CEU Cardenal Herrera Faculty and Dental Clinic

The project for the CEU University Faculty and Dental Clinic involves the comprehensive renovation of the former Capitolio Cinema, a building deeply rooted in the collective memory of Elche, which was converted from a movie theater to a shopping center in the past and is now being transformed into a university and healthcare facility. The intervention is conceived as an operation on the existing building that preserves and reuses the structure, envelope, and significant heritage elements to the maximum extent possible, updating the building with sustainability and energy efficiency criteria.

The project interprets the building as a cultural and architectural palimpsest. The façade facing the street and the grand staircase, which are essential elements of its identity, have been preserved, as have the original decorative and ornamental features, maintaining the atmosphere of the old cinema. At the same time, the Capitolio's spatial and material resources—the large central void, the double heights, the sequence of lobby and hall—are reinterpreted to serve the new teaching and clinical program. In addition, the metal structure of the previous shopping center is maintained to support the new use. This strategy minimizes the alteration of the foundations and vertical elements, reduces the material impact of the work, and keeps the successive “lives” of the building legible. Thus, the intervention on the building is an exercise in economy of means and intelligent reuse of built heritage.

Access to the Faculty is through the original lobby of the cinema. From there, you can reach the two floors of the teaching area independently, either via the side staircase, which already existed in the cinema and led to the stalls, or via the main staircase, which leads to the office area. The space originally occupied by the stalls and stage now houses the classrooms and study rooms on the two upper floors, all of which have natural lighting and ventilation. The generously sized hallway is a circulation space, but also a place for meeting, resting, chatting, or informal work, a kind of “waiting room,” which is essential in any contemporary teaching architecture today. On its lower level, this ‘spacious hallway’ overlooks a void that is the full height of the original façade and opens onto the street through this intermediate space. And on the upper level, this ‘spacious corridor’ opens directly onto an outdoor terrace that has been restored to its original condition.

The organization of the new teaching and clinical program is based on the existing structure of the old shopping center, but it corrects and qualifies it by opening two courtyards perpendicular to the main façade, transforming a compact and closed floor plan, typical of a cinema and shopping center, into a “comb” of ventilated and naturally lit spaces. The preservation of the original cinema lobby as the entrance to the faculty and the eight-meter-high void between the two façades, the old cinema façade and the new faculty façade, which provides access to the clinic, allow the building to be renovated while maintaining its most valuable spatial and formal elements, while introducing new ways of using, meeting, and working that are typical of an educational space.

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The project introduces public and everyday use into the heart of the dense fabric of Elche's city center, activating a volume that was previously hermetic and opaque to the city and is now visually and functionally permeable. The main lobby, the separate entrances to the Clinic and the Faculty, and the incorporation of the upper terrace as an open space reactivate the relationship with the public space, providing local educational and health services and reinforcing the building's role as an updated urban icon.

In this case, rehabilitation has also meant updating the building's thermodynamic performance. The new corridor between the historic cinema façade that opens onto the street and the new glass envelope of the Faculty acts as a thermal regulator for the complex, thus improving its energy performance. The two linear courtyards and the skylights that extend them to the ground floor bring natural light and ventilation into the classrooms and clinical spaces, reducing dependence on mechanical systems. A building that was originally closed, designed for the dark world of cinema, has been transformed into an open, permeable, and luminous building for interaction between people and their training, while at the same time highlighting the heritage and social value of the original building.