Arquitect: Martín Lejárraga

Town Library and Reading Park. Torrepacheco_Murcia
The plan projected for the growth of the city destined a general apple of 30,000 m2 to public facilities: a library and a primary school. The program, required for both buildings, allowed us to search for a balanced relationship between the plots assigned to each of them, though the ultimate intention is that both interventions are offered to the city as one space, public, open, and continuous.
The project comes up from the idea of treating the apple as a whole, from a new topography that re-qualifies the expanding area in Torre Pacheco; an urban, cultural and leisure alternative for the citizens. The fold of the ground determines our intervention. The two buildings adapt their relative position to the ground, creating spaces destined for shelter and communication.
The public space contains and protects the buildings—two sides of the same coin.
The intervention is a parenthesis in the city, an area upon which environmentally different circumstances converge. Current buildings cohabit with the growth of longitudinal streets prepared for the construction of semidetached houses in series.

I have always understood that the real value of a project resides in giving what nobody asks for. In this case it lies in completing the built project with a park in the open air, which will profit from the environmental and social conditions (Mediterranean weather, very mild and multiethnic relations) offered by a prosperous city, like this one.
Together with it, we propose new ways to approach and be in the public buildings, and to appropriate urban space.
Compatibility between the buildings and the surrounding terrain, and making the most of spaces and facilities, create a special layout of common areas (library, auditorium, meeting room…), and urbanized spaces (sports courts, greenhouses, gardens, playground, swings…).
Those enlarge the space to be used and enjoyed by the whole city.
The program of uses and of the associated built volumes is rounded off with an art gallery, with independent access, an only space that leans out over the general topography of the plot projected.

On one occasion I was defined as a Pit Bull architect because I do not lose hold of the project till the end. In this case, the trust and complicity of the Town Hall in Torre Pacheco and the Consejería de Educación y Ciencia (Regional Cultural Ministry) in Murcia, together with the fact that we have worked in a team, have made it possible for construction to start with a general definition of the block, and finish with the last building.
© Martín Lejarraga
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