NEW HEADQUARTERS OF THE REAL CLUB CELTA DE VIGO
Competition. Vigo (2015)
The move of Celta de Vigo to the heart of the city, to the Mercantile Circle building on the corner of Príncipe and Velázquez Moreno streets, is a unique opportunity to carry out an intervention that marks a change of trend, and put ahead the generosity and the desire to build a higher quality city.
The building of the Circle is a work of Gómez Román of the year 26. Its way to build the corner and the original amplitude of its spaces, especially of the Sala Regia, make it interesting for the urban fabric. Two reforms, one at the end of the 1960s and the other at the turn of the century, make a significant harm to it, by permitting the growth of a series of disorderly constructions in the original roof that alter the scale of the intervention, and intervening through intermediate levels in the access zones, causing them to lose the spatial quality that they had in the beginning.
Our proposal starts with the demolition of these additions that are disturbing both the scale of the street and that of the building itself. Recover the sky, act with generosity, living up to what the city can expect from one of its emblematic institutions. Also recover original proportions and spatial quality.
On the deck we place a light piece, retrenched, that serves to sew the building with the neighboring ones, and which will contain the offices of the club and its foundation. Sala Regia is restored to its splendor and communicates directly with Príncipe Street so that it can function as an independent event area. At the street level the mezzanines are demolished and an area is proposed for sport events that replicates the Estadio de Balaídos in the center of the city. Finally, a basement is built that works as a commercial area and allows the economic viability of the performance.
In our approach, we discard some of the uses proposed in the program by the club (clinic, youth residence) as incompatible with the recovery of the scale appropriate for the city and sure that there are better alternative locations.
Our commitment is to make a building without concessions, in which every institutional use will perform at the highest level and with an urban implantation of the best quality.