Project | 2008 | San Sebastián | The design proposes the reuse of a tobacco factory built in San Sebastián in 1913, by the river Urumea and the railroad tracks. It has produced over 200 million packs of cigarettes annually in the 60’s. The existing building has an imposing exterior volume with four well proportioned courtyards, while the interior of the building has been very compartmentalized and damaged.
The program envisages the transformation of the factory into an international center devoted to cinema, an activity which is closely associated with the city and the rest of the contemporary visual «manufacture». Thus, the building wants to be a factory of the present.
The proposal retains the volume, the façades and the courtyards of the old industrial structure, but it inverts its sense. The courtyards are transformed into closed rooms, of a suitable dimension for film projections, concerts or conferences. The floors are cleared from the old pathways and these are transformed into enormous corridors which serve as a lobby, foyer, exhibition space and even a cafeteria and an informal auditorium.
Thus, the interior scale of the building is completely modified and, even if almost impossible for a cultural institution, it becomes the most appropriate for the public and global purposes of the center.
To complete the program, a new fragment of the place, of stone, glass and air, stands on the shoulders of the old building. With the magic gesture of the “harrijasotzailes”, the Basques hoisters of granite stones, that piece of territory will float over the old tobacco factory, over the course of the Urumea and over the bright haze of the Cantabrian Sea.