Flamenco flair: Herzog de Meuron reinterpret the southern Spanish tradition of flamenco in a new contribution to Jerez

Architectural Review, The, June, 2004 by Carla Bertolucci

Flamenco occupies a cherished place in Andalucian culture, and the city of Jerez de la Frontera is widely regarded as its birthplace and spiritual home. The city produced numerous famous performers, creators and interpreters, and the local style displays the exuberant influence of gypsy communities who historically have always been integrated into Jerez.

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As part of a wider plan to redevelop the city's decaying and depopulated historic core, the municipality launched an invited competition for a City of Flamenco, a cultural complex that would act as a performance venue and reference centre for the network of folk clubs and activities associated with this unique art form. The programme included an auditorium, museum, school and documentation centre and the shortlist of firms included four Iberian practices (Cruz & Ortiz, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra from Spain, and Alvaro Siza and Juan Miguel Hernandez from Portugal); one Japanese (Sejima & Nishizawa); and one from Switzerland, Herzog de Meuron, who were eventually awarded the commission.

Located in the centre of Jerez's old town in an area bounded by the old Almohad rampart and two quarters, San Miguel and Santiago (both historic crucibles of flamenco art), the site and programme presented two main challenges: to insert a large new volume into a dense urban matrix of modestly scaled buildings and labyrinthine streets, and to interpret in the folkloric traditions of flamenco in a cultivated, contemporary way.

Herzog de Meuron's winning design is a modern version of Jerez's famous Alcazar, arranged around a garden of reflecting pools and orange trees concealed behind a walled perimeter. Within it are staircases and skylights that connect the main auditorium with underground classrooms, and a lookout tower which houses the museum. Both fortress and paradise (in its Islamic interpretation of the classical hortus conclusus), the Swiss proposal provides public open space in the dense hub of the historic city, wrapped in eroded walls of lattice-like tracery (made from specially cast concrete blocks) that recalls the historic legacies of Arabic geometry and Andalucian ornament, as well as more modern sources--urban graffiti, the tactile patterns of tattoos and the rhythmic roughness and sensuality of flamenco itself.

The perforated wall, and the secret garden, shape and structure a new urban topography out of various extruded, sunken and projecting volumes. Trees and water provide shade and cooling in the intense Andulacian climate and orchestrate a rich interplay between inside and outside. Herzog de Meuron see the project as a city within a city--their initial complex forms a nucleus which can evolve and be added to over time.

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