Alabaster Museum-Auditorium

Alabaster Museum-Auditorium

Architect:	Carlos Gonzalvo
Collaborators:	Albert Samper
Year(s) of design:	2010
Planned Location:	Fuentes de Ebro, Zaragoza, Spain
Coordinates:	41° 30' 4" N, 0° 36' 27" W See on the Map Adjust the marker

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Please excuse any mistakes this translation might have and feel free to correct them if you wish to collaborate with our project.

Introduction

Project presented the architectural competition for students VELUX 2010.

Location

Image of the quarry

The place where he developed the program is a mountainous area, where conditions of light and space allowed us to develop a new area where culture and tradition was consolidated with light and architecture.

These environmental conditions allowed us to chart a new way to search the one with the alabaster light and architecture: a quarry.

The quarry, now abandoned, unusable, is a bleak place to which we wanted to bring life and harmony, creating new spaces of light combined with the material itself.

Then, the population of Fuentes de Ebro, belongs to the region of Zaragoza. The city that gave its name to this region is one of the most important in Spain and its strategic position as seen from a logistical point of view is enviable. The village is located only 26 km from the city, can be considered a privileged location.

Concept

The sculpture,is the art of modeling material, creating volumes and spaces shaping the light.

Alabaster light enabled us to relate architecture to create a parallel world and drawing inspiration from the career of sculptor Eduardo Chillida.

The main objective of the project was based on going from the origin of the material to form a new space, which allows for a light, sculpture and architecture, giving a new shape and function to the quarry in order to bring the environment above everything changed had been extracted by exploiting the light to develop a cultural program.

Spaces

We develop a cultural program - assembly hall, exhibition halls, etc..

The program takes place in a cavity in a quarry, no right angles, with a rhythmic variation of holes suspended in air leaving the plant under these fully illuminated to achieve a multifunctional space connected to the lower levels.

These holes vary in length from the top will penetrate within the institution itself creating a link between alabaster and creation, thereby facilitating the formation of a space to think, share and display.

Materials

translucency test

We use thealabasteras the main material in every work.

This material allowed us to maintain a relationship with the outside world, the project is underground, it channels the light reflected off the ground with greater intensity and thus the filter to the interior.

The chemical composition of alabaster is the same as the cast, although it differs from the size of crystals in the stone, being in alabaster very small (less than 0.1 mm) and a highly compacted fabric .

Its ease of work, manual and machinery, and especially its translucency, waxy luster and opalescent appearance, are the properties that have led to a historic ornamental use.

In the setting of value differences between different types of alabaster the criteria used are as follows: origin, color, translucency, grain (density, color and intensity), uniformity of the stone and compact.

In Spain, there have been farms in different places: Almería, Burgos, Cuenca, Granada, Guadalajara, Lleida, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, Tarragona, Zaragoza and Teruel. It is in Aragon, where the most important sites that currently provide most of the alabaster mined and worked in Europe.

The main deposits are located on the southeast edge of thegeological basin of the Ebro - where the project is developed - and in the basin of Calatayud-Daroca.