Cultural Complex in Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, Miguel Fisac

Cultural Complex in Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, Miguel Fisac.

This is the last project of Miguel Fisac, who died in 2,006, at the age of 93, who we could say that died with his boots on. This complex is located in the Sevillian town of Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, in the Silver Route, next to the North Range of Seville, and that is has just about 5,000 inhabitants.

Prior to this Cultural Complex Miguel Fisac only realized two projects for the province of Seville, one The Institute in The Maria Luisa Park dating of 1960 but never built and the other one was the Stella Maris Building of the Apostolate of The Sea of 1965.

The building in Castilblanco is located in the urban centre of the town, the site is flanked by housing blocks with a maximum two stories high and which have exterior white painted walls, interestingly one these block to the North look like an influence on this project because of its typology given the square volumes and textures which gives it a particular aspect.

It is the integration in the site area what Fisac seems to be looking for, respecting and assuming the urban context of the surrounds even though of the great volume of his building, being achieved this because of typological similarities and the language of the textures.

The external walls were realised with white concrete panels cast in situ and handmade, the building can be framed in the era of experimentation with this material that he stars from de decade of 1969’s. Fisac shows us concrete as a “soft material” and patenting the so called flexible formwork which he applies to external walls from polystyrene and resulting in elastic textures, polished and soft.

Fisac has being in a constant renovation that lead him to experiment endlessly with building materials, he was National Gold Medal of Architecture in 1994 and member of a talented generation of Spanish architects such are Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, Antonio Fernández Alba, Daniel Fullaondo, Fernando Higueras Díaz, the first Ricardo Bofill, and where we could include Rafael Moneo being quite young at the time.

The Plant of the complex its developed from square volumes intersected between them in an irregular shape, being the most ample area volume and height that corresponding to the Theatre-Auditorium, in contraposition that with less height and more humane then is that which is destine to the library and administrative section.

Blind walls are predominant and that is evident in the part corresponding to the theatre but there are also significant opening areas dedicated to illumination especially to the library zone in the form of long windows using a functional architectonic language, and given the great area of glass it was necessary the use of a high thermal performance glass with a refracting bronze tint avoiding that way the massive thermal absorption that could take place in the Sevillian summer, something to be expected. Instead of a geometric solution within the façade he opted for this technical solution so not to alter the volumetric purity of it.