Wholesale architecture
Introduction
The old Málaga Wholesale Market, declared a Site of Cultural Interest "Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain)") in 1987,[1] and the work of the Spanish architect Luis Gutiérrez Soto, has housed the Málaga Contemporary Art Center (CAC Málaga) since 2003.
The historic building is located on the left bank of the mouth of the Guadalmedina River. It is one of the limits of what was formerly the Muslim medina, reclaimed from the mouth of the river during the urban reorganization works of the city of Malaga around the 19th century, where the Port of Poniente was located. Currently, the area is integrated into the historic center, although it is an urban area formed in the middle of the century, in the then immediate periphery of the city.
Building
History
In 1937, in the midst of the Civil War, the rationalist architect Luis Gutiérrez Soto, a member of the so-called generation of '25 and author of such notable works within Spanish modernism as the Europa and Barceló cinemas or the Chicote bar in Madrid, was commissioned to design a building to house the wholesale market in the city of Malaga.
It was originally conceived as a free-standing building, with an almost triangular trapezoidal plan, adapted to the uniqueness of the place in which it is located. The works, which began to be carried out in 1939, were supervised by the municipal architect Eduardo Estévez Monasterio"). Finally, in 1944 the building opened its doors until the 1980s when, due to the new needs of the city, a new market was built. Since then, the Gutiérrez Soto building was used for different purposes that plunged it into a process of abandonment and deterioration.
Structure
The building, following the original project, is built using a structure of pillars, beams and concrete slab. It has a basement, ground floor, two floors and a terrace that occupies practically the entire roof. The horizontality that characterizes the building is broken by the presence of the tower that rises above the roof and completes the original project. The market presents a plan plan composed of two perfectly interconnected parts: a first piece would be the one corresponding to the vertex "Vertex (geometry)") of the triangle, where the access area and administrative offices are arranged; The second or central body of the building presents an open space connected to the lateral bays "Crujía (architecture)". This central space presents a "Roof (construction)") roof with a terraced shape and is higher than the rest of the side naves.