Town Hall

The new Town Hall is being built on the same site where the old Town Hall stood. This was a 1950s building with a regional style that was in poor condition. It had a central tower crowned by a clock and a wrought-iron balcony on the first floor above the entrance. Plaza de España, where the Town Hall is located, is a dilapidated space with an irregular layout; it is more of a crossroads bordered by disparate, uninteresting buildings. The Town Hall has appropriate symbolic and emblematic features that seem unavoidable. It displays the flags with which the residents identify and must have a balcony from which the mayor presides over certain celebrations.

The Town Hall of Serranillos del Valle meets these conditions, however, it is implemented by opening a small glazed courtyard on the “main” façade, around which the programme is organised. All the rooms open onto it, establishing an intermediate link between them and the square. This semi-open condition, which extends the space of the square inwards, makes the Town Hall clearer and more democratic, at least in its formal configuration.

The new Town Hall is a box-like structure with thick masonry walls finished on the outside with white cement mortar and a limestone plinth. The courtyard façades, which are largely glazed, are constructed with a steel structure clad with deep grey painted steel sheets. The interior divisions never reach the ceiling, so the exposed ceiling slabs on both floors allow each of the two floors to be understood almost as a single space.

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