Project implementation: Argentina
Project development: Argentina
MEMORY
"Every operation must be subordinated to the purpose of reintegrating and preserving the expressive value of the work, since the attempt to achieve this is the liberation of its true form. Restoration as a critical process and restoration as a creative act are, therefore, united by a dialectical relationship, in which the former defines the conditions that the latter must adopt as its own intimate premises, and where the critical action realizes the architectural understanding, which the creative action is called upon to pursue and integrate."
* Architectural restoration. R. Bonelli (1963)
The building dates back to 1920 and 1921 and represents a clear example of the industrial architecture of the period and the region's economic and productive development model. It is located in the port area of the city of Santa Fe, Argentina, an area currently experiencing the greatest growth and development in the city, due to the obsolescence of the railway and port infrastructure.
The renovation project is based on the conception of the old mill as a space in which interventions are made in a balanced way, enhancing the original building and accommodating the new programmatic uses intended for the academic activities of the schools that make up the Municipal High School.
Taking on the hallmark that defines the building's structural metrics, the intervention is conceived as a succession of flexible spaces that overlap and advance over the central nave, according to the needs of each area, generating trays with double, triple and quadruple heights, which enhance the existing spatiality while maintaining the matrix of the original typology.
The intervention involves the recovery of the masonry of the envelope, the restoration of the external enclosures and the original metal structure, assuming the marks inherited from the past, highlighting the relationship between the old and the new and evidencing both the material and immaterial value of things.