Miguel Silva Barral Design Portfolio

MIGUEL SILVA BARRAL

DESIGN PORTFOLIO

URBAN SPA HOTEL

IN A FORMER PRISON, OURENSE (2017)

The first project in this selection is my Architecture Degree’s Final Project. Its scales range from landscaping to construction detailing and structural calculus, with a special focus on the spatial characteristics. The main goal of this project was to become part of the landscape, to get a feeling of belonging to the place as it has always been there. The project process went from the inside to the outside, starting from the atmospheres and spaces and zooming out until reaching the urban scale. The relationship between the nineteenth century prison building and the new development is its most important point.

The concept emerges from a sensory intuition: in order to bathe I must descend to the springs, to the depths, to the cave. This way, I feel in the spa as if I were in the thermal stream itself.

The bathe and stay spaces are then a succession of caverns, the movement spaces being then cracks in the rock. The user shall enter the spa as if he were exploring.

Consequently, the architectonic language will be that of the stone, the stereotomic, its light and gravity. If the concept is to enter the cave, the spaces should have the materiality of the local stone: granite. The light will guide the visitor through the spaces and allows to create deep, almost mystic atmospheres.

Since the spa spaces are analogous to a cave system, the volumes protrude to the exterior in very few occasions.

When they do, it is also with the heavy vocabulary of the stone, as if they were rocks exposed due to erosion.

Making a subterranean building has two virtues. On the one side, it gives the spa a very strong spatial feeling, while on the other side it keeps the visions to and from the prison clean. This gives this building the prominence that had lost over the years.

Since the new development is below ground level, the way of connecting with the prison, which is to host the hotel, and with the street, is fundamental. This connection piece is to allow hotel guests to go from their rooms to the restaurant and the spa, as well as external users to go from the street and parking to the hotel reception and the spa, all without mixing them. This is solved with a double spriral staircase.

The spa is to be a very important service to the city. Walking by should be reason enough to recognise that there is something relevant standing there. The staircase will also serve as a monolith to point the entrance.

HOTEL The hotel is fitted into the former prison building. It comprises 2 junior suites, 2 familiar suites and 12 double rooms, along with exhibitions hall, reception, breakfast room and a cantina.

RESTAURANT

HOTEL reception exhibitions room breakfast room 4 double rooms

ground floor

cantina -1st floor

2 junior suites 1st floor 2 fam. suites 8 double rooms

The entrance to the restaurant is at a lower height than the hotel cantina. The two are connected through ramps, which constitute the dining room’s roof. At ground level we can find the bar, and upstairs the private dining room.

The main dining room is downstairs. Here the vocabulary is also that of the stone. The light sneaks through the cracks in the stone blocks and also through the walls, which are perforated to achieve a softened light that reminds us of the concept: the cave. The kitchen, the hotel laundry and other services are found in the lowest level.

SPA Once inside the spa we find ourselves in the cave system that ought to guide us to the hot springs. First of all, we find the hall. Then we go through the dressing rooms into the spa itself. We can find outdoor pools and an active pool. Then, in a corridor, the treatment rooms.

In a lower level, the passive pool and two saunas, and in the end of it all, three contrast pools.

restaurant spa

hall dressing rooms active pool 4 massage rooms 2 jet shower rooms passive pool outdoor pools 2 saunas contrast pools

ACTIVE POOL

CONTRAS

ST POOLS

RESTAURANT

FILM LIBRARY IN AN URBAN MANOR, LUGO (2013)

This project aims to fill in a void within the medieval urban fabric along with completing a partially torn down manor. As such void spaces don’t belong in a medieval urban layout, the project is composed in a way such that two smaller squares are created. While totally contemporary in materials and shapes, these buildings and squares resemble the size and feel that belong in an old town.

Lugo is a city whose foundations date as back as the Roman Empire. Its old town is encircled in a roman wall, from the 2nd century. The site is placed just nearby this wall, a huge void in the urban fabric that once was a coffin factory, and nowadays is no more than a rat-infested blank plot covered in undergrowth. Partially swallowed by thick layers of weed, a manor house, called Pazo de DoĂąa Urraca, still survives. It has lost much of its former geometry, being today less than half of what it once was.

All of these stories and limitations not only do not limit our possibilities, but spur our imagination to try to restore this place’s former glory. For that purpose, we are told to fit into this privileged place a film library, with movie theatre, workshops and residence for guest lecturers and audiovisual artists.

The main consideration for the layout of this project is space. Spaces as big as the one we have do not belong in a medieval urban fabric. That is why the pieces are set in a way such that two smaller spaces are created. All of the new buildings attempt to complete the unfinished blocks and shape the spaces around. The manor itself is extended to its former dimensions.

The program is divided in parts. In the manor house, we have the management offices and information of the complex. Facing the main street, the library and video library, in a glass container. The main building, the movie theatre, is the piece that creates the two squares around itself. Covering a party wall, the workshops rise over the theatre. And lastly, completing each one one block, the residential building and the multifunctional building.

                            

                                                  

LIBRARY/VIDEO LIBRARY

    This    three-storey 

building hosts the audiovisual archive, as well as a regular library, in the upper floors. On the ground level there are viewing booths  for both individuals and small groups.

       

 

 

 



                                













 

MOVIE THEATRE

 

This building is placed in a way such that it creates two spaces, fitting the scale of the medieval town. The movie theatre is the main building of the complex, and the projection hall is its most important room. 8 meters high, it features stalls and gallery. It also has a  double-height hall for hosting events and premieres. 

 



 

WORKSHOPS



The high building completes the block, rising as  high as the party wall behind it. It hosts two multifuntional rooms meant for cinema-related  activities. The lookout in the upper floor offers sights over the Wall, the fields and the Miño river. The two lowest floors are part of the Movie Theatre hall.  

 

 



                                                                                                  Multifunctional building. It has two apart    ments with one living room-bedroom, kit-        chen and bathroom in the floor           ground       and two workshops for seminars in the                    upper floor.                                                                                           Refurbishment of the Pazo de Doña Urra-

MULTIFUNCTIONAL BLOCK

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

 

MANAGEMENT



 

 ca, an abandoned and mutilated manor               house. Two bodies are added to comple             te its original shape, which was mutilated            over time. Its spaces are dedicated to offi    ces and assembly halls, as well as a recep            tion and information office for tourists,                 visitors, guests and partners. 



 

                                         

 

               

 

APARTMENTS

Residential block that hosts 8 flats, 40 m² each, with one living room-bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Four of them are in the upper floor and another four in the ground level.  

 

                 

 

 

 





SPORTS&SPA BY THE MANDEO RIVER, BETANZOS (2015)

On a broader scale, this project’s scope is to harmoniously occupy a large field by a river bank. This takes on a completely different approach, much more abstract than the other projects in this selection. Apart from intervening in the river bank and distributing the buildings and services across the plot, there is also a masterplan for other lands adjacent to the river, which comprises protected areas and urban developments.

The first consideration when confronting this project was the location. The plot was enormous, mostly flat, adjacent to the Mandeo river and floodable a few times a year. How can we place ourselves elegantly in such an immense territory? How could we occupy the space with a balanced composition?

After searching for references of other artists that had confronted the same problem, I came to the masters of the harmonious occupation of the space: the suprematists. These artists (painters, sculptors, architects) worked with a completely abstract language, in which the value of the elements did not stem from themselves but from their placement in the composition. That is how I figured out how to occupy the empty, flat space.

This way, diverse shapes and patterns are laid on the blank canvas of the plot. These simple geometry traces colonize a space that would be otherwise unmanageable. The most powerful shapes, where the main services of the complex are to be placed, are spreaded across the plot.

They keep their coherence with linear elements such as paths, corridors, walls, slopes. Where main pieces meet they either overlap or are “sewn” with linear patterns.

The rest of the process consists simply in filling the already harmonious shapes with the many services that this project comprises, seeing that every element in the composition makes sense and is perceived as it has to.

Ilya Chashnik, Suprematist Composition, 1923 Kazimir Málevich, Supremus nº56, 1916 The abstract concept behind the composition that occupies the landscape The concept gets real when lines and patterns become buildings, paths and pavements

The thermal complex is divided by use in three different areas. First, the main function is the hot baths. The main space is the thermal pool, with its bubble baths and jets. Here we can also find the saunas, the ice fountain, the contrast pools, a sunbathing area, the massage zone and an exterior area for relaxation.

This outdoor relaxation area is composed by a few passages that link the outdoor saunas over the surface of an artificial lake. The area finds its inspiration in japanese gardens, both tsukiyama and karekansui.

The second area is the sports complex. Featuring facilities f pool and access to the river to practice rowing, as well as sh

for basketball, football and hockey, it also has a sports helters for the kayaks.

The third stage is the leisure area. One pool for adults and other for kids and a cafe are the features of this area, as well as another set of dressing rooms and other services.

The river bank is treated here so that a variety of plants can live on it, making a walk by the river an enjoyable experience for the senses.

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Quay

Bouganvillea

Prunus

Wetland

Hydrangea

Citrus aurantium.

Bouganvillea spp, Hedera helix, Lonicera japonica o Passiflora caerulea.

Camelia, Prunus.

Hydrangea.

I. pseudoa-

T. angustifolia

Riparian forest

P. australis

Iris pseudoacorus, Typha angustifolia, Phragmites australis.

Foot passage

Alnus glutinus

Tamarix

Metrosiderus

Alnus glutinos; Osmunda regalis.

Tamarix; Cupressus; Populus alba; Metrosiderus excelsa; Araucaria excelsa; Arbutus unedo, Cercis siliquastrum.

Various species of Acer, Quercus, Populus.

Along with the building project, there is also a mild intervention to regenerate and regulate another river bank, a few meters upstream. Here, two landscaping interventions mark both ends of the masterplan, the rest being just passageways and vegetation, and policies to keep the private lands in order.