This Centre of the Dramatic Arts presents itself to the city as a platform, as an urban stage with the city and landscape as backdrop. In the area there is an exceptional view of the city, the mountains (Macizo de Anaga) and the Sea.
In order to take full advantage of the landscape potential, the considerable difference in height between the terrain and the adjacent street is used to make the height of the roof correspond with the slope of the street, arranging the uses of the programme below this level.
The interior roofed patio, generated by a three-dimensional folding of the wooden surface of the roof, is conceived as a scenic box that opens up towards the city and affirms itself as the building’s spatial reference point, a place for relationships and interchange.
Defined as an inclined surface, the patio functions at the same time as an open-air auditorium and as the backbone for the pedestrian routes throughout the building, comprising a system of ramps that relate the different scenic spaces of the building via an oblique geometry.
The whole building can be transformed into a space for performances, a public open theatre with the audience watching from the ramps, the platforms, the landings, transformed into both actors and spectators at the same time.
Featuring a striking, zigzagging system of ramps that relate the different scenic spaces of the building, the multi-storey building has been developed with the intention of providing a platform, an urban stage with the city and landscape as backdrop, where ‘the action determines the space of representation.
"We look for local materials, a low technical complexity of the project and also low maintenance costs. In the case of concrete, the structural elements function at the same time as the finishings.
We also consider light as a building material - the light that fills the interior empty spaces. The fundamental quality of the elements delimiting the spaces is their transparency or reflectivity - in other words, their behaviour in the presence of light."
Location: El Ramonal, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Tenerife, Spain
Architect: gpy arquitectos
Collaboration: Félix Perera Pérez,Gustavo García Báez, Constanze Sixt, Architects
Structural Engineering: Martínez Segovia, Fernández, Pallas y Asociados
Technical Architect: Luis Darías Martín
Technical Industrial Engineer: José Miguel Navarro
Contract: Necso Entrecanales Cubiertas, S.A.
Constructed Surface: 3.360 m2 Year: 2011
Client: Tenerife Insular Council + Canary Islands Government
Photographs: Teresa Arozena, Miguel de Guzmán, Roland Halbe, Efraín Pintos, Joaquín Ponce de León