Contemporary Art Space in an Former Convent
Architects
Sol89. María González & Juanjo López de la Cruz
Collaborators
Alejandro Cabanas, Instalaciones; Andrés Pino, Architecture Student
Technical Architect
José Castro
Client
Centro de Iniciativas Culturales de la Universidad de Sevilla
Construction Company
Cotracom S.L.
Fotografía
Fernando Alda
A place is not only its present but also that labyrinth of times and different epochs that intersect in a landscape and constitute it; just as folds, wrinkles, expressions carved by happiness or melancholy, not only mark a face but are the face of that person, who never has only the age or the mood of that moment, but the sum of all the ages and all the moods of their life.
Claudio Magris, The Infinite Journey.
The project interprets the convent in which it is inserted as a context continuously altered over the centuries, a changing space resulting from the transformations over time that have marked it with various traces and scars.
The intervened building has undergone numerous alterations since it was founded in the 16th century as the Convent of Madre de Dios de la Piedad. After the disentailment of 1868, it was designated as the Faculty of Medicine in 1869, and the hygienist and enlightened currents led the architects of the time to multiply and enlarge the scarce openings that dotted its walls; in 1931 it was devastated by a fire, after which it hosted various university faculties until today, housing the headquarters of the Center for Cultural Initiatives of the University of Seville. Beyond historiographic interest, all these transformations suggest a continuous material alteration that transcends styles and dilutes heritage certainties, confirming the paradox that ultimately it is the space, the most intangible, that endures with greater resistance even than the construction.
The project also rests on a reflection around the exhibition of contemporary art. Recalling some works of this century, we can recognize that a good part of the expression of current art understands architectural space as working material. These are practices that consider that the exhibition hall is already, in itself, the place of creation. Thus, a contemporary exhibition space cannot be projected as a static place where works are exhibited replicating the old background-figure relationship with the exhibition support, but the architecture might not be entirely conclusive. As if it were an unfinished story, such a space should be left in suspense, waiting for each exhibition to come to complete it.
