Saint Mary of Vilanova de la Barca

The main objective of our intervention was to restore and recover the site as a new multi-purpose hall for the municipality. The project seeks to establish a complementary dialogue between new and old parts, between its present and the memory of the past. The original church is a basilica type building with two naves, a presbytery and side chapels. It is 22 metres long and seven metres wide and the interior it ten metres high. On the eastern side there are some imposing lateral buttresses, possibly of Romanesque origin, and in the chancel there is a late Gothic ribbed vault from the 17th century. The entire church was built with local ashlar with break joints, extremely weathered and eroded over time. Recently, the construction of a semi-detached single-family house on the site of the former moat has had a substantial impact on the ensemble.

The most important part of the intervention was the covering elements: façade and roof. The project establishes a new continuous envelope formed by a two-leaf façade and a gable roof. The whole system is conceived as a new ceramic shell that rests delicately on the remains of the old walls.

The exterior façade is covered with brick lattice that reproduces the dense and irregular finish of the stone ashlars. Its finish is airtight and opaque - without windows - and emphasises the continuity with the original construction. The interior façade, on the other hand, has a perforated brick cladding which, together with the metal truss roof, reinforces the contrast and discontinuity of the original parts.

The entire interior has been painted white and, together with a new lateral courtyard, brings more light and brightness into the interior.

Overall, the proposal restores the volumetric form of the old church and preserves the atmosphere of repose and introspection of the original sacred space. Next to the main church space, the project also proposes a new entrance to the complex. The previous entrance - a door opened in the apse of the church after the Civil War - is replaced and the side space of the old moat is converted into a new entrance courtyard. The pergola, trees, the ground-covering vegetation and the chain of water appear as new elements in the landscape and create a scenography that serves as an entrance threshold to the interior of the church.