PALACE AND MAIN SQUARE OF GRAJAL DE CAMPOS
1st Prize Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition 2017
Al final sólo queda
la voz, la voz, la poderosa voz
de la llamada:
– Lázaro, ven fuera.
Animal de la noche,
sierpe, ven, da forma
a todo lo borrado.
José Ángel VALENTE
1st Prize Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition 2017
.
Thus, like Lazarus, architecture must resurrect, come to its senses, to give shape to everything that has been erased, everything we have lost or has been taken away from us. This resurrected – or reborn - architecture must be the one that recovers the erased memory of the city and by recovering it, it may also start to recover itself, to reborn.
In other words, it is now the hour to shake the root and turn it to the sky. It is now the hour of rebirth, the rebirth of cities and the rebirth of architecture; the hour of questioning the current drift and correct the course. Therefore, it is now, when architecture lies wrapped in high oblivion, using Francisco de Quevedo’s words, when an ending and restart is more necessary than ever before; a restart which will unavoidably mean looking back and evoking ancient memories, as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux would say, and rebuild over the rubble of a past that preserves endless treasures for the future.
Looking to the past seeking inspiration and models has been, is and will be the one and only and dangerous revolution possible to face an architecture that today stands for a mediocre stability based on an absurd rupture with its inheritance favouring a presumed progress that obliges – this is unfortunately the vanity of our times – present to turn its back on the past as if it were a grotesque image of a two faced Janus that opposes Modernitas to Antiquitas as the two irreconcilable faces of a same coin, let’s turn back our sight once again, let’s hear the call.
This is precisely what we pretend through this proposal for Grajal de Campos, attentively hear the call and look to the past to give shape again to everything that has been erased, evoking old memories and recovering them for this place with an architecture that inevitably must resurrect and talk once again in terms of composition, proportion and beauty.
Thus, in this Main Square, which has been blurred by successive transformations, the lost image is recovered in order to insufflate new life to this urban space through basic architectural elements that once articulated it – porticoes, loggia and fountain – and also adding new ones that never existed before – new stone door – which presence we consider necessary because of the new use given to the palace dominating the square, once symbol of feudal power, now symbol of civic power when becoming Town Council.
To definitively limit the ensemble and close the southern façade of the square, new dwellings destined for social renting will serve not only as an effective closure and delimitation to the recovered square, but will also stablish the pattern that unbuilt plots on Main Street should follow in the future.
For its part, the Palace of the Earls of Grajal will also recover its lost image through its typological recovery and some of its original uses – such as the winery and olive grove garden – and at the same time will be slightly modified to host new uses but never deviating of its original configuration.
The New Town Hall will now placed on the West wing of the building, while the North one is dedicated to exhibitions and hosting pilgrims following the traditional Way of Saint James, and the East wing will be occupied by the hotel with the careful reconstruction of its wooden gallery overlooking the newly recovered garden. The South Façade, with its imposing loggia dominates the square and constitutes one of the most important attractions of the palace, is potentiated thanks to the new door and the tower now transformed into an imposing staircase to resolve the height difference between the square level and the courtyard and also providing the Town Hall with a representative entrance form the public space.
A new Garden is here proposed with olive trees planted following a grid, a precinct enclosed by high walls, a hortus conclusus where at dawn sunlight will rise over the olive trees and their silver leaves, thus producing also the happiest shines and reflexes on the water that traverses and whispers inside the orchard.
With these interventions in the square, palace, dwellings and garden – which form part of a whole – we aim to reconstruct all the erased, evoke ancient memories of the place through these forms and architectural elements which recover this place’s timeless beauty, making real the dur désir de durer of Paul Éluard which is still alive in our old European cities and call, once more, with a sole and powerful voice to its rebirth.
