Municipal Theatre, Casas Ibáñez
The most valuable feature of the site are the two formidable pine trees on the plot. Saving them, the space that has been used for years as a place for parties and dancing is rescued for Casas Ibáñez. The theater is built around this shady and intermediate place, outside but 'inside', empty and wooded, and from it there are the accesses to the merchandise, the administration, the rehearsal rooms and the theater hall.
The theater does not open to the wider space, the Paseo de la Cañada, and employs a certain La Mancha architectural tradition by hiding its access. It does not renounce its public character, thus, from the Paseo de la Cañada the high and broken canvases of the theater provide a vibrant blind façade under the sun that identifies it as a public building.
The diversity of uses of the building is compatible with a compact body. The theater can be segregated for an evening concert, for the small administration office with morning hours, or for the evening operation of the rehearsal rooms. The stalls of the auditorium can be divided by a thick curtain to reduce seating capacity for smaller audiences, and one of the rehearsal rooms can occasionally be transformed into a small public auditorium without hindering the building's interior circulation. Large openings that mark certain places establish a certain empathy with the landscape of La Mancha, arid and open, in a nondescript place in the interior of the town of Casas Ibáñez.
