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Music box: this centre for young Spanish musicians is a hermetic stone cube with a luminous heart

Architectural Review, The, June, 2004 by Carla Bertolucci

Founded in 1495 as a 'Grammatic Academy', the University of Santiago de Compostela is one of the oldest in Europe, playing an important part in the cultural life of Galicia and Spain. Like all modern academic institutions it continues to evolve, with the development of a research campus on a park to the north of the historic core of the city. The park is a dense green lung studded with small, object buildings that form a suitably picturesque array in the landscape. Among them is a new Centre for Musical Studies dedicated to honing the skills of postgraduate students and training musicians for the Galicia Symphony Orchestra (GSO), one of Spain's most prestigious and long established ensembles.

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Designed by Madrid-based Anton Garcia-Abril, one of an emerging generation of Spanish architects, the new building is a compact, hermetic cube, three storeys high. In form, scale and materials, it has a loose affinity with a neighbouring pavilion by Cesar Portela, but Abril's building is more rough hewn and inscrutable, its squat bulk wrapped in a chunky layer of pearl grey Mondariz granite, with slit-like windows incised apparently at random into all four sides. Large slabs of stone laid in broad bands 1.75m wide are used to create the impression of a solid, monolithic structure, like some weathered archaeological relic. In reality the slabs are 300mm thick and supported by a steel frame, but perhaps more interesting is the way in which the stone is turned inside out. Instead of a smooth, finished surface, the rough inner face of the granite is deliberately exposed, each slab marked with deep vertical abrasions. These scorings are the irregular imprints of drills and cutting tools, acquired during the stereotomy process, by which stone is cut and shaped.

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Despite its mass and heaviness, the heart of this stone box is hollow, carved out to form a lightwell that cascades down through the building, bringing light into the deep plan and the foyer of a small subterranean concert hall. The double-height hall is dug into the slightly sloping site and its underground position ensures acoustic separation between it and the secondary rehearsal and studio spaces above. Light also percolates into the foyer through a horizontal slot cut along the datum where the building meets the ground on the east facade. Here, in a momentarily disarming illusion, the stone cube appears to be floating above the ground. The cube's imposing mass is also dematerialized at night when the slit windows that perforate the granite skin glow with soft light.

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The main entrance is a double-height proscenium on the north facade that connects with the central lightwell, offering a clear view through the building. There is also a secondary entrance to the concert hall on the east side, which is mainly for use by the public when attending performances and recitals. In warm weather people can spill out into a paved parvis, sheltered by the grassy banks of the undulating terrain.

Internal organization appears simple and logical, with various rehearsal suites, practice rooms and administrative facilities arranged around the stepped void of the central lightwell. A hierarchy of scale obtains, with larger spaces at lower level and smaller cellular rooms on the upper floors. In section, however, things are more complex, as the configuration of the lightwell alters slightly with each floor, so generating changing and often unexpected vistas down through the building. Though acoustic privacy is an important issue (which usually means dense, opaque surfaces and enclosed, introverted spaces), Abril does achieve some sense of permeability and spatial interpenetration with the contortions of the lightwell and the use of diaphanous glass walls in certain rooms. A subtle palette of white and grey unifies the cool, luminous interiors. Elegantly reconciling the needs of study, practice, and performance, this apparently rational building, with its ripped granite facade and the drama of its internal spaces, is also a quiet romantic.

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