Ciutadella school of music and performing arts
Location: Menorca (Spain)
Year: 2024
Type: public competition. 8th place
Client: Ayuntamiento de Ciudadela de Menorca
Area: 1.600 sqm
Team: Pablo Valero Escolano, David Úbeda Sales, Francisco Garrido Roca, Rocio Martínez-Fons Delgado
Building engineer: Rosalino Daza Fernández
MEP: Francisco Ibáñez de Navarra Quintero
Acoustic: Macustica Management S.L.
Resource: Procuratie Nuove (Venice, Italy). Vicenzo Scamozzi
Our proposal for the new School of Music and Performing Arts of Ciutadella stems from the approach to the site’s urban values. The project plot, located next to Plaça de l’OAR and the future Plaça de la Pau, forms an urban void inherited from the change in direction once marked by the old city wall. This meeting of directions generated a series of irregularly shaped spaces that eventually degenerated into this large diffuse void, affected by the lack of identity and morphological unity of the surrounding buildings.
The need for Ciutadella to have this new facility is also the ideal opportunity to address this problem that has persisted for years. The project arises from the intention to create and consolidate a new urban axis connecting Avinguda del Capità Negrete with the future Plaça de la Pau. This new axis allows us to create a transition between the two public spaces while organizing the necessary accesses to the building. The building acts as a hinge between the two new squares, reorganizing both voids and serving as a backdrop with the aim of stitching together and harmonizing the variety of scales and typologies in the area.
The building is organized longitudinally through an interior street or atrium across three levels, which articulates the different programs of the building, acting as a bioclimatic space that ensures light and ventilation for all classrooms while generating spatial and visual connections. On the ground floor, the independent programs of the school (the band rehearsal hall and the auditorium) are grouped, ensuring that their use does not interfere with the daily activity of the school. The auditorium is used to resolve the difference in level established by the detailed study of the plot between the accesses from Avda. del Capità Negrete and Carrer Josepa Rossinyol (approximately 2.15 m difference), thus responding to this circumstance without affecting the development of the building. A service and loading/unloading access is proposed from Carrer Josepa Rossinyol, as it is the only point of the site connected to a road. The main entrance and the band’s access will take place through a threshold from Plaça de l’OAR.