High culture.

A new centre in the old Arabic quarter of Malaga provides the run-down neighbourhood with a cultural focus as well as much needed facilities.

The old Arabic quarter of Malaga has a history of neglect, wealth having long ago retreated to the surrounding hills and tourism to the coast. In 1983, in an attempt to revive the area, the local authority proposed a cultural centre -- the Centro Cultural de la Generation del 27. [+] Luis Machuca Santa-Cruz was appointed as the architect.

Because of political, economic and contractual vicissitudes, the centre has taken 15 years to build. During that time the concept has changed, for client and architect realized that in its initial form it would have been too arcane and possibly intimidating to have much impact on the neighbourhood. In 1996, it was decided to broaden the scope of the enterprise and create a more open, popular centre, accommodating the cultural services of the local authority, and including a theatre, galleries, a public library and cafe. The G-27 collection of books and paintings would be housed in a restored adjoining eighteenth-century building, previously a boys' home, the Casa de los Ninos de la Providencia.

As is usual in old urban quarters, the site is irregular and uneven. Though the general plan is not complicated, with ancillary rooms and passages round two main volumes -- theatre and library -- the architects have exploited the irregularity and unevenness to generate a layered building that, apparently composed of distinct parts, responds to the surrounding urban scale. With the G-27 library to the east on Parras Street, the rest of the complex is made up of two main intersecting buildings oriented in different directions. Separate entrances allow each part to function independently.

Along the main thoroughfare of Ollerias Street on the west, the building is aligned with the street, its plain stone face stepped down from south to north to relate to the different heights of buildings to either side. Here the main entrance, drawn back from the street, leads to a large foyer and stairs to the theatre. Above the entrance, an angled sheet of stone shielding the glazed interior and third floor terrace from the sun relates abstractly to neighbouring miradors.

From the north, you enter the library at first floor, ascending a monumental flight of stone steps from the Plaza Nueva to a forecourt and entrance. The semi-basement houses archives and a reading room.

This scheme is about links, symbolic and physical. While ensuring that the forms and scale of the new complex responded to local ones, the architects were also concerned that the building should be an eloquent landmark. Beneath projecting lanterns shedding light into third floor interiors, walls and corner tower are of the pale sandstone traditionally used in monumental buildings in old Malaga.

Internally, physical links consist of swooping ramps, flights of stairs and open bridges. Elegantly expressed with beech-lined walls and beech or limestone floors they run around the peripheries of the main volumes. A covered passage between historic and new buildings both connects and separates, while a visual link is provided by the view through the big library windows of the old building's west wall.

Machuca's use of a few materials, seen to full advantage in the beech-lined theatre, and his manipulation of light, have produced a handsome set of interiors. Angled sheets of stone across the library roof direct cool luminance into the north-facing library while protecting it from the full force of the sun. On the south, a small enclosed courtyard shaded by a tall palm illuminates the foyer. Passage through the building is dramatized by light: the open bridges, with their delicate balustrading, and flights of stairs criss-cross under clerestories in a luminous beech-lined chasm at times rising the full height of the building.

(+.) The name refers to a high cultural moment in Spain, and to the artists and writers, like dramatist and poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, who made it so.

ARCHITECT

LUIS MACHUCA SANTA-CRUZ