Architects: aq4 arquitectura
Location: Ortuella, Vizcaya, Spain
Team: Ibon Bilbao, Jordi Campos Garcia, Caterina Figuerola Tomás, Carlos Gelpí Almirall 
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Adrià Goula Sardà

Project Area: 3,472 sqm

Collaborators : Iván Pena, Alberto Berga, Javier González, Albert Duque, María Ruiz, Mónica Molas, Alessandra Sirianni
Client: City of Ortuella

PREEXISTENCES

OKE is the new Ortuella Culture House, in the former mining area of Vizcaya. There is no extraction of iron sulfate. The valleys that previously received rusty sand dunes, now pile groups of metal ships lacquered in polygons. Everything has been erased, and there is no trace.

We have been lucky enough to build there, where a main street and a square can be joined. OKE looks from side to side through a road, as far as possible, to see and be seen from a distance in a precise approach maneuver.

It is a structure that alternates bays of 380 and 750 centimeters to facilitate storage and different activities. Each bay defines its own section. From the topography of the valley, the roofs are displayed as facades.

We knew the scale of the underground infrastructures. We wanted to build something that was there long before the absurd polygons.

INTENTIONS

Place a building perpendicular to the main route of Ortuella to look at both sides of the valley. See and be seen from a distance.

Connect Otxartaga Square, the most significant public space of the village with Catalina Gibaja Street. Use this opportunity to make the new house of culture “stretch” the plaza to the street and the street to the plaza.

Shaping the volumes that define the building to respond to the different topographic levels that delimit the place.

Complete a new urban route where existing exterior spaces connect with different activities in the library, square and street.

Working with the topography to define two different access and uses that are set by the program. The parking entrance from the existing one on the plaza, can give direct access to Catalina Gibaja street (height 0.00 m).

Allow the Multipurpose Room to function independently, with an access of 3.35 m as part of the new plaza, where different activities can be developed, although the rest of the building is closed.

Define the empty space – filled space with a succession of bands of different widths, where the program is finding its place.

Allow a flexible organization by equipping with spaces that serve for predictable and unpredictable uses of the house of culture.