Musical Studies Centre

Musical Studies Centre in Santiago de Compostela, Spain by Ensamble Studio

Photographs are by Roland Halbe.

Antón Garcia-Abril and Ensamble Studio's built work is refreshingly different: heavy rather than light, opaque rather than transparent, rough rather than smooth. At a time when much of the built environment aspires to the unachievable lightness, transparency, and smoothness of digital culture, it's just great to see architecture that embraces its antithesis.

The Musical Studies Centre at the namesake university in Santiago de Compostela, Spain is a prime example of Ensamble Studio's manipulation of mass, materials and construction details, all an important part of their work. What was originally a municipal slaughterhouse for the Arganzuela area of the city becomes a center for arts and culture. The architects attempted to modify the building's function "without [it] losing its original industrial allure." On the exterior, this previous function is not clear but rather alluded to via the almost impenetrable walls and simple form.

The stone exterior exhibits many qualities besides merely weight or mass. It resembles rock hewn almost directly from the quarry. Its stacking creates a striated appearance that makes another allusion to its place of formation. Its lack of smoothness exhibits an efficiency from unnecessary cutting and smoothing, something more common to corporate architecture, though increasingly the province of higher education.

The interior, while not a complete abandonment of the exterior's weight, is smooth rather than rough, fitting for the part of the building that the occupant comes into contact with the most. The spaces serve the building's particular needs, "to create mutable visual, acoustic, and practical atmospheres," according to the architects. This assertion might be difficult to ascertain, but the design's weight and texture do give the building a tangible presence and embrace to the occupants that belies its simple form and relatively small size.