FRIDAY 13/09/2013 WWW.BDONLINE.CO.UK13FRIDAY 13/09/2013

WWW.BDONLINE.CO.UK TECHNICAL ROOFING12

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PROJECT ➜

Cooking school in ancient slaughterhouse

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The kitchen with the culinary plants courtyard.

ArchitectSol89LocationMedina-Sidonia, Cadiz, SpainCompleted2012

By Hugh Strange

Medina-Sidonia, in the province of Cadiz in southern Spain, is a historic hill town notable for its uniform material palette of white-washed walls and ceramic tiled roofs. The recent project to create a professional cookery school by young Spanish practice Sol89 responds closely, but not exactly, to these materials, result-ing in a building that appears tightly embedded within the close-textured urban grain.

The town’s slaughterhouse was constructed in the 19th cen-tury and comprised a three-bay structure oriented around an internal courtyard surrounded by a high perimeter wall. Prior to slaughter, cattle were kept in the remainder of the plot.

The cookery school project inhabits and adapts this building, and has expanded into the leftover space, but has created a series of small-scale inner courts that allow a porous, open environment with extensive cross-ventilation to the internal spaces. Together with the variety of rooflight configura-tions, this has also created a rich complexity to the daylight-ing of the school’s rooms and circulation spaces.

The walls of the new building are of white-painted render on masonry as in the surrounding town, with spaces dedicated to cooking lined in ceramic tiles. The old floors of the abattoir have been replaced with concrete slabs.

Most distinctive in terms of formal articulation and material palette, however, is the roof, where cheap ceramic tiles usually employed in traditional

Spanish housing projects have been used. The architect selected a smaller-format 130x130mm tile than is usual in order to achieve a more delicate appearance, and has formed each rooflight as a folded plane of horizontal and angled pitch.

The resultant exterior matches the gently chaotic, topographic character of Medina-Sidonia’s roofscape while providing an elegant and well-lit interior environment.

PROJECT TEAMArchitectsMaría González and Juanjo López de la Cruz, Sol89ClientFundación Forja XXIQuantity surveyorJerónimo Arrebola Structural engineerAlejandro Cabanas Building services engineerInsur JGContractors Novoarididian SA and Rhodas SL

Above: Exterior view of the cooking school roof from the top of the town.

Below: Main elevation with the new roof.

Section

Ground floor plan

Detail section

1 Reconstructed brick wall with cement-lime mortar2 Concrete sub-base 150mm with Polyethylene sheet over drainage layer of gravel quarry and filter layer with geotextile sheet of polypropylene 3 Concrete slab 150mm

4 Levelling layer of cement mortar, 50mm high-density thermal insulation, vapour barrier, concrete slab5 Waterproofing layer of synthetic rubber 6 140x140mm ceramic Benesol tiles fixed with elastic adhesive mortar7 Hidden gutter, 20mm

waterproofing with galvanised steel cover plate8 White concrete sill to top of ancient walls with elastic adhesive mortar 9 10mm sheet steel with anti-rust primer10 Automatic roll-up curtain11 Aluminium-framed

windows with Climalit glass12 Fixed galvanised steel window with Stadip glass13 Galvanised steel window 14 Galvanised steel handrail 20mm and 15mm galvanised steel sill15 Double layer of

waterproof gypsum board 16 Waterproof gypsum board17 False ceiling with sound insulation 18 Accessible false ceiling with sound insulation 19 Stone tiling 20 Stone non-slip paving 21 Granite paviour skirting 22 Granite paving

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