Ecosystem Design at the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona. Elena Orte

Activity

The architecture table 11

Library

General public, Professionals

26 September 2024

Elena Orte: "Ecosystem Design at the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona"

Elena Orte is a graduate architect and holds a Master's degree in Advanced Architectural Design from ETSAM at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. In 2005, she co-founded the SUMA studio in Madrid together with Guillermo Sevillano. She is a lecturer at the IAAC in Catalonia and at the IE in Madrid, and has been an Assistant Professor at ETSAM. Recently, her studio won the Emerging EU Mies Award 2024. She has participated in international juries, seminars and workshops, and her projects have been published in prestigious architecture magazines.

SUMA has won national and international competitions, including libraries and public housing in Spain. Their work has been awarded multiple times, such as the Mies van der Rohe Emerging Award 2024, Best Public Library of the Year 2023 (IFLA), and the First Prize COAM 2023, among others.

The Gabriel García Márquez Library, inaugurated in 2022 in the Sant Martí de Provençals neighborhood, Barcelona, has transformed a "non-place" —a former parking lot behind a police station— into a vibrant civic center. Known as the "Guggenheim of La Verneda," this library stands on an elevated plaza that expands public space and improves pedestrian circulation. Beyond being a knowledge center, the library responds to historical demands of the neighborhood, providing a space for meeting and social cohesion.

The building's design, inspired by volumes stacked like books, combines a laminated wood structure and steel elements, achieving the largest exposure of wood in Europe to date. Accredited with LEED Gold certification, the library stands out for its sustainability strategies, such as photovoltaic panels, rainwater reuse, and a ventilated facade.

Organized around a triangular courtyard, the library offers versatile spaces that promote social interaction and the exchange of ideas. Its innovative design has been recognized as the Best Public Library in the World in 2023 and the Mies van der Rohe Emerging Award 2024. Since its opening, it has strengthened social bonds in the neighborhood, becoming a cultural and social landmark, affectionately known as a "Palace of the People". Organizes: Santiago Varela

Collaborates: College of Architects of Alicante

Information

Opening hours: 7:00 PM
Duration: 90 minutes
Type of activity: Design and Architecture
Modality: At the museum

Related activities

Program to which it belongs

The architecture table

General public ... , 29.01.2015 - 17.12.2026

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante whose collections are formed by works created fundamentally in the twentieth century. They range from the so-called avant-gardes to all the approaches and artistic manifestations that took place in the decades of the second half of the past century. They are expressed on different supports and materials, with diverse dimensions and techniques. In turn, the temporary exhibitions are related to these collections and allow for expanding or deepening some aspects of contemporary chronology. However, contemporary architecture is absent from both the permanent collections and those temporary manifestations.The architecture of the MACA itself, a project created and directed by the Sancho Madridejos Studio, is a beautiful building of great functional efficiency. The syncopated projection of horizontal and vertical spaces establishes a formal order based on the geometry and texture of the materials used in construction, while revealing a kind of tension resolved by the overhead passage of light, a kind of "felt" spirituality more emotional than real.The MACA proposes in a conversational format, meetings around art and architecture around the architect's table. In the MACA Library, the last Thursdays of each month, from January to May 2015.This first cycle will consist of different manifestations. The first and fundamental one will show works by an architect related through his vital and professional activity to the province of Alicante. The selection criterion will be conditioned by the modernity of the proposals, understanding that modernity, first of all, in a chronological sense, attending to those architectures and architects who were protagonists and participants in the advent of contemporaneity. The exhibition of some models will allow for offering three-dimensional models, reclaiming the model as such, as the authors of the Renaissance defended. And to illustrate the complete work process, sketches and preliminary drawings will be shown alongside the project plans and notes developed during the construction process. All of this with the ultimate aim of understanding and grasping in some way the constructed space.The architect's table, a table from 1912, real and present (deposited in the MACA by its owner Alfonso Navarro Guzmán), serves as an ideological foundation to link the exhibitions and will serve as the material support for the models so that we can traverse, while dreaming, the imagined space.

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