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Architects: Ventura + Llimona
- Year: 2014
Text description provided by the architects. In February 2009 the City of Zumarraga (Gipuzkoa) announced a competition for designing the Interpretation and Welcome Center for Visitors in La Antigua. Besides the permanent exhibition, the program called for a temporary exhibition hall, a conference room, a restaurant, and storage services. All these spaces are especially designed for their intended uses and to operate independently from other facilities, as they can be completely isolated from the rest if necessary.
The facilities have been constructed in a site adjacent to the Romanesque shrine of La Antigua, also known as "the cathedral of Basque chapels" and with great tourism potential. Therefore, we should not break with the landscape or exceed the height of the chapel, but as necessary for its function as tourist facility. Thus the view of parking areas has been canceled from the porch and the center, it is buried in its 65%, entering the mount and minimizing the visual impact, contributing to the sustainability of the building, offset by a contribution of geothermal energy.
The search for a single discourse to integrate content has led to continued dialogue to unite the museologic and architectural interest. The design is formalized from the history of the place.
The porch that greets the visitor is both a great vantage point of the town of Zumarraga and the chapel.
The design of the building and construction materials are an interpretation of the natural resources of the area: wood, stone and iron, subsistence economies of La Antigua and Zumarraga.
In the access ramp to the center there is already an ornamental design, a metallic tubular material. This material present inside and outside the center, symbolizes the forest and its exploitation and also hints at the significant role of metallurgy in this county. It is designed as an element that is structural, ornamental, divider, museum support and transmitter of weather and light. But the center also shows other representations of the forest: light gaps on the porch, molded walls like a negative of trunks, and views to the outside, the living forest landscape.
The river, as it organized human settlement in the past, today organizes spaces in the facility. It is represented by the large skylight that runs through the building, a concept emerged from the galleries-stands of some facades of Zumarraga. A river of light for interior spaces that addresses circulation routes. A heat collection element in winter that moves through the aspiration of the chimneys of the building, which in summer allows us to do the reverse effect.
The display elements are also designed solely for this center. These are all key factors contributing exclusivity, personality and quality to the visit. The facility has been designed with one goal: unity between conceptual design and contents, since we have designed an Interpretation and Welcome Center for Visitors.
