2022
MCHAP
New Legislature of Cordoba
Morini Arquitectos
Córdoba, Argentina
November 2019
PRIMARY AUTHOR
Lucio Morini, Jorge Lelio Morini and Sara Gramatica
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Julia Garayoa
CLIENT
Gobierno de Cordoba
PHOTOGRAPHER
Gonzalo Viramonte
OBJECTIVE
The original program raised the idea of building the executive power in the south and the legislative power in the north part of the site. Both buildings had to have a strong identity of their own that clearly expressed the independence of the two powers, while maintaining a visual balance. The two buildings sought abstraction and the impossibility of being able to appreciate their real scale. The executive power building has a strong identity through its stone materiality (concrete), rotated and faceted. The challenge of the new legislature was to find an image opposed to the executive. A light, ethereal building as if it were a great curtain for the participation of the Society. The essence of the Legislative Power is that of democratic participation through the debate of the political parties that compose it and the possibility of society being able to experience the process directly.
The physical conformation of the building is based on these principles, its floors in the shape of a slightly deformed circle allow all activities to converge to a large central space lit from above, from which the operation of the entire complex can be perceived without any hierarchy. This places all spaces in equal democratic participation. The focal point of this large encompassing space is the session room (70 legislators) which is where the discussions and the sanctioning of the laws take place, which is why this space acquires a much more significant and symbolic importance.
CONTEXT
Córdoba is the capital city of the province of Córdoba, Argentina. It is in the central region of the country, on both banks of the SuquÃa River. It is the second most populous city (1,500,000 inhabitants) in Argentina after Buenos Aires and the largest in the country. It is also an important cultural, economic, educational, financial and entertainment center in the region. It is also known as "La Docta" because its university is the oldest in the country and the third in South America.
The new Legislature of Córdoba is in an old railway site used as a repair area for trains and wagons that became a barrier for the city, separating its center from the Suquia River and the adjoining fabric of General Paz neighborhood.
In the 1990s, the property passed into the hands of the province until, in 2011, after a private initiative, the new Civic Center (executive power) of the province was built in the southern area of the property, leaving provision for the execution of a public park and the future Legislature, complemented with the execution of two adjoining bridges that have restored and given continuity across the river of the urban fabric.
The land that in its origins was a great barrier for the city, ends up transforming into a strategic place and connection of the city.
PERFORMANCE
The Legislative Power can be visited by society and participate, attending the debate that takes place there. For this reason, it seemed interesting that the building had a series of sequences, where you discover it, not only visually, but other senses begin to be involved. The first sequence would be to approach the building from the urban perspective, walking along the esplanade in a climate that transmits a sensation of heat, dryness, sun, where an almost domestic entrance is visualized through the abstract veil of parasols of aluminum. The second sequence begins as we approach the entrance, we discover that the building is located on a large water source, the scale begins to transform, the curtain is pierced, passing from the exterior light, from the immensity of the city, to compress us in the dark tunnel where our first sensation is auditory with the sound of falling water and at the same time a perception of well-being produced by the humidity of the source. Immediately after the third sequence begins, decompression occurs, generating a profound change of scales upon entering the immensity of the luminous courtyard of 21-meter-high concrete columns that houses the legislative precinct. And for the final sequence, we go up to an esplanade in the sunlit patio that is the entrance to the very heart of the building that is the Legislative Precinct built in wood. The sequence would then be light, shadows, light and finally light.
