Acha Zaballa Arquitectos

Hibridization comes to town . Europan12 . Don Benito

Acha Zaballa Arquitectos

The development of a central pedestrian area serves to revitalize the tissue that faces these central spaces and their ramifications.

NEW CENTRALITY
It revitalizes and strengthens the trade and service activity in this sector, placing value on existing buildings.
Reuse strategy.
MOBILITY
Pedestrian area. The pedestrian area is extended from the Sanchez Cortes Square to the Museum Square, the Plaza España and to the new Plaza del Hospicio. A continuous surface, free and accessible, which compensates the lack of free spaces in the south of the town.
The underground parking provision eliminates the servitude of surface parking and improves the perception of spatial continuity and accessibility of the area.
Traffic living area. The existing solution on the Calle Ramon y Cajal and Groizard streets is extended to the perpendicular axis of the streets Arroyazo and Villanueva. The traffic displacement to the north alignment of the area ensures fluency on the road grid and allows inserting the use of underground parking with a tangent condition to the edge.
NEW USES. URBAN PRIORITY
The priority is to create an intergenerational environment. Improve public space in the heart of the town centre.
Defining space through sustainable architecture, lasting and above all adaptable.
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
The Santiago Apostol Church and the House of Guillen occupying a central position, and the Imperial Theatre, the House of Culture, the food market, several Modernist mansions and some bourgeois houses on the perimeter define a heterogeneous environment to set in value.
Beyond this surrounding range of amenities, urban fabric presents a feature homogeneity, especially from the streets Mesones, Consuelo Torres (south), defined by a height of three plants and white stucco facades with moulded hollow frames.
The proposal is to combine the priority of creating a new public space with preservation of existing block concept. Therefore the existing alignments of streets Villanueva, Cecilio Gallego and Consuelo Torre area preserved.
STRATUM. THE PRE-EXISTING.
The aim is to preserve along with the House of Guillen, part of the original fabric that accompanies it, not altering the image of España Square and materializing the building on strata of the city. However the specific percentage of preservation or demolition is considered a factor as adaptable as the proposed boundary set.
The percentage of demolition is not determinative. The proposal is adaptable.

THE PROPOSAL
It is a flexible element with occupiable spaces, closed and open spaces, but is primarily a promenade. A three-level sequence from the square that in rising development locates an accessible route leading to two levels of terraces over the Hospice square and surrounding streets, ending at a viewing platform above the Guillen House with views towards the España square.
A hybrid space (public space) and campus (of citizen knowledge and testing of new uses), civic centre (socialization and range of activities) and leisure alternative in town.
A balance between the traditional urban fabric and the modes of XXI century.
It is not an architectural finished element. It is rather a strategy for the development of a viable support an adaptive edge where the occupation or closed volume is defined in terms of demand that may arise due to use.
It is a space:
>Playful free spaces capable of hosting outdoors activities, with the sufficient surrounding infrastructure to ensure versatility; enclosed spaces with outdoors projection capability
 >Socializer urban reference for intergenerational encounter and hybridization of different activities
 >Interconnected strengthening ties between citizen initiatives, public institutions and local businesses

THE LIMIT is
LEAKY
ACCESIBLE
VERSATILE
FLEXIBLE
ADAPTIVE
CUSTOMIZABLE

USES
ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES / REVIVAL OF ECONOMIC FABRIC
> COMERCIAL: the implementation of new businesses helps revitalize the surrounding tissue
> SHOWROOMS TEMPORARY LOCAL INDUSTRIES AND TRADES: the centre becomes showcase for a better understanding of reality and the progress of industry and local research by local citizens and foreign visitors. Companies that are not located in the centre temporarily occupy it and are disclosed.
> COWORKING CENTER: especially, but not exclusively, used by the youth. A space where resources and synergies of all kinds are shared.
> WORKSHOPS
> MARKETS AND FAIRS: periodicity and varied subject (crafts, culinary topics like cheese or mycology), seasonal or regular throughout the year (food market goes out one day to the week)
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
> LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS: space for youth, neighbourhood associations, seniors, in which they share leisure, rest or classroom activities such as cookery, film library, aerobics session or tai chi. It converges a diverse public knowledge along extended hours mixing knowledge and leisure.
> MEETING SPACES, ASEMBLIES, rallies: the central space of the square, but also the upper terraces, the inclined planes serve to accommodate meetings of various kinds of affluence.
 CULTURAL
> LOCAL EXHIBITIONS: the presence of the nearby Cultural Centre marks the dimension of space reservation in the sector. However, their activities can expand to the square, to the covered or roof-top terraces.
> SPACES FOR CONCERTS, exhibitions, recitals, festivals ...
LEISURE
> PREMISES OF HOSTELRY
> VIEWPOINT TERRACE
> MEETING POINT: reference space for recreation and as a starting point for guided tours
> FREE SPACES (the square central platform, inclined planes, high terraces) serve to accommodate walkers, sports enthusiasts, attending outdoor concerts, freaks of new technologies…
RESIDENCE
> HOUSING
> OTHER: apartments for young and old, temporary residence, transit workers or tourists.
 And in general [AREA @], the entire space is an area connected to technologies 2.0. (WiFi, optical fibber connections ...)

MAPPING
WHERE IT ALL HAPPENS?
AT WHAT TIME?
SOCIALIZATION SPACES a topographic sequence of accessible, open, closed, covered, uncovered, at level of plaza, raised from ground, rooftop spaces
Here gymnastics, resting, working, staying up late… is practice
 Uses hybridization involves overlapping affluence cycles.
From the daily cycle: residence and work, trade, youth hangouts, to the weekly cycle of expanding food market, holding workshops, and to the monthly or seasonable cycle.
There is always something to do. There is always someone around.