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  COME VEDERE L'ARCHITETTURA CONTEMPORANEA HOW TO SEE CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
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BUILDING
 
 
SGAE Central Office
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DESIGNER
 
 
Ensamble Studio
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DESCRIPTION
 
Anton Garcia Abril Ensamble SGAE Santiago de CompostelaThe SGAE (General Society of Authors and Publishers) Central Office in Santiago de Compostela, is located in Vista Alegre property, a privileged site with intermediate scale between a private garden and a public green area, from where the skyline of the historical city can be glimpsed. The project for the development of the plot was designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, and contemplated the construction of a series of buildings with academic purpose, most of them already built. The SGAE Central Office situated in the west limit of the site completes the intervention in Vista Alegre and defines its boundaries.

Anton Garcia Abril Ensamble SGAE Santiago de CompostelaThe architectural conception of the building incorporates the spirit of the city of Santiago developing a singular identity and entering a dialog with the history and memory of the place, as well as a close relationship with contemporary artistic language.

The program includes not only social activities for the attendance of authors and publishers, but also a wide range of public cultural activities. It is divided into four functional areas distributed in four levels respectively: Diffusion, Formation, Public Area and Management, with accesses from the garden and the street. Three thousand square metres in total constructed to serve the city and its artists.

The SGAE central office expresses its will to become part of the perimetral wall of the property both by its location and longitudinal layout adapted to the border of the plot. The building puts forward the confrontation of three walls which run along a space of varied constructive, material and perceptive scales. A stone wall looking into the garden, an interior wall made of CDs and a translucent glass wall facing the street. They all work as filters of the different urban situations delimiting and organizing the program in functional strips.

The great stone wall, can be thought of as a monumental sculpture, constructed by the superposition and repetition of prehistoric orders adapted to a Renaissance broken composition. The Mondariz Grey stone facade components appear in one of their purest forms, as irregular ashlars of variable geometry and size, selected directly from the quarry overage, and ordered in permeable strips that manipulate the South light breaking it on the inside. This sculptural content causes the disintegration of the building as such, going beyond its mere symbolic and functional dimension within Vista Alegre property: the building becomes aware of the place and integrates; it stands as a representative background of the site.

Anton Garcia Abril Ensamble SGAE Santiago de CompostelaThe interior CD wall is a plane placed in between the outer curved elements: stone wall and glass wall. It represents the chord which draws the arc described by them and grants the scale of the space confined between walls. Its material composition and quality make it appear like an impressive stained glass window with different degrees of transparency, a wall made of color and light, in clear contrast with the nature of the opposite stone wall.

The translucent glass wall offers a discreet face to the street, controlling the light and views of the spaces inside, according to their activity and needs.
The building arches, widens and narrows, by the interaction of these three elements, generating fluid multivalent spaces, such as the porticoed street defined by the stone wall and the CD wall; a space that roots the building directly to the city of Santiago. Walking through it, the user experiences the compression of the space in the centre, where the main entrance to the building is located, and a progressive expansion to the ends where the space opens to the landscape and frames it, generating two viewpoints.

The building then becomes a street, an urban space inside a garden, which reactivates the site bringing vitality and dynamism to the atmosphere. And it also becomes a stone wall, thought of as both boundary and background, that fences in the garden and develops the use of a material which belongs to the place: stone.
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MATERIALS
 
stone, glass
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LOCATION
 
Continent
Europe
Nation
Spain [España]
Autonomous community
Galizia [Galicia]
Province
A Coruña
Town
Santiago de Compostela
Address
Rua Das Salvadas, 2 (Parque Vista Alegre)
 
 
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MAP
 
 
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TYPOLOGY
 
ARCHITECTURE
Buildings for offices and professional practises
Offices
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CHRONOLOGY
 
Project
2002    
Realisation
2008
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BIBILIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
 
 
Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Maria Hosé Marcos, "Urban sculpture", A10 new European architecture 27, may-june 2009, "Section: Natural stone" p. 52
"Headquarters for the Sociedad General de Autores & Editores (SGAE)", A+U. Architecture and Urbanisme 9/2008, september 2008 [Small architecture in Spain], pp. 116-125
Silvia Monaco, "SGAE Central Office", Domus. Special Work, pp. 56-57, allegato a/published with Domus 916 luglio-agosto/july-august 2008
"Sede de la SGAE, Santiago de Compostela SGAE Headquarters", AV Monografías/Monographs 129-130, I-IV 2008 [España 2008. Balance del año/Summary of the Year], "Sedes simbólicas/Iconic Headquarters" pp. 78-85
Antón García-Abril, "Arquitectura de peso. La construcción masiva de un espacio leve", Arquitectura Viva 113, III-IV 2007 [Piedra al limite/Stone at the Edges], pp. 34-37
Daniel West, "A wall in stones", Icon 41, november 2006, p. 57
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CLIENT
 
 
SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores)
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DIMENSIONAL
DATA
 
Surface
footprint sq.m. 3.000
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STAFF
 
Project
Ensamble Studio / Materia Inorgánica
Project architect
Antón Garcia Abril
Collaborators
Débora Mesa Molina
Design team
Ricardo Sanz, Marina Otero, Elena Pérez
Developer
Materia Inorgánica
Quantity surveyor
Javier Cuesta
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CREDITS
 
 
Photos © Ensamble Studio / Materia Inorgánica
Text edited by Ensamble Studio / Materia Inorgánica
Courtesy by Ensamble Studio / Materia Inorgánica

Anton Garcia Abril Ensamble SGAE Santiago de Compostela


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