Espai Ridaura

ESPAI RIDAURA


LOCATION:
Santa Cristina d’Aro (SPAIN)

ARCHITECT:
Capella Arquitectura

MODEL:
SPACE PLUS on Fully Automatic Telescopic Tribune

MORE INFO:
CLIENT: www.santacristina.cat
ARCHITECT: www.capellaweb.com

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Santa Cristina d’Aro is a beautiful town located in the middle of the d’Aro valley, very close to the Mediterranean sea and still keeping the bucolic environment of the Costa Brava area. The flourishing tourist activity in Summer demanded leisure & culture spectacles the town could not offer; the existing venues were old, basic and far from the town centre and even the yearly International Festival of Chamber Music was traditionally celebrated in the local church. So the Local Administration determined to build a multi purpose hall.

While the local administration decided to build a new venue to celebrate these spectacles demanded by the visitors, it also made clear the venue should also be prepared for the small local events and necessities of the town during the rest of the year. Subsequently the Espai Ridaura was created as a multi purpose hall with capacity of 345 seated spectators (1,286 standing) that could work as small auditorium & theatre but also as the place for small exhibitions, fairs and conferences.

Additionally, the project should meet the strict requests required by the Regional Department of Culture of Catalonia due to its location: it could be a versatile building but always respecting the environment and its exclusive situation. So, during the designing process of the building, its integration with the surrounding landscape was a key issue: the volume of the construction was projected over the leafy forest that inundates the Ridaura river and the mountains located behind it. In fact, the back of the stage is a big window that, when the performance allows it, may show the gorgeous riverbanks forest. And then the “green roof” of the building is just unique: an eco-friendly system composed of rich local vegetation that isolates the interior of the building. The idea is putting on the roof the vegetation it was “stolen” from the sole – so the building totally disappears when being observed from the sky!

For a building like this the architects considered a telescopic tribune that could “liberate” the central area of the auditorium: so Ascender proposed a fully automatized telescopic stand (both platforms and chairs open and close electronically controlled by a remote power control). Additionally, we also proposed our Matrix system for the mobile chairs so they could be placed in front of the telescopic tribune when needed – this would facilitate the customer to add more chairs to the venue or even not to open the tribune in some occasions. The tribune is finished with plywood panels in all visible pars (front and sides) so it is totally concealed when closed: it creates a “wall effect” at the back of the venue. Meanwhile, the chairs used both for the tribune and the mobile area belong to the Space Plus series: higher back and longer wooden arms for an extra sense of comfort while respecting the limited dimensions of the telescopic tribune.

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