Taller De Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha, S.C.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

Taller de Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo

CLIENT
Fundación Alfredo Harp-helú, Oaxaca

MANUFACTURERS
Newmat

BUILDING FACILITIES
Ici Instalaciones (Ing. Adolfo Toraño)

STRUCTURES
Grupo Sai (Ing. Gerson Huerta)

CONSTRUCTION
Fundación Alfredo Harp-helú, Oaxaca

DESIGN
Mauricio Rocha, Gabriela Carrillo, Rafael Carrillo, Alma Caballero

PROJECT ARCHITECTS
Mauricio Rocha And Gabriela Carrillo

RESTORATION PROJECT
Arq. Gerardo López – Sebastian Van Doesburg (Fahh)

CONCEPT
María Isabel Grañen Porrua, Sebastián Van

SUPERVISION AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
(Grupo Ga&a) Augusto Pi-suñer, Adolfo Escárpita, Gilberto González, Rafael Cabrera

COLLABORATORS
Erika Rivera, Dalia Gatica, Anabel Gomez, Henny Dekeijzer

PHOTOGRAPHS
Francisco León, Luis Gordoa

LOCATION
MEXICO

CATEGORY
Restoration

YEAR
2012

Text description provided by architect.

Restoration of the Monastery of Santo Domingo de Soriano entitled "San Pablo". Located just one block from the main square of the city of Oaxaca, between Independencia and Hidalgo streets, it is a collection of houses / buildings forming part of the first Dominican convent in the city.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

Up until three years ago, the former convent of San Pablo was in a building distorted by a series of additions of little historical value that affected the building not only aesthetically - leaving the building completely drowned within these aggregates, but also because they affected the structure of the old building by the enormous amount of added load.

For the first part of the restoration, the original structure was relieved, demolishing the vast majority of additions.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

Thus we managed to recover almost 90% of the high and low corridors of the convent, part of the church and the entire Rosary Chapel.

Unfortunately, the resulting area was insufficient to give the building the cultural features with which it was conceived, and which have been the engine for the rescue of this property.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

Therefore, it was necessary to place a light and reversible metal structure on the east side of the project, which refers to the ephemeral nature of a scaffold and also commemorates the old bay of cells lost at the opening of Fiallo street.

This contemporary element creates a useful space with an area of almost 700m2 divided into 3 levels.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

This meets the area required for the operation of a specialized library and an exhibition area that should be in a controlled climate, protected from the weather.

For this reason, this space is divided into two areas: a reading room, located within the intervention, in direct relationship to the courtyard of the cloister, protected from the elements by a glass facade always in shade due to a mobile roof.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center

And archive areas, who concentrated on the east side, taking advantage of the massive condition of the convent.

We seek to accommodate most of the archive material directly on the wall to avoid unnecessary weight on the structure of the building, and also to protect it from the light.

To the outside, and in what was formerly a public parking, we recovered the churchyard demolishing all recent additions, which can be accessed from two alleys reopened in their original dimensions.

This historically open space at the heart of the city block, a typology foreign to a city like Oaxaca, now acts as a meeting and distribution point to the various buildings that are part of the project.

San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
© Luis Gordoa



San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
Plan
San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center
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Taller De Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha, S.C.
T +52 55 56612120
Taller De Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha, S.C.
Av. Miguel Ángel de Quevedo 95, Chimalistac, Álvaro Obregón, 01070 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico