Francisco MANGADO
 
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FRANCISCO MANGADO

Parque de los Cuentos+

2007-

Convento de la Trinidad. Malaga-Spain

5.900 m2


A story can be said to be a sequence of spaces we discover that intersect and produce emotion; surprises we intuit but are not evident. The project builds on this idea by making the spaces un-evident or not immediately recognizable, even if readable typologically. This is especially clear in the convent buildings, which are not very beautiful on the outside but are evocative inside, leading us to make direct access into them clear of references to their exteriors.

Mystery plays a role in the project. Nothing is obvious. In the preexisting convent building, this is achieved simply by manipulating its access in such a way that the crude obvious view of it from outside is avoided. The interiors are plain containers, recognizable but as neutral as possible with respect to the exhibitions referring to tales. And this cleansing must also be mysterious. To create mystery, what better instrument is there than light? Hence the new spaces for temporary exhibitions could be understood exclusively as exercises in the use of light.

“A cloister within another cloister” unitarily works out many fundamental questions, in the knowledge that this typology is historically among the most solid. Surprise, the prospect of measuring it and regulating it through the accesses, the possibilities that arise when the relation between inside and outside is regulated: all these are inexhaustible sources of architectural genesis.

In this modest, unitary context, only the volumes connecting preexisting and new, the star containing the access, and the broken piece that allows one to continue the route initiated in the monastery, are special. Translucent and ventilated throughout the perimeter, they will by night become “Aladdin’s lamps” of the city of tales.

Málaga, España