Religious building inside the plot of an old church and added laterally to its upper part. It is the winner submission of a public tender. It is distributed in large living rooms to held religious events and a sanctuary. The problems featured by the plot are its reduced surface for the essential programme of needs, its situation that was really squeezed in the adjoining buildings and its orientation to the north in a side street. Furthermore, we find the planning restrictions and a maximum height, which obliged us to modify the original façade, and a very reduced budget by the parish.
We start from a project idea of an “open building” which invites citizenship to the inside and, at the same time, it opens itself to the outside and its bordering spaces, being its INTEGRATION WITH THE MAIN BUILDING ALREADY BUILT BY THE SANTA BÁRBARA CHURCH, Ecclesiastic and Patrimonial building, one of the most fundamental aspects.
The project is based on the ENJOYMENT AND THE LIVING OF THE SPACES FROM THE INSIDE, not focusing on merely decorative elements, but on the definition and the creation of itself as an “SPACE” of a great architectural value in its own formal design.
The objectives of the project are the search of a current and functional building where the spatiality, brightness and the idea of establishing a dialogue with the existing church through the characteristics and hints that reflect and inspire the idea of the divine, are going to take precedence. Formally, an architectural dialogue referring to heaven, the divine and the “light” is established through elements of verticality, being this one of the architectural aspects, which defines the church, and also through the zenithal incoming light and double height spaces, which will help to achieve the ENERGETIC EFFICIENCY of the building.