The Contemporary Art Center of Córdoba, designed by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, is not a centralized building: the center moves from one space to another, trying to be everywhere.
It is configured as a sequence of precincts linked to a public space, onto which all the different functions of the building flow. Conceived as a place for interaction, it is a common space in which one can see an installation, access exhibitions, visit the cafeteria, spend time in the media library, wait for a performance to begin in the black box, or maybe simply look out onto the Guadalquivir River.
Just like those literary structures that include one story within another, the architects took a system as starting point for the project, a law generated by a self-similar geometric pattern, originated in a hexagonal form, which contains at once three different types of halls, of one hundred fifty, ninety, and sixty square meters.
The materials help to achieve the art factory character pervading the entire project. In the interior, bare walls, slabs of concrete, and continuous paved flooring establish a spatial structure susceptible to being transformed individually through different interventions. A network of electric, digital, audiovisual, and lighting infrastructures ease access to sockets and connections throughout the building.
On the exterior, the building asserts its presence by means of a single material: prefabricated concrete fiberglass panels, or GRC. These clad opaque and perforated façades, along with the flat roofs and the sloping ones of the halls. The industrialized conception of the system help to guarantee the precision and rationality of its execution, being part of the combinatorial concept governing the whole project.
In contrast to the homogeneity that globalized civilization seems to impose in all contexts, the Contemporary Art Center of Córdoba aims to interpret a different Western character, overcoming the clichés of that common expression.
Images 1, 2, 3 courtesy of Nieto Sobrejano Arquitectos
Images 4, 5, 6 courtesy of Roland Halbe
Discover: nietosobejano.com
