Going Guerilla in Triana

Fotos © Jesús Granada

Until recently, Spain's economic crisis scarcely cut into the number of buildings I have been asked to review by different publications. But since this spring the lack of new work in the pipeline over the past few years seems to be having an impact. This modest museum in a former pottery works in the Seville neigborhood of Triana is all about the crisis, not only in terms of work but also in professional confidence, as I elaborate at the end of my article:

"...The tone of the new" facades, and their invisibility to the street, is in keeping with the modest ambitions of the intervention. The Museum is the product of a new era of moderation in public works, in striking contrast to the projects initiated before the crisis. From the nearby streets, the silhouette of César Pelli's 180-meter-tall Torre Sevilla looms, commissioned by Cajasol, a failed public savings bank. Its lower floors will soon be occupied by the CaixaForum, a cultural center run by La Caixa, the bank that rescued Cajasol, after La Caixa abandoned a more ambitious plan to house the center in the medieval ship works of the Atarazanas in the historic center. Elsewhere, the wooden mushrooms of the Metropol Parasol in the Plaza de la Encarnación, by German architect J. Mayer H., seem gloomy and underused on a warm summer day. And the court-ordered demolition of Zaha Hadid's half-finished library for the University of Seville has been completed, after the project was challenged by local residents for occupying a public park. In this climate, as the Triana Ceramics Museum would seem to confirm, architects must go guerilla, pass under the radar of public attention and commit themselves to specific, local goals."

More from my original text (the published version was somewhat garbled by my Austrian editors, as their title shows (see below)):

"For the Triana Ceramics Museum in Seville, local architects Miguel Hernández Valencia and Esther López Martín, of AF6 Architects, frame the haphazard elements of a disused pottery works with a second-floor addition that overlooks them on four sides, giving the complex a sense of unity.... "

"Hernández and López ... preserve the original brick kilns, buildings and sheds that were built, over time and with little planning, in and around an open patio. To this labyrinthine complex they add a second level that forms a ring around the patio, and arrange visitors' itineraries on both levels. The patio occupies part of a large block that is enmeshed in the barrio's urban fabric, and that includes the "Cerca Hermosa", a famous gated alley lined with modest houses...."

"Hernández and López's approach to the project was to accept and build on its chaotic accumulation of elements, adding a contemporary contribution with the distinctive facades of the second level....."

"The ceramic brise-soleil of its facades is inspired in the metal storage shelving stacked with half-finished pottery pieces that the architects found in the factory. Its "shelves" are of galvanized steel, and the clay units are custom-made in four sizes, with round centers and faceted exteriors so as to stack easily with a bit of silicone.... They left the original street facade of the building unchanged, with its small corner entrance decorated with terra cotta and painted tiles, adding only signage to a parapet, together with the motif of the brise-soleil in low-relief."

"The tubular clay units of the brise-soleil ... bring to mind unexpected references, from the polka dots on traditional Sevillian flamenco dresses to the [nearby] Triana Bridge, where cast iron circles of graduated diameters fill the space between roadbed and arch (a structural system introduced by Antoine-Rémy Polonceau on the Pont du Carrousel in Paris in 1834)."

Entry facade

 
Playing at Gorrillas in Triana
Triana Ceramics Museum, Sevilla, by AF6 Arquitectos
architektur.aktuell 426, September 2015, pages 70 - 79