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Architects: Estudio Huma
- Area: 1050 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:David Frutos
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Lead Architects: Jose Amorós Martínez y Alberto Amorós Martínez
Text description provided by the architects. The work is about the restoration of Casa Dorda, an old 18th-century convent built for the Carmelite nuns. The intervention highlights the social transformation that society is experiencing as a result of COVID, based on a new way of relating, where humanity prevails.
The project focuses on the revaluation of the palace's ground floor, justified by its value as a heritage of the city, from its status as a cultural interest. The restoration is motivated to accommodate the new headquarters of the city's water company, which, after the pandemic, is motivated to create a new management system based on attention and service to the citizen, where they feel safe and accompanied; loved and respected, through the creation of places of tranquility that calm; and promote a new communication in the every day, based on human relationships, from where they can speak and be heard.
Water justifies the purpose of the project. It is from the water that the palace takes on its new life today, in the firm will to reflect its dormant spirit. Thus, the new materials used seek to represent water as a link.
Glass represents the transparency of water. Used as a resource to classify the different spaces for use, through the creation of light wells; resulting in an open, fluid, and dynamic space in its transitions. These courtyards, executed with this luminous transparent skin, define an area where vegetation grows, relieving the sensation of a closed interior space and promoting the well-being of work, from an airy space surrounded by nature. Glass is used to create furniture; in work tables, in the public service counter, and in the employees' office; executed through a triple layer of tempered glass, to which the intermediate layer is broken on-site, in order to provoke that wet effect of a water droplet sustained over time.
Terrazzo represents water's resilience in its adaptation to form. Used as flooring and executed on-site through a mass of white cement and sand, mixed with selected and dyed aggregate in its core with a bluish pigment as a subtle nod to water.
Aluminum represents the reflection of water. The mirror that shows everything, is arranged on the ceiling, walls, and existing pillars. Creating an infinite space from where the light in its reflection turns the area into a continuous kaleidoscope.
The tensioned canvas represents the immateriality of water. Creating a continuous mirror without joints, which reflects everything that approaches it. The void that reflects everything, from where space is amplified.
Under the slogan of "building with water," water constructs the facades through continuous waterfalls that bathe the glass in their windows facing the street. Water justifies this new life and nourishes our emotions, becoming the maximum exponent of life.
