Prehistoric Interpretation Centre Cadiz Memory – Gutiérrez, Monge, Alvarez-Cienfuegos, Monge

The Interpretation Centre Cadiz Prehistoric intended as a reference to the prehistory of Cadiz. The new building includes an exhibition illustrative of various elements characteristic of this epoch, and is also the starting point for various archaeological routes.

The building is located in the municipality Benalup-Casas Viejas Cadiz, near the coast and within the Park of the Acorns. Its hallmark is given by a natural environment featuring the intense green of the pines. The varied topography which is based allows for different assessments of the near and the distant, giving the urban landscape plant horizon.

The implementation of the building faces a situation of party walls that vary in height and a built environment minor. The building addresses this situation by taking the landscape as a reference, adopting a resounding presence to the outside, and solving an interior where the surprise comes.

Externally, the building hides all party walls and maintains alignment of the street with a small setback on ground floor, singling access. Disappear any decorative element in the composition and a gap arises only with dark glass. This hole will serve to reflect the landscape from the outside to capture it from the inside, stressing the integrationist of the proposal with the natural environment. The resulting volume, white, continues the line of traditional constructions of place. Only the base, corrugated sheet black, determine its nature and contemporary public facilities.

Inside the building, the light is present across the courtyard and a roof skylight in introducing the overhead light in the lobby. The uncomfortable solar geometry is regularized through empty elements like the playground or the hall adapted in this way, the remaining spaces orthogonal geometry.

The tours are triggered from a ramp that leads down from the outside to a porch, a diaphragm that invites us to enter the lobby, consisting of a double height naturally lit.
The tour starts building from the outside, down a ramp that reaches a low-lying dark hallway, through which, it is found, then a large entrance hall on two levels naturally lit.

The inner journey begins on the ground floor and down into the basement through an open staircase, lighted from the courtyard. In the basement is, on one hand, workshops and yard as a space for outdoor work, and secondly, the start of the exhibition program that runs linearly. A higher plants is promoted by a second staircase, which reaches the ground floor first, then the first floor, the exhibit concludes on a balcony that shows the entrance hall downstairs. At this point reappears natural lighting to drive visitors to the completion of the course.