“Rehabilitation of old fencing rooms” is located in the old disarmament warehouse, a military construction from the middle of the eighteenth century inside the complex of the “Arsenal” which belongs to the historical memory of the city of Cartagena.
The object of the project is the integration of the new ‘CESADAR’ office (Centre for Supervision and Analysis of the Navy Data). The project is based on the recovery of the essential elements of the old rooms, like the space generated by the three longitudinal naves, the structure, the original floorings like the wood flooring, or brick paving…
There are three essential actions in this project, rescuing the old construction, giving value the whole space; recovering the original geometry erasing the last building alterations, and providing the infrastructures for the new uses.
We start from the rehabilitation of the original structure, getting new continue spaces like in the original halls and establishing new transversal communications by new voids that simulate the geometry of the fencing masks. This way we achieve the separation a qualification of the necessary spaces that fulfill the program, such as new common work spaces, individual offices and meeting rooms. The number and sequence of the halls make possible the combination of both uses in a natural way and with simple interventions in the existing building.
In addition, we recover the original stair that communicates the main access in the ground floor with the halls in the first one, and enhance original flooring with a new elevated glass floor that makes possible the conservation and view of the original one at the time that it is used to conducting the energetic systems.
For the other places, where the original flooring was lost, the answer is to put a technical ceramic paving, that remembers the original ones, at the time it lets the access to the new technical conducts.
For the air conditioning, we reuse the existing skylights where the air machines are kept out of sight, while let the natural light came in.
