Enblanco 10N.Indd

ENGLISH TEXT The magazine EN BLANCO is intended to diffuse knowledge of the best works of remains and the new museum to be built became part of an archaeological architecture and civil engineering made nowadays in concrete, preferably white and agricultural landscape, a witness of a remote past inserted among Andalusian or coloured. It is our intention to meet the interest of those who want to know the agricultural constructions. latest innovations in the fi eld of concrete architecture and at the same time, The romantic image of ruins, so many times rejected for being nostalgic and to serve as a disseminator of research emerged in the same fi eld. anachronistic, is, however, able to transmit not only the evocative power of ancient The purpose of EN BLANCO is to publish the results of formal, theoretical, constructions but also the destructive force of time and nature. Maybe it is in this technological and scientifi c research related to the production of buildings and duality –construction, deconstruction- where resides the fascination of archaeological engineering works that help defi ne our environment, built in concrete. remains, not only as the memory of missing buildings but as the trigger of the mental The magazine meets the formal and conceptual requirements that allow reconstruction of other future architectures. At least that is what we understood recognition as scientifi c publication. Thus the magazine follows a strict editorial during our fi rst visit to Medinat al-Zahra archaeological grounds. The remains of the policy, both in the selection of works and articles and in the periodicity and linguistic ancient Hispanic Muslim city suggested a dialogue with those who, a millennium ago, fi eld. It is described in the opening pages of each issue and published on the web. conceived it and built it; but also with the patient work of the archaeologists and with Compliance with this policy in the past two years, has enabled the magazine to be the surrounding agricultural landscape, which gains an abstract quality due to the assessed favorably and it appears indexed in the catalogs Latindex, DICE and RESH, geometry of the ruins. as well as databases ISOC and Dialnet. In MIAR ranks 12 of 37 national magazines The site reserved for the museum of the archaeological grounds aroused opposing and 118 of 183 international journals in the area of architecture, with a visibility index feelings. On the one hand, yearning for a remote undiscovered past that impregnates IDCS-2012 of 3,102. Currently still under evaluation and incorporation into other the landscape that stretches towards the mountains of Cordoba. On the other hand, the international quality indices. chaotic sprawl of the recent constructions hovered over the surroundings of what was Vicente Mas Llorens a palace-city. Our fi rst reaction on arrival would state the future project from the very beginning: we shouldn’t build in that landscape. In front of such a broad expanse we would like to work as an archaeologist would: not to construct a new building, but to THE WHITE CITY: MADINAT AL-ZAHRA fi nd it underground, as if the passage of time had kept it hidden until our days. “We set a two-dimensional mesh, a starting point and a referenced height level. We outline Enrique Sobejano two rectangular volumes from which to begin the excavation: removing regular successive Lehrstuhl für Experimentelles Gestalten und Grundlagen des Entwerfens layers in strata. The patient work ends up given encouraging results, revealing the layout Studiengang Architektur. Universität der Künste Berlin of a building whose walls will shape the museum, the auditorium, some workshops and Every architectural work establishes a conscious or unconscious bond with time. This storage facilities. We strengthen the walls, set their upper level and cover them. We found temporal nature of architecture, what Walter Benjamin 1 defi ned as past turned space, some paving from ancient patios and corridors: we restore them and turn them into the becomes particularly evident when a contemporary intervention takes place closely main focus of the new project. Finally, we establish the scope of our intervention by erecting related to historical buildings or archaeological remains. Under these circumstances a perimeter enclosure: a precinct that will protect the fi nds” 3 time operates in the project both as temporality and historical reality, in a dialogue Maybe this text extracted from the documents submitted for the competition is between present and past where every decision acquires not only a spatial and symbolic the best one to explain the idea that originated the Project: the metaphor of an sense, but also a constructive and material one. This was the leitmotiv of our project excavation. Thus, our task would be discovering and unearthing the architecture hidden for the Madinat al-Zahra Museum in Cordoba, conceived as a personal conversation underground, just like archaeologist still do. The underground museum articulates between the architect and the building, between the dynamic process of its development its spaces around a series of solids and voids, loggias and patios that lead the visitors and construction and the permanent presence of the ruins of the ancient Umayyad along their tour. From the main lobby a wide square courtyard with an imposing pool royal city. The refl ection upon the process of constructing, its materiality and execution arranges around it, like a cloister, the spaces for the assembly hall, cafeteria, shop, would become part of a shared narrative in which every action is understood as a library and exhibition gallery. A deep and longitudinal courtyard provides service to representation of some former reality, as an evocative interpretation of both the lost private areas such offi ces and workshops while another outer void that refl ects the Hispanic Muslim medina and the contemporary archaeological works. golden light on its white walls constitutes the extension of the exhibition area of In the second half of the 10th century, the fi rst caliph Abd al-Rahman III had the museum. Along the tours, storage areas, conceived as big spaces open to visitors promoted the erection of a palace-city on the outskirts of Cordoba, which was carried and illuminated from above, merge with public areas of exhibition and dissemination. out by his successor Al-Haka and was maintained just for around seventy years. The new building is built in only two fundamental materials, white concrete and A millennium ago, the disintegration of the Ummayad Caliphate, triggered in 1010 by the corten steel, evoking those colours of the stuccos used in the ancient city. Choosing violent destruction and plundering of Madinat al-Zahra, meant the disappearance of white concrete was not only an aesthetical choice, but a consequence of our will to its buildings and a fast oblivion of the city and its history, which has been shrouded in establish a bond between a contemporary material and the original construction legend for centuries. In 1911, the architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco began the recovery of Madinat al-Zahra. Conceiving the whole building–walls, slabs, pavings- in only of the ancient palace complex, undertaking the fi rst archaeological excavations, which one material that is built on the site means that its own construction implies have continued until our days with a minimum of breaks. A century later, in 2009, we its completion. In other words, walls and slabs are exposed and fi nished after fi nished the construction of a new museum and a centre of interpretation after ten deshuttering, incorporating all utilities inside without any other additional fi nishing. years of work, since our fi rst visit in 1999 to the site where the Andalusian Regional This constructive choice needed a paste of high homogeneity and compactness; so Government had announced the corresponding competition. That visit would mean we used white cement and 20mm limestone aggregates from Cabra, a nearby town the beginning of a long process –competition, project, construction- that made us to in Cordoba, in order to guarantee the uniformity and colour of the whole building. be gradually aware of the surprising bonds that sometimes architecture establishes Walls and slabs formworks played also an essential role. Tongue in Groove pine with time. Three chronological milestones -1010, 1911, 2009- concerning respectively to Wood panels (700mm x 20mm) were previously panel and sanded on site and then the destruction of the Arab city (a millennium ago), the beginning of the archaeological fi xed on rigid phenolic panels. We decided not to use release agent to avoid any excavations (a century ago) and the development and construction of the museum colour alteration that could modify its external appearance. The presence of white (during a decade), share the same space and unexpectedly assume a symbolic value that concrete in the whole building becomes so dominant that all aspects regarding to goes beyond the idea of an architecture that belongs to an only time and an only place. form, construction, texture and colour gain a fundamental role, not only qualitative, The original Arabic name of the city, Madinat al-Zahra, can be translated as the but also conceptual, as an expression of the close bond between the material and radiant or shinning city 2, probably, according to different writing sources because the generating idea. The formwork wood is arranged horizontally, providing a visual of its prevailing white and south oriented walls and buildings. The city was built continuity to the walls, only altered every 2,40m by vertical joints recalling the module in calcarenite limestone extracted from La Albaida, a nearby quarry. Its buildings of the formwork system that was used. Anchor marks are also arranged following were coated mostly with white stuccos, but also red-blood on socles.

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