CLIENT
Ajuntament Vila-real
LOCATION
Vila-real, Castellon
CATEGORY
Housing
PHOTOGRAPHY
David Zarzoso
VIDEO
Cabana Team
FURNITURE
Moroso
In August 2019, began the works that will lead to the achievement of the comprehensive rehabilitation of two historic buildings, heritage of Villareal, the Gran Casino and Tagoba Theatre. Both buildings were acquired by the City Council in the previous legislature and the rehabilitation projects were drafted by the architectural firms Cabana Partners for Architecture, based in Madrid and Negrosobreazul, from Valencia, jointly. Both projects seek to recover the heritage value of the buildings.
The buildings that are object of rehabilitation are The Gran Casino and the annex and the abandoned Tagoba Theatre, both built around 1919. There are indications that suggest that, in the beginning, both buildings worked together and that later modifications compartmentalized them fo r different uses: from premises for one of the clubs of the municipality, to a bank branch and also as Popular University.
The idea of the architects from Cabana and Negrosobreazul , has been the original operation of the building, adapting it to the new uses as headquarters of citizen services and offices of the City Council and for its part in the Tagoba, recovering its use as cafe - theatre, giving it hybrid capacity for the holding of conferences and plenary sessions.
“In the age of information overload and noise, clarity is a virtue”
Yuval Noah Harari
Neither the Gran Casino nor the Tagoba Theatre were treated very well during the 20 th century. A series of unfortunate interventions that forgot the capacities of these architectures from the beginning of the century were disintegrating their spaces and making these two bodies gradually turn their backs on each other.
This intervention ha s had the challenge of understanding the Gran Casino and the Tagoba Theatre as a whole and recovering them as a new organism well connected between them and with Vila Real. To this end, the inclusion of a new space: a space of agreement, intermediate, bet ween these two magnificent architectures: the prism of light.
This prism of light is the “universal connector” between the theatre and the casino, since, with a body that relate all the levels of one building in the other, it contains the common vertical core ( with a panoramic elevator and a lightened staircase) and is released on the first floor towards Insa street with a new entrance facing the main street. This space is the protagonist for resolving the functional dialogue of these buildings and making it easier for it to live as a complete and fluid organism.
Therefore, the visitor will be surprised by the appearance of this space composed mainly by two remarkable facts: the pregnancy of the staircase and the diffuse light that is contained in the pri sm.
Wabi - sabi
1. Aesthetic Japanese concept describing a kind/type of aesthetic vision based on “the beauty of imperfection”
2. The art of aging
The cleaning and recovering process of these buildings provided another fundamental ingredient: time. The architectural firms have seen before them the inherent beauty of time in this rehabilitation, and have taken it as a banner in the project ́s decisions.
For this reason in the “new” Tagoba Theatre and Gran Casino it will be possible to contemplate constructive elements from another time: bare and stark architectures that show the beauty of the masonry walls and the mortars used at the beginning of the 20 th century.
These textures have been respected and enhanced with indirect lighting that upgrade de senescence of this elements.
The beauty of the passage of time: wabi sabi.
This prism of light is the “universal connector” between the theatre and the casino, since, with a body that relate all the levels of one building in the other, it contains the common vertical core ( with a panoramic elevator and a lightened staircase) and is released on the first floor towards Insa street with a new entrance facing the main street. This space is the protagonist for resolving the functional dialogue of these buildings and making it easier for it to live as a complete and fluid organism.
Therefore, the visitor will be surprised by the appearance of this space composed mainly by two remarkable facts: the pregnancy of the staircase and the diffuse light that is contained in the prism.
