Reform of the old bread industrial building of the Convent of San Francisco de Olmedo

Place: Valladolid
Date: 2005
Design/direction: Eduardo Delgado Orusco

This building of industrial origin, a large blind and diaphanous nave contained within the walls of the municipality of Olmedo, raised serious doubts about its usefulness and future. It was an old warehouse, known as "panera", although its use does not seem so clear, linked to an old monastic exploitation, now disappeared. The installation had been acquired by a local developer as part of the site occupied by the old monastery of San Francisco, and the doubt that was raised was its possible demolition or the use of its structure for some endowment.

Finally the City agreed to its residential use as long as its presence was not masked. With the help of the municipal technicians we elaborated this project whose main strategies consisted in the concentration of the façades of the facade to avoid an image of "machine-gun" of the same and the opening of small inner courtyards in the plot of the houses.

On the other hand it became necessary to complete some canvases of the brick factory that with the passage of time had deteriorated and even fell. Our project, taking the criterion of pictorial restorations, used the same material although with a grammar clearly contemporary, which achieved integration but not at the cost of confusion..