Rehabilitation of the Market of Saint Lucia
The project resolves the contradiction between the unity of its formal configuration and the diversity of its uses. The car park, the market, the health center and the civic center have completely independent accesses. But, at the same time, they share a collective vocation that materializes in the central atrium to which they open, from which they receive natural light and with which they acquire their status as a community public service.
The great topographic difficulty of the place where the building is located led Manuel Gallego to propose in the original project in 1979 a configuration of staggered mezzanines. The strategic position of the stairs and elevators that we propose allows the transit between the mezzanines and the segregation of the building's diverse program to be easy, fluid and accessible to all. The visual intertwining of uses and circulations around the central atrium that we propose to open transforms into a valuable visual and spatial event for the building but also, in a way, it will be the heart of the Santa Lucía neighborhood.
This project is not intended to be a 'modernization' of Gallego's work. It tries to get the most out of its original approach, minimizing the impact and modifications on its essential elements and, at the same time, maintaining its light, industrial and panopticon spirit.
