Refurbishment of the Lateral Building of the Monastery of San Clodio / OLAestudio

Architects: OLAestudio
Location: Calle San Clodio, S/N, 32420, Ourense, Spain
Author Architects: Óscar López Alba
Area: 629.24 m2
Project Year: 2017
Photographs: Héctor Santos Diez / Manuel Vicente

Promoter: Agencia Turismo de Galicia. Xunta de Galicia
Construction: COPASA
Quantity Surveyor: Enrique Ramos Fernández
Collaborating Architects: Lucía Fernández Rodríguez y Fátima Nieves Fernández

Build a spa in a stone box.
The current Hotel Monumento de San Clodio in Leiro is one of the most important pieces of Galician monastic architecture. Annex to the set were the ruins of the stables and cellar. A large stone caisson with remains of the vaults that covered the ground floor. This ruin, impregnated with gravity and time, was the starting point.

The Tourism Agency of Galicia decided in 2013, undertake its rehabilitation as a spa and complete the whole. The program is the classic of these facilities: changing rooms, reception, massage rooms, relaxation rooms, Turkish bath, sauna and swimming pool. These were the premise and this is the result.

The original memory of the project sought to be very brief, as bare we imagined the architecture that should be inserted. In a telegraphic and direct way, the ideas of this work were exhibited and exposed:
– Do not touch the existing, masonry walls of 1.50m wide, remains of granite vaults, niches, and hollows.
– Act without altering the perimeter, insert pieces to house the uses.
– Recognize the ruin as a value and read the passage of time and the weight of the inherited architecture.
– Insert pieces to collect light.
– Insert an excavated stone plane for the pool.
– Emphasize the inherited atmosphere and take it to its new use.

In short, create a new use recognizing what was a stable and a cellar cradle of the Ribeiro. The reality of the work led us to simplify the inserted architecture, something that, in general, improves the projected. Each of the 6 compartments in which the interior is divided hosts a different use and materializes differently. The light is dimmed from the access piece to the spa piece. Each space graduates its light and accommodates the formalization of what is inserted to generate atmospheres and different scenarios for each use. Light architecture on the upper floor, stony on the ground floor.

The proposal is a tour for rest inside this stone box. The architecture was withdrawn for recollection. The interior seeks to be clear and resounding, only explodes when you reach the pool where the wooden structure rises to become a skylight. Your form is a desire. Different light (natural and artificial), different materials, different textures, different pavements, different colors and different scales at the service of silence and the senses.