Ulargui arquitectos

bus station and public library. Ronda

An interior garden. As a new palace: this is what this building tries to offer to the city of Ronda.

1. But no, we won’t spend public money in extraordinary symbols, as yells, showing them to the city. We live in times of changes. Public buildings have to be simple and close to the citizens. Ideas more than power, pedagogy more than imposition. As the beautiful examples that can be seen in the downtown historic center, the new building will show itself to the exterior just a gate and, behind it, a courtyard. A place just to have a look, where silence and calm slow down the travellers and where the reader and the student will find the horizon over the book.

2. The library The program is divided between public and private, noise and silence. In the entrance, the main counter desk, close to the control point, toilets and reading rooms. After that, the mediatheque and the hemerotheque with the computers close to the individual study places. Research area with over 50000 volumes in its shelves. In the background is placed the private area with two multi-purpose meeting rooms, working groups and researching areas. These areas could be used independently with their own entrances from the courtyard.
3. The bus station The shops, the newstand, the café and the toilets are placed close to the entrance: all complementary spaces that can be isolated by a bendable gate in an open and independent schedule. The travellers zone has a waiting area and another area for the lockers. In front of them, a continuous counter where to buy tickets and watch the buses. Information, administrative area and tickets selling area too. From the waiting area, two scalators lead to the platforms, with enough room for 15 buses and their garage.

4. Two buildings in one Due to the reduced budget and the building size, turning these two buildings in a whole is the main virtue of this proposal. Understanding two different programs simultaneously is a virtue and not a problem. The frenetical activity of the bus station can be balanced by the calm of the lecture in the library. Concessions stands for the café, the shops and the newstand will be used by all the visitors, something impossible in a traditional way. It is also beautiful that in front of a bus station, a place sociologically devalued, it is set the library, the culture, face to face. The joining point will be the entrance and the courtyard, a filter that would divide the glances of ones and anothers, trying to mark out the waiting and lecture areas, producing a single main image.

5. About sustainability and economy The best energy is the one that is not consumed, so the project tries to build not much and improve the surroundings a lot. By reorganizing the plot, on the north side, the building becomes a limit of it, and on the south side a big plattform. The building finishes are brick walls with grout mortar and a thick vegetation cover as isolation. To the interior, concrete slabs in the ceilings, limestone tiles in the floors, underfloor heating and cooling systems, wooden frames, the same as the furniture, screens and most of the divisions made of glass. A few materials placed directly.