Time as a Design Resource in Architectural Heritage intervention. The Case Study of the Conversion of the Escuelas Pías Church into a Library

Intervention in architectural heritage involves reflecting on a pre-existing architecture that has been transformed over time. In turn, the new action raises the need to create a new layer on the inherited architecture that allows it to adapt to new requirements. Therefore, the different stages in a monument’s life are fundamental factors in the design process, requiring an understanding of its past through the events of history, recognition of its present as a consolidated material pre-existence, and its possibilities for the future as an adaptation to current requirements that will ensure its survival over time. Furthermore, this new layer needs to link with the monument’s past and present through a specific compositional strategy in which time is presented as a concept that generates interesting resources capable of favouring an effective dialogue between the parts. Precisely because of its historical character, the monument incorporates a whole series of formal and material conditions that are the product of the passage of time. So, the new intervention can refer to them to establish this necessary dialogue. This research aims to explore these compositional resources used in architectural heritage interventions, in which time emerges as a concept that generates the design process. To this end, the case study of the conversion of the Escuelas Pías church into a library is chosen in which various resources can be found to obtain a wide range of strategies that can serve as a reference for future interventions. The compositional tools detected cover a wide range of relationship possibilities ranging from integration with a specific time of the monument to the simulation of different strata that respond in a fragmented manner to each specific temporal circumstance present in the monument’s pre-existence. Time is materialised through formal or material identification with a temporal stratum present in the monument’s history. This way, different possibilities are covered, from identifying with an eternal and immutable time to creating current and ephemeral strata, from creating a timeless architecture to searching for specific stylistic identification.