Renovation of Plaza Mayor Tourist Information Centre
Within a historical context so characteristic as the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, the team of architects redesigns the interior space of the former Bakery House, now Tourism Centre, to bring up its qualities and to improve its use.
Considering the historical space as a demanding heritage, the aim of this project was precisely to recover the nature of the inherited historical space perception, barely altered since the intervention of Gómez de Mora and Tomás Román after the fire of 1672.
Thus, it was fundamental to understand two basic points that define the intervention. Firstly, keep the space defined by the granite columns mainly empty. Secondly, introduce a contemporary piece which would set a constant dialogue with the classical structure, not keeping the classical geometry. In this way it was important to value the mentioned classical building structure through a modern piece which was not formally and materially related to the classical building.
This modern twisting piece, made with Hi-Macs, works as an argument for the generation of different kind of spaces which define the necessary program of a tourist information office and connect, at the same time, the two existing spaces in the historical building; the columns room and the courtyard.