Year of construction: 2020

Year of project: 2017

State: Built

Location: Plaza de la constitución, 12. Porcuna (Jaén)

Promoter: Parroquia de Ntra. Sra. De la Asunción de Porcuna; Obispado de Jaén.

Architect: Pablo M. Millán Millán

Contributors: Simona Belmondo (Architect); Javier Muñoz Godino (Architect); Inmaculada Cervera Montilla (Architect); Javier Serrano Terrones (Technical Architect); Javier Bengoa Díaz (Engineering); Tecnisondeos (Geotechnic)

Builder: José Morente Romero

Photographer: Javier Callejas Sevilla

The project starts from the need to expand the parish dependencies in a plot inside the bottom of an intramural block of the historical city. The complexity of the plot lies in the many walls of different heights and the different nature of each of them. Thus, this space borders on houses, with fragments of wall canvas, with towers of the walled enclosure, with patios… in short, the classical complexity of heritage cities.

The history of the plot deserves special mention, since this place was a container of an important house of the municipality, the Mendoza house. Based on a classic typology of central patio, this house was demolished, without patrimonial criterion being since then this space as the most important urban void of Porcuna.

Under these urban premises the project was born as an exercise to bring order. For this we resort to the rigor of geometry. Remaking the central courtyard with new dimensions we get a set of full and empty balanced order the plot. Thus, a perfect square patio, although it could be assimilated to a cloister or floor of a monastic complex, in this case it will lend its dimensions and proportions to be the floor of a parochial center.

THE AIR BECOMES SERENE

Parish Center in Porcuna.

Pablo Millan, architect.

“The air becomes serene and dresses in beauty and unused light, Salinas, when divine music sounds, governed by your divine hand.” Fray Luis de Leon.

I must confess at this point that from the first moment the images of Pablo Millán’s latest project in Porcuna have captivated me.

Some very white arcades, with simple white ribbed vaults, on two floors, make up two sides of a beautiful patio in Porcuna. The other two sides are the walls or dividing walls that, intentionally painted white, are a perfect complement to our arcades and, if it fits, they give them more value.

Any architect immediately comes to mind the EUR of Rome, by the architects Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto Lapadula and Mario Romano. Here more content and with proportions capable of moving us.

Giorgio de Chirico, the Italian surrealist painter, also comes to my memory, with his series “The Enigma of the Day” that some of us carry in our hearts.

But, above Romano and De Chirico, the work of the very young Sevillian architect Pablo Millán is of the highest order. And it conveys to us the spirit of that verse with which we began this writing. Serenity, beauty, light, divine music.

And, once again, the very accurate images of Javier Callejas.

Alberto Campo Baeza