Detail of the project ed. 2024

ora­­to­rio-y-audi­­to­rio / Spain

Design­er	ENRIQUE JESÚS HER­MOSO LERA
Loca­tion	C. PAJARES 22, 28223 POZUE­LO DE ALAR­CÓN, MADRID
Nation	Spain
Design Team	ENRIQUE JESÚS HER­MOSO LERA KARIN HEIMANNSFELD DAVID GAR­CÍA LÓPEZ MAR­I­U­CA LÓPEZ FERNÁNDEZ
Year	2014
Pho­to credits	JESUS GRANA­DA: JG JAVIER ORIVE: JO

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The 60 year old Reta­mar School with a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 2,250 need­ed to replace their old chapel to increase its sit­ting capac­i­ty from 250 to 600 and to pro­vide an addi­tion­al audi­to­ri­um for 450 audiences.
Our design aims for inte­gra­tion with the exist­ing build­ings, pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­struct­ed in bricks, while at the same time main­tain­ing its own unique char­ac­ter for the school, high­light­ed on the exte­ri­or by a promi­nent roof, fin­ished in green zinc.
This new church is designed inside out: The inside space of the ora­to­ry, which is the most impor­tant ele­ment of the project, giv­ing it both its char­ac­ter and “soul”. We were look­ing for a build­ing, being able to serve a vari­ety of activ­i­ties – from grand cel­e­bra­tions to the day by day school func­tions (for sev­er­al hun­dred pupils aged between five and sev­en­teen as well as for over five hun­dred fam­i­lies). With the large vol­ume of space; 35m long, 20m wide and 12m high, the big chal­lenge has been to cre­ate a large com­mu­nal space where each indi­vid­ual has the abil­i­ty to with­draw into ones inner space to com­mu­ni­cate with God.
This was achieved with­in the larg­er vol­ume by the use of nat­ur­al light, an asym­me­try in the over­all com­po­si­tion and by the selec­tion of materials.
A sequen­tial sub­di­vi­sion of the large vol­ume of inte­ri­or space was the strat­e­gy. Nat­ur­al light enters through the tri­an­gu­lar sky­lights of the roof run­ning from the por­ti­co to the pres­bytery. The entrance, placed under a large and impor­tant stained glass win­dow which is incor­po­rat­ed with­in a cur­tain wall, is on the wing, which opens to the redesigned plaza of the school. This entrance unveils its asym­me­try by cre­at­ing a first rup­ture – on the left, a grand­stand raised by a stair­case and to the right, the main part of the nave. The high­er lev­el grand­stand and the choir are used for spe­cial days when atten­dances are high­er than nor­mal. The light­ing there is achieved by a rec­tan­gu­lar pic­ture win­dow, in stained glass, which, although a dif­fer­ent shape is rem­i­nis­cent of a clas­si­cal rose window.
Hav­ing passed the entrance, the view is guid­ed to the pres­bytery, slight­ly ele­vat­ed, in a grand alcove in which, behind the altar, a free-stand­ing altar­piece frames the shrine.
The nave and ceil­ing are clad in bam­boo pan­els and slats in order to achieve a har­mo­nious tran­si­tion between the curv­ing roof and the side pan­els. In the inside shell of the pres­bytery the bam­boo is replaced by titan with a gold­en flair, while the gold­en gran­ite is replaced by green gran­ite around the altar to mark the sig­nif­i­cance and impor­tance of this area.
The most impor­tant and holi­est space with­in the build­ing, the pres­bytery of the ora­to­ry is fin­ished with a spe­cial mate­r­i­al — extreme­ly thin lay­ers of titan, less than 1mm thick which are assem­bled in a fish scale pat­tern. Six types of pat­terns were used in rows of dif­fer­ent widths tran­si­tion­ing between the curved sur­faces to allow the shrine to be exact­ly in the cen­tre of the presbytery’s asym­met­ric space. This method of instal­la­tion is used here for the very first time and the stun­ning effect — the pres­bytery gets an absolute sin­gu­lar out­look — jus­ti­fies its complexity.
The bam­boo, apart from rein­forc­ing the con­ti­nu­ity of the whole space is detailed to allow for acoustic absorp­tion between its slats, impor­tant dur­ing the ser­vice for chant, word and prayer. With the excep­tion of the beech bench­es, bam­boo is used through through­out because of the spe­cial prop­er­ties it brings to the inte­ri­or. The rich warm char­ac­ter­is­tics of the bam­boo com­bined with the com­plex­i­ty of form are high­light­ed by both the nat­ur­al and arti­fi­cial lighting.
With the excep­tion of the altar and altar­piece our scope of work extend­ed to cov­er the light­ing of the ora­to­ry, all the wood­en bench­es, the invert­ed gran­ite pyra­mid for the holy water and the three huge stained glass win­dows (com­plete with Latin, Greek and Ara­ma­ic texts and abstract draw­ings in blue tones) which com­bined cre­ate a vivid con­trast to the warm colour of the wood­en interior.
The ora­to­ry appears as a unit, sup­port­ed by a base of bricks which con­tains the auditorium.
Mov­ing through the entrance hall, an inter­me­di­ate space between the new and the old build­ing is opened up with a con­crete stair­case insert­ed beneath a large sky­light. This new inser­tion, bathed in nat­ur­al light, acts as a sec­ond entrance space lead­ing vis­i­tors to the audi­to­ri­um. On the same floor are three more mul­ti­pur­pose class­rooms, rest rooms and tech­ni­cal rooms.
The audi­to­ri­um is formed by the two struc­tur­al grids — respect­ing the orthog­o­nal sys­tem of the ora­to­ry but, at the same time com­posed and work­ing with a ‘turned’ axis. This allows a visu­al exten­sion of the back­ground mak­ing the hall more pro­nounced while at the same time allow­ing the rows close to the scenery a notable sen­sa­tion of prox­im­i­ty with the speak­er or the actors.
The inte­ri­or of the audi­to­ri­um is for­mal­ized by con­trast­ing two very dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als — gal­va­nized expand­ed met­al mesh and bam­boo pan­els. The wing man­tles appear as per­fo­rat­ed met­al pieces that, apart from con­di­tion­ing acousti­cal­ly the space, are at the same time the lim­it of the inte­ri­or skin. The big columns in front of these are pan­elled with wood and ‘orga­nize’ the sus­pend­ed ceil­ing cre­at­ed from inclined per­fo­rat­ed wood slats posi­tioned to cre­ate the required acoustic envi­ron­ment. In between the slats, hard­ly vis­i­ble, the expand­ed met­al mesh is used to host the light­ing of the audi­to­ri­um. The screen of the cin­e­ma, as well designed asym­met­ri­cal­ly, is cov­ered by bam­boo slid­ing panels.
From the out­side, a con­crete stair­case, act­ing as an amphithe­atre, allows dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for the use of the exter­nal space sur­round­ing the build­ing. Next to the audi­to­ri­um, the huge can­tilever of the ora­to­ry choir gives shel­ter to the out­side scenery, where the school has an addi­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ty to per­form sum­mer the­atre and oth­er festivities.
This inter­play between the two main spaces is expressed on the exte­ri­or by the dia­log between the brick and the zinc reflect­ing solid­i­ty and move­ment, earth and heaven…

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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