Jayton Cultural Center and its surroundings, Elche.

Elche is its streets, its squares, its neighbourhoods. The duality of a twisted vernacular urbanism full of shadows caused by its alleys that fight against the heat, surrounded by ‘simple’ designs of soft colours that are highly integrated with the environment; and a new way of making a city in the “eixample”, with large blocks limited by the orthogonality of its peripheral streets.
It is adaptability and symbiosis, so well exemplified in the farmhouses, traditionally associated with the orchard where fruit trees and vegetables are grown in the shade of the palm trees (‘El Palmeral’).
Can it be, from a specific action such as a cultural centre, to preserve local identity and promote social inclusion? How can the reinterpretation of the vernacular be transferred to a building and a public space? Can architecture be generated from the reading of public space? How can public space be enriched from built spaces?

AL[QARTA] is summed up in the concatenation of spaces, ‘neighbourhoods’, ‘streets’ and ‘squares’ where the exterior and the interior are diluted in a sequential manner: The street, the exterior pedestrian space, the covered pedestrian space, the protected spaces, the interior square, the exterior garden, the buffer spaces, the lobbies… around a large central public ‘heart space’… when do you stop being inside or outside?
The projected volume is perforated on the ground floor by ‘streets’ of different heights that redirect the public space towards the central ‘heart space’, generating shadows and a microclimate with vegetation that enhances habitability throughout the year. It will be an intergenerational meeting point for citizens, amidst the freshness and smells of Mediterranean species to be planted.
The most public uses of the programme on the ground floor (auditorium, multipurpose hall and bar-cafeteria) are thus structured through the articulation of these new streets generated and the large central square-heart space, opening (also) towards the park.
In this way, the cultural centre, instead of being concentrated in a single building isolated from the outside but taking advantage of the public space as an urban ‘parasite’… is distributed, fragmented and articulated to coexist with it, protecting it, qualifying it and enhancing it.
Saving the privacy of the built environment, all the openings are made towards the central square-urban space, through an exterior skin of ceramic latticework whose design arises from the reinterpretation of Valencian tiling. Here the forms become more organic and friendly, allowing the space to flow.
The administrative area is distributed on different levels, generating terraces, patios and ‘buffer’ spaces where you can breathe, at different heights. Shared and semi-public spaces are created that are also connected to the auditorium, allowing them to form part of the recreational spaces necessary for this use.