Gömda rum till ytan

Sammanfattning: At first sight, Villacañas seems like a dull and unassuming village in the centre of Spain. In contrary to so many other Spanish villages, Villacañas doesn’t have a strong and visible historical heritage with narrow streets and old buildings. The first thing that meets your eye, when entering the village, is an avenue of abandoned door factories and industrial complexes. The architecture of Villacañas is beige, reddish-brown and dusty, like a vertical extension of the ground it is built on. The buildings are rarely older than from the last century and the only discernible evidence of history is a tall tower of a stone church. Having spent some time in Villacañas I realized that, previously, the village had looked completely different. Last century, the village was excavated under the surface. Most of the population in the village lived in underground rooms, silor, that were barely visible from above. This typology is today almost completely erased and remains unknown for the passer-by. Gömda rum till ytan is a project driven by curiosity in exploring the architectural historical journey of Villacañas. Through conversations, experiences, and observations, I’ve tried to understand and interpret. The first part of the project is a survey of the architectural history of Villacañas, with focus on the silo as the dominant typology. It’s a process of investigating the determinants that have influenced the architecture over time, how it has changed, why and what characteristics it has. The second part of the project investigates how historical layers of architecture can consociate and be highlighted in a context that has tried to forget and eliminate the past. By identifying a site, where the architectural history of Villacañas is represented, I’ve developed a proposal of how these layers of history can act together. In the last part of the project, I reflect upon the process, the proposal, the underground and value. To summarize, Gömda rum till ytan is a project that, through a knowledge building about Villacañas context and history, examines how the hidden and forgotten layers of architecture in the village can be taken to notice and act together with the present. The project investigates the relationship to the silo as a home, its origin and disappearance and portrays a proposal where the silo is directly and indirectly integrated and highlighted.