Grupo Aranea commission for the Municipal Cultural Centre in M

Spanish interdisciplinary architecture studio Grupo Aranea will carry out a commission for the Municipal Cultural Centre in Mysłowice, Poland. Described by the critique as one of the most promising teams of young architects in the international architectural scene, in October the studio will launch a project Isla Polonia in Mysłowice. The Isla Polonia project is our first production both in Poland and in this part of Europe, and that is perhaps the biggest challenge of this project and at the same time a source of the greatest satisfaction – says Francisco Leiva Ivorra (senior architect and a founder of Grupo Aranea studio). Grupo Aranea is a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, landscape experts, artists, biologists, sociologists and historians, created with the intention of taking up a wide range of architectural challenges and territorial interventions; much wider than a traditional architectural company does. The studio was founded 12 years ago in Alicante. Based in Spain, it works both on local and international levels, in any context, place or country. The studio expresses its own philosophy in the most effective and representative ways through such disciplines as architecture, landscape, planning, exhibitions, art and teaching. Since its creation, the Grupo Aranea has received numerous national and international awards, including first prizes in a national competition for a Public Library in San Vicente, Spain (2001), international competition for 111 Apartments in San Juan, Spain (2007) and an international competition for a Public Park in an old valley in Elche, Spain (2009). Their work, included in important international exhibitions, is nowadays a part of the permanent exhibition in the MoMA, New York. Mysłowice, a town with population of above 70.000 inhabitants, is located in the heart of Silesia - an industrial region in Southern Poland with a coal-mining landscape. The shrinking cities effect is one of the reasons why the Municipal Cultural Centre (MCK) in Mysłowice attempts to develop the cultural activities directed to the citizens of the town. MCK decided to assign a space for a reading room which would include albums, books and magazines devoted exclusively to broadly defined culture – from crocheting, model making, through cookery books, lifestyle magazines to contemporary art publications and architecture press. All mentioned material, donated by various publishing houses and private persons will be accessible to the general public free of charge. This way the space will be filled with a random collection of publications and audio books. The architects were given a commission by Marcin Szczelina, the project curator. As he states: I have been continually colla borating with MCK for a few years now and I am very excited about the opportunity of running this international multidisciplinary project within a local context. I do hope this activity is another step to stimulate the local community with art. Grupo Aranea were to design an installation – a piece of furniture that would redefine the notion of a reading room and the interiors of the Municipal Cultural Centre. Basing on our large-scale experiences as well as deriving from our interest in nature, we decided to create something small and very personal, that would be inspired by something large, public, anonymous. In effect, we created a sort of a micro-world, a multifunctional piece of furniture of universal character, which, located in a closed space enriches it with a unique new element. This is a kind of our personal island for Poland – explains Francisco Leiva Ivorra. The idea behind Isla Polonia project is to introduce a landscape into a closed space. Here, the architects are inspired by a topography of an island with its characteristic richness of natural forms: mountains, rivers, valleys, hills, meadows and lakes. Minimizing such a large geographical form that an island is, to a scale of a piece of furniture appears interesting from the perspective of the designing process. Moreover, it provides us with a large number of leisure areas, varying in terms of size and proportion, as well as in a number of people able to use it. This way the architects create a shapeless micro-object, which irregular form corresponds with soft lines present in nature, and thus distances itself from straight lines of the interior's walls. The results is an independent, autonomous body contrasting with given surroundings. At the same time, the main advantage is the comfortability and functionality of the object, which is why the designed piece appears an ergon omic mass in which the designers shape particular hills, seats, ridges and folds, observing the positions of a human body in sitting and lying positions, and by that achieving the final shape and character of the 'island'. Why an island? Architects of the Grupo Aranea studio explain: On an island everything is logical and clear, every smallest detail has its meaning. Nothing can go unnoticed on an island. Island stimulates our senses; we are all geographers on an island. There are islands where you can forget yourself, there are others where you can find yourself, there are also islands where you can have a fried fish right after you dive. We go past islands each day and rarely realize that. Isla Polonia is the first one on the archipelago that allows us to rediscover ordinary places that we usually indifferently pass in the rush of our everyday lives. Project realized under a Honorary Patronage of the Major of Mysłowice, Mr Grzegorz Osyra. Project Curator: Marcin Szczelina Organizer: Municipal Cultural Centre in Mysłowice More details at www.mckmyslowice.pl