Exercise Two Laura Copy

C4 Cultural Centre NIETO Y SOBEJANO

1

ing and ataurique decorations, or the rules and narrative rhythms implicit in the poems and tales of Islamic tradition. Like those literary structures which include a story within another story, within yet another… - a story without an end – we conceived the project as starting with a system, a law generated by a repeating geometric pattern, originating in a hexagonal shape, which in turn contains three different types of rooms, Like a combinatorial game, the permutations of these three areas generate sequences of different spaces which possible can come to create a single exhibition area. The artists’ workshops on the ground floor and the laboratories on the upper floor are located adjacent to the exhibition halls, so the point where there is no strict difference between them: artistic works can be exhibited in the workshops while the exhibition halls can also be used as areas for artistic production. The assembly room – the black box – is designed as a stage area suitable for theatrical productions, conferences, film screenings, or even for audiovisual exhibitions. El Croquis 136/137 Site Plan

Internal perspectives

Architecture nourishes itself constantly from images hidden in our memory, ideas which become sharp and clear and unexpectedly mark the beginning of a project. Perhaps this is why the echo of the Hispano-Islamic culture which is still latent in Cordoba has subconsciously signified more than a footnote in our proposal. In the face of the homogeneity which our global civilization imposes in all aspects of life, the Centre of Contemporary art aspires to interpret a different western culture, going beyond the cliché of this expression used so frequently. Distrusting the supposed efficacy and flexibility of a neutral and universal container commonly used nowadays, let us image a building closely linked to a place and to a far memory, where every space is shaped individually, to a time which can transform itself and expand in sequences with different dimensions, uses and spatial qualities. We have always been admirers of the hidden geometric laws through which those artists, artisans and master builders of a remote Islamic past were capable of creating a multiple and isotropic space within the Mosque, a building facetted with vaults and muqarna windows, permutations of ornamental motifs with lattice windows, pav-

2 Plan view of model

Permutations of facade