Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
La Gota Cultural Center is a hybrid building that aims to create a new focus of urban centrality in Navalmoral (Cáceres), showcasing the identity of the town. In addition to a Tobacco Museum, the building hosts temporary exhibit spaces and a permanent exhibition for the painter, Sofia Feliu. The geometry of the building was inspired by the structure of the tobacco plant and principles of equality and diversity that are seen in their leaves: they are similar but different at the same time. The building contains a core for vertical connections with a structure similar to the way plants emerge. These plants are equal in size and morphology, but slightly vary in height, character and are slightly offset. Inside, the building has an atmosphere inspired by the tobacco drying-buildings, where patterns of light and shadow find their way through traditional brick walls. To achieve this aesthetic, a ceramic fabric was designed for the exterior surface of the building to allow light to enter into those spaces through a matrix of openings. This produces a dematerialized façade with refined geometries, allowing the filtration of sunlight through the walls and into the spaces.
A green wall extends to the exterior of the Tobacco Museum. It is a didactic wall with tobacco plants and vegetation of the region that provides cooling for the building in the summer as well as significant energy savings. Between the Cultural Center and the adjacent building, a public square is created and flanked by the green wall on one side and ceramic mesh on the other.
The five floors of the center are set on five displaced boxes, one above the other. The floors are staggered in the areas where boxes are flying to create the effect of a box “on the other.” The post-tensioned structure of the building permits, through active reinforcements, large spans and reduces the slab edge profile. This structural system not only uses less material and creates a lighter structure, it also increases the bearing capacity of the concrete and it prolongs its life span by reducing deformation and decreasing cracks.
The façade is made up of a double skin composed of a glass wall and ceramic fabric. A thermal space is created between these elements, preventing the summer heat to enter the building, while allowing views that are created from the inside evoking the image of the tobacco drying-buildings.