INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF IDEAS “ASTORIA-VICTORIA” CULTURAL PARTNER CENTER “PLAZA DE LA MERCED”
Location: Malaga
Author: José Seguí Pérez. ESTUDIO SEGUÍ
Mara Partida y Héctor Mendoza.
Date: 2017
Commission: First Prize, Malaga City Council and OMAU, for the International Ideas Competition.
Surface: 9.188,47 m2
Malaga City Council held an Ideas Competition to define the architecture and use that could be envisaged for the block of the former Astoria and Victoria Cinemas. The delicate location, as it configures one of the lateral façades of the Plaza de la Merced, the existence of archaeological remains in its subsoil, its important location in relation to the promenade-lounge of Calle Alcazabilla (with the Picasso Museum, with the Roman Theatre-Alcazaba Monumental Complex and the recent Customs Museum), and the need to define an appropriate use capable of boosting and dynamising the urban activity of this important sector of the city, were perhaps the main characteristics of the content of the call for ideas.
The proposal seeks to meet all these demands by proposing a building that, while respecting the configuration of the Plaza de la Merced, “looks out and looks” from its interior at the surrounding landscape of the Alcazaba, whose “canvases” of walls are referenced in the “skin” of the façade of the proposal, and the necessary visual perspective to the magnificent Alcazabilla promenade-lounge offered by the other “head” that dialogues with the one shaped by the Customs building.
The architects Mara Partida and Héctor Mendoza collaborated with the technical team of ESTUDIO SEGUI, in the architectural conception, and in the realisation of the socio-cultural use the actor Antonio Banderas with the creation of an important Performing Arts Centre (with Theatre, Classrooms and Visual Productions) and the Starlite group with an attractive restaurant and leisure offer as a complement to the cultural activity of the centre.
