NATURE CENTRE OF LA MANCHA “ARS NATURA” IN CUENCA

In the Cerro Molina Hill there was nothing, nothing grew. A hill that didn’t have even a shade. A universe of barren land apart from all, even apart from its strategic location between the old and new town.

The aim was to achieve a place, not just a recognizable landmark. Creating from nothing an environment equivalent to six football fields that could share with the building its protagonism in the urban integration.

The project emerged as a sum of evocations of the landscape: the cliffs, the alleys, the sinkholes, the shapes of Kars that the city really owes and between the tribute to one and the debt to the other, the building became invisible from the nature and symbolic from the town with its large glass windows-image without joinery of 100 m2 each.

The building,consisting of four parts with some formal and functional autonomy, is related to the park through different promenades coinciding with the indoor levels. Water and vegetation also enter inside and colonize the stony geometry and shapes the built environment. The facades of double glass skin, bioclimatic, with a family of structures, installations, blinds and screens, are nearly a meter thick, so that the entire exhibition can be contained in the skin, and settle for use in winter or summer
The access is under the free cantilever of the auditorium. The roofs, transformed in mountains that can be explored, transport the viewer to a bright interior. An interior where the evening sun runs the facade images and stories of faunas and floras dreamt by the children that come with the school visit the following day.

Materials: Stone Bateig in different cuts and structural glass.

DATA:

Architects: Jose Maria de Lapuerta, Carlos Asensio.

Promoter: Junta de Comunidades Castilla la Mancha

Construction: JRC Construcciones

Area: Museum: 5,330 m2. 6 hectares park

Dates. Project: 2000 Construction: 2007-2010

Team: Raquel Lara. Architect. Paloma Campo. Architect / Francisco Gil Ortega. Architect. / Alberto Garcia. Architect and Surveyor. / Facilities: Tragsatec / Quantity Surveyor during construction: Juan Jose Prieto. Oscar Gonzalez