As cities grow, centers of production shift out of cities, leaving urban areas without productive capacity. In addition, the geographic distance between the points of production and consumption creates an unbalanced model due to the consequences of the continuous horizontal transport of goods, as well as dependence on external supply and a lack of user control over the products consumed.
Food will be the protagonists in the new life of the whole, and all the phases of the production chain will be present, from its cultivation in the environment, to its treatment and conservation, experimentation and training, consumption and tasting. The complex will become a condenser of the rural and urban worlds, and this spatial compaction of the process will lower costs and reduce raw material losses.
Thanks to the wide variety of uses that surround the culinary world, food production is compatible with the potential of the whole to become a public emblem. Visitors will get closer to the product they consume, and become aware of the process behind it. It will be a place to celebrate gastronomic culture.
The section of the building reveals two very different areas due to their spatial characteristics. On the one hand, two rooms with a greater free height and covered by skylights in their entire width - one in each nave - and on the other, two floors of reduced free height compressed by floors and drop beams, located in the west nave. The most public uses are located in the main spaces - dining room, tasting, events, market, auditorium - while the less public uses - food treatment center, laboratories, cooking school and show-cooking rooms, building management - are located in the rest of the smaller-scale spaces.
The intervention on the main spaces of both naves is closely related to the building's most singular element: the skylights. The installation of a system of curtains that slide parallel to the longitudinal structure of the deck openings, enhances the light and the skylight as the main element of the factory, and allows creating a sequence of more or less illuminated spaces both in the east nave. , at level 0, as in the west nave, at level +4.33. The curtain element creates atmospheres of different lighting - the skylight atmosphere and the atmosphere between skylights - while preserving the visual depth of the naves, enhancing their spatiality.
The ephemeral nature of the curtain ensures flexibility in the division of the space in the nave, which can be divided according to the use it is to host. On the ground floor, the smaller bands - the size of the skylight or between skylights - can accommodate medium-sized dining rooms, or tasting rooms. The union of two or more of these bands allows activities with a greater public reception, such as fairs, conferences, or weddings. On the floor at +4.33 the curtain system is maintained, but without reaching the ground, which allows the development of market use without interruption in its entirety, while the light and skylights continue to stand out as main elements of the fabric.
