Projects

Casal Balaguer is a palace in the historic centre of Palma, a family house that grew throughout the centuries, beginning in the 1300s, then in the 1500s, and finally, in the 1700s, and presently loses its domestic use to become a public building, a cultural centre for the entire city. Valuing the different eras contained in the building, regarding its physical qualities without distancing ourselves from the historic periods that have shaped it, allows us to act without separating ourselves from the building: if observation is not given to distinguishing between eras, then action should not keep a distance. We act from the building’s interior, with a physical and direct thought, transforming the structure with the decision of giving it a new phase, of prolonging its life. Having sketched the building for a long time allows us to subsequently make decisions in its regard. In that sense, the sketch gives us confidence to work on what we find without physical or temporal distances with respect to history, in a continuum of time that has the effect of the new interventions coming to blend with the rest. The final result is a new generation for the building, with things inherited and new; the work of changing form that takes what exists and draws on the basis of that. It is a geometric metamorphosis, but also one of materials, of the proportions of the empty spaces and the dimensions.

The effort focuses on getting the old palace to express the maximum of its spacial, material and historic qualities; the new function gives us great freedom to design a new building inside the one that precedes it, exploring the qualities of the old construction.

Discovering the unfinished condition of the existing building allows the thought that the actions on it have not come to an end, that it is something that is evolving, imperfect, the result of a sum of phases in which ours is yet another, and not the last.