El Gran Casino y el Teatro La Tagoba
In 2019 begins the comprehensive rehabilitation of two historical buildings, the Gran Casino and the Teatro Tagoba in Villareal. The rehabilitation projects were drafted jointly by Cabana Partners for Architecture and Negrosobreazul. Both projects aim to recover the heritage value of the buildings.
Both buildings were built in 1919, with indications that at first both buildings functioned jointly and that later modifications compartmentalized them for different uses. They were used for one of the town's clubs, for a bank branch and as the People's University.
The idea of the architects of Cabana and Negrosobreazul, has been the original operation of the building, adapting it to the new uses as headquarters of citizen services and offices of the City Council and for its part in the Tagoba, recover its use as a cafe-theater, providing it with hybrid capacity for holding conferences and plenary sessions.
About functionality
In this way, the challenge is to understand both buildings as a whole and recover it as a new body connected with each other and with the city of Villareal. To this end, a new space has been included: a space of concordance, intermediate, between these two magnificent architectures: the prism of light.
The prism of light is the "universal connector" between the buildings since it connects all the levels of one building with the other with a common vertical core (a panoramic elevator and a lightened staircase).
Therefore, the visitor will be surprised by the appearance of this space composed mainly of which is mainly composed of two remarkable facts: the prominence of the staircase and the diffuse light that is contained in the prism.
About materiality
Another fundamental ingredient in the recovery of these buildings: time.
In the "new" Tagoba Theater and the Grand Casino one can contemplate constructive elements of another era: bare and stark architectures that show the beauty of the masonry walls and mortars used at the beginning of the 20th century.
The textures have been respected and enhanced with indirect lighting that updates the senescence of these elements.
The beauty of the passage of time: wabi sabi.
Wabi-sabi
- Japanese aesthetic concept that describes a kind/type of aesthetic vision based on "the beauty of imperfection"
- The art of aging
The final ingredient has been under which all other subordinate thoughts and ideas are subordinated: the recovery and restoration of historical elements. For example, the recovery of the main modernist facade of the Gran Casino, as well as various interior elements such as historicist sconces or other incunabula. In short, the project is a firm step to reconnect Villareal with these emblematic buildings that is proposed as an experience of contrasts, between the old and the new, between recovery and criticism.
