Day Care Centre in Alcalá de Guadaira
The “Luis Velázquez Peña” Civic Centre is located in Alcalá de Guadaira in the province of Seville, on the site of some old pipe-clay quarries.
The marked unevenness caused by the open-cast mining of the mineral for so long has given the landscape a very peculiar appearance, with a multitude of escarpments and vertical cuts in the land.
The project was to restore an edge of the city that was degraded but which is actually an excellent location because of the views it provides of the old quarries from a level of approximately 15 metres.
It was to respond to the need for a car park for nearby houses, a public park and a day centre for senior citizens.
The park was to serve as a connection between the city and the new day centre and to make for a pleasant access walkway from the main avenue just behind the plot.
The edge of the escarpment was adapted to create a path around it that leads to the Civic Centre.
It serves three main purposes: a dance floor, day room and canteen, which have been laid out around a large open-air communal square and in such a way that they can be operated independently.
The three bodies have an extremely simple layout, with the service areas and toilets arranged into compact modules which act as screens to separate the general use areas from the private spaces.
The interior has been arranged in such a way that the different activities can be carried out in a smooth and unhindered manner, with no compartments or divisions in the corridors, and so that the building complex looks like a single unit.
On the outside, these three bodies have been lined with a façade material that binds them and ensures the unity of the whole. The lining creates a gallery area that connects the different use areas under a roof.
Evoking the vertical hollows of the pipe-clay quarries, the textured skin of the building is arranged in an octagonal geometry using rustic brick with lines of white mortar.
The rustic brick was used in the outdoor communal space and main entrance, thus increasing the scale of the complex and its consistency with the inspiration behind the project, which was to convey the idea that the building had been dug out of the land.
