PROJECT INFORMATION
Architects: Knitknot architecture
Construction: Knitknot architecture
Location: Logroño, Spain
Part of Concentrico 05 Festival www.concentrico.es
Area: 90.0 m2
Project year: 2019
Photographs: Josema Cutillas
Knitknot architecture
‘Tea, Chocolate and Coffee
{The ‘Corral de Comedias’ as architecture for storytelling}
knitknot architecture . concéntrico 05 . Biblioteca de La Rioja . Logroño
With ‘Tea, Chocolate and Coffee’, knitknot proposes to re-imagine the patio of the Public Library of La Rioja as a “Corral de Comedias” 1 - that is, a traditional Spanish open-air theatre – where to activate and share the multiple stories and narratives from the books that the library contains in its shelves during the fifth edition of concentrico, Logroño’s International Festival of Architecture and Design.
With this intention, the intervention borrows a series of architectural typologies that belong to the collective imaginary of storytelling and gives them a new context in the library courtyard, placing them around a central module that conforms the stage. These spaces are:
1. The bar top
{one-night friendships}
2. The high school stairs
{Teenage stories between classes}
3. The bed
{The bedtime story}
4. The “festejador”
{Sharing experiences next to the window}
5. The confessional
{Confessing secrets}
This re-contextualization turns them into characters and spectators, in such a way that each individual fragment proposes a way of telling—and listening to—stories, more or less intimate, more or less collective, more or less exposed.
The central piece re-contextualizes ‘gorgorito’s’ puppet house, a very popular local puppet show, and proposes the inversion of the puppeteer's space, traditionally hidden, to expose it and automatically turn anybody who inhabits this module into a storyteller. Likewise, the installation takes its name from the song that always ends gorgorito’s puppet show, entitled 'tea, chocolate and coffee'.
Visitors can participate in collective experiences of storytelling, as well as in the most intimate moments of the installation. During the festival a series of performances were scheduled, as the storytelling show 'Lugares con Historias' by Carles García Domingo, and the contemporary dance piece 'Historias con cuerpo' by Gabriela Jiménez Bajo, created specifically for the installation.
Although the festival finished on May 1st, the installation will remain throughout the summer in the Library courtyard, reconfigured to accommodate summer activities, and, after the summer, the different modules will be distributed to public schools of the city.
(1) Corral de Comedias
1. m. During the XVI and XVII centuries, this term was used to designate a model of public open-air theater installed in the inner courtyards between neighboring blocks in the main cities across Spain. The city of Logroño had a Corral de Comedias in the courtyard of the Misericordia Hospital, inaugurated in 1604 and which remained until 1839.
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