Museu del Molinar de Montuïri

The village rises on a small hill. The village is shown as an accumulation of houses. Its scale is domestic. The houses stand about a strong unevenness. The village is built from stone. The village is hermetical, fenced, blind, opaque. The building stands in an end of the village, on the highest point, with sights over the Pla de Mallorca. The plot shows an unevenness of 9 meters between the street of access and the new inferior promenade. The building uses this unevenness. It appears excavated in the terrain, of stony appearance, sculpted in the rock. The result is a semi buried building that generates a square above of it and to the same height than the street. It is constructed in concrete, smooth in the inner side and very rough on its outside. Thanks to this relief -also present in the houses of the village- the patina of the time, the dirtiness added by the years will enter to be part of the architecture.
On the other hand the village is composed of small modules. These modules describe houses. Houses which are contained between two party walls perpendicular to the street, constructed in stone and of great width. Likewise it happens in our building. The building is sorted from small modules, one beside the other. Following the model. Walls of concrete of one meter of width placed in parallel and separate six meters from each other. These walls configure the space, they sort the facilities, they are an entrance of natural light. The sequence is marked on the plaza through cuts of light. The building is hermetical, closed, opaque, blind. Only some small fissures will allow us to enter inside. When we go down to the ground floor we will see how the light plays with the model of the party walls. From one side it enters tangent above the wall, it shows all the dimension and outlines it. On the other side it puts it against the light, cutting a big hole which allows the light to enter more intensely.

Museu del Molinar de Montuïri by Jaume Mayol in Spain won the WA Award Cycle 3. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.