AWARDS:
-2024 Competition for the Refurbishment of the Ballesteros Educational Complex in La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz. First prize
SITUATION: Avenida de España nº5, La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz. >>Open in GOOGLE MAPS
DATES: competition (2024), project (2024-2025)
CLIENT: La Línea de la Concepción City Council
ARCHITECTS: José Antonio Carbajal Navarro, Nicolás Carbajal Ballell and Rodrigo Carbajal Ballell
COLLABORATING ARCHITECTS: Fernando Moreno Humanes, Alejandro Fernández Serrano, Rafael Rus Sánchez and Pilar Miquelajauregui Holguín
BUILDING SURVEYORS: Jesús Bozzo Fernández de Tirso
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Pedro Lobato Vida
SERVICES ENGINEER: MSR Asesoría y Consultoría de Instalaciones SL
The Ballesteros Complex today houses the Virgen de Europa Teacher Training College as well as some municipal offices and various citizen groups.
It currently has a series of maintenance deficiencies and the need to adapt the building and its facilities to the new regulatory, energy and safety requirements, which is an opportunity to consider the real opening to the neighbourhood of the complex of the old military building converted into a first class facility.
The aim is to respect a building of unique character and adapt it in a natural way to its new tasks and needs. A contemporary and measured intervention in its approach, rational and clear in its organisation of spaces and circulations and focused on achieving versatile and comfortable work areas and free spaces capable of promoting relationships and encounters.
The actions can be synthesised into two basic operations: the first consists of rearranging its areas, providing them with new facilities and ensuring the accessibility, evacuation, safety, functionality and efficiency of these new spaces; the second is based on converting the courtyard into the core of the operation, preserving its spatial qualities and its character as a free space that is available for a multitude of activities and events.
It should be pointed out that two issues raised in the tender phase have been left out of this intervention: on the one hand, the reconsideration of the exterior spaces surrounding the building, giving them value by creating new accesses and rearranging its parking or sports areas with new enclosures, together with the redefinition of its front towards Avda. de España by means of new urban furniture and the redesign of its parterres; on the other hand, the enlargement of the building in such a way that the teaching areas would find a suitable place on the inner perimeter of the roof, a new volume barely visible from the street that would not affect the large scale of the courtyard.