Municipal library and theater
The project to refurbish the Casa de la Cultura in Boadilla del Monte for its use as a new municipal library and theater is based on a 1980s building that originally hosted two somewhat confusingly mixed functions. The new design envisions the building as a public-oriented space, leveraging the urban, programmatic, and material aspects of the original structure. Each of these elements has been reorganized to create a contemporary, collective facility.
The first strategy involves separating the building into two distinct parts. This transformation from one building into two generates new independent entrances that, when facing each other, create a public space in the form of an elevated plaza above the surrounding streets. This intermediate space, a hardscaped and accessible plaza, serves as the entryway to both the library and the theater.
The second strategy focuses on materials. The new design retains brick as the primary façade material, aiming to blend innovation with tradition. Ceramics are prevalent in Boadilla’s urban context, visible in nearby heritage elements such as the wall of the 18th-century Gardens of the Palace of Infante Don Luis and the 13th-century Church of San Cristóbal.
Externally, the two parts of the building are expressed as materially identical volumes of differing sizes.
The third strategy is structural. The original building was designed with intermediate floor columns working in tension, supporting the theater roof via large trusses in a sloped roof that enclosed an unused space. The project reverses the load direction, converting these columns to work in compression, transferring loads to two large post-tensioned beams in the theater ceiling. This optimization of urban volumetry allows for the creation of a new, expansive reading room beneath the roof.
The refurbishment of the Boadilla library and theater fully utilizes the site’s conditions: it creates an independent theater entrance, raises the roof to the maximum allowable height, and reverses the structural behavior, proposing a new double-height reading space with north-facing overhead light on the top floor. Finally, the façade’s materiality is reorganized to enhance the relationship between the building, its program, and its heritage surroundings.
