Zaragoza is growing, transforming and reinventing itself without losing its essence as a bimillenary, mixed and friendly city. And due to all this, its network of cultural infrastructures is also increasing.
Today's Zaragoza acknowledges the importance of art and culture as framework for a sustainable development. New spaces for new realities; a new culture for new ages.
Expo Zaragoza 2008 make possible the construction of new and different first-rank cultural facilities and served to renovate several existing ones. Now, the cultural model of the city must be updated if Zaragoza wants to become a European cultural city of reference endowed with new structures under principles such as mobility, cultural cooperation, technology, sustainability, creation of wealth, education for culture, emotion as rule for living, and creativity of the cultural industry.
But, Zaragoza is already a European internationally-bound city with great possibilities to organize a varied and eclectic programme able to joint tradition and modernity as well as to reflect its spirit.
Zaragoza is a city that is growing without complexes and advancing with big steps towards a promising future in which innovation will have a great importance.
Zaragoza is answering to this challenge, and from 2010 to 2015, within the framework of its Strategic Plan of Culture, will add a wide number of new generation facilities to the already existing ones. Equipments such as the Arts and Technology Center, Zenit Pavilion (Zaragoza Fair Trade), Las Armas Music Center, Espacio Goya and Caixaforum among others, will create a new map of a city moving ahead for culture.
· An art gallery related to new technologies, an area for working, and production equipments with the newest material
· The Department of Research and Production will launch a programme to attract local, national, and international artists, to generate new projects, collaboration, expositions, exchanges and new programmes, with special attention to Milla Digital project.
· Areas for working, and flats and apartments for local and international artists, for a certain period of time.
· Laboratories and workshops to design, develop, produce and test locally any art product.
· Areas for expositions, spreading activities and educational equipments
· Art Lounge and common area at the square level, at the same height that the water elements at Paseo del Agua and La Almozara district
· Administration areas.
In order to chose the team responsible for the design and construction of the CaixaForum Zaragoza, the Obra Social "La Caixa" - among six of the most prestigious teams of Spanish architects- has chosen the project presented by the Estudio Carme Pinós. In 2012, this building will be a living milestone and innovative building for giving service to every citizen.
The building will have two big exposition hall of 810 and 439 m2 -hanged on different levels- to link the city centre with the new Pignatelli park, former location of the old railway station.
CaixaForum Zaragoza will be built in an area of 4,407 m2. The social and cultural center will have 5,527 m2, and its cost will be 15 million €.
The present Pablo Serrano Museum -tripling its area- will be the siege of the Center of Contemporary Art in 2010. The project has been made by the architect José Manuel Perez Latorre, in the old workshops of the Provincial Orphanage, a place which has been a museum from 1994.
Being fully contemporary, the complex will be composed of a new library, a café, and a small specialized shop in the ground floor, as well as a lobby and ticket offices, an administration area and educational halls.
An escalator and lifts will allow the visitor to have access to the three exposition floors. The first floor -devoted to the work of Pablo Serrano- will become more important.
The project of Herzog & de Meuron will extend the Museum of Zaragoza and will create the Espacio Goya for the preservation and knowledge of the heritage of the museums of Aragon. This project will also include invaluable historic collections, from the beginning of the Iberian and Roman age to the Zaragoza of the 20th century.
The extension project focuses on the figure of Goya, with a special attention to his training in Zaragoza, the influence from other Aragonese painters, and the impact of his works in other generations of foreign artists and other artistic fields. The museum will have big halls for important temporary exhibitions.
The fence circling the Museum and the inner courtyard of the old Arts Schools will be suppressed. Therefore, the Arts Schools will become independent from the rest of nearby buildings, and allowing the original arches of the three floors to be seen.
Designed by Joaquín Sicilia, the new and spectacular football stadium of the Real Zaragoza will be placed in San José district, between the third and the fourth ring roads, in the closest area to the consolidated city, accessible on foot, and only 400 metres from the pabellón Príncipe Felipe.
The stadium will have 628.720 m2 and a capacity for 43,000 - with the possibility of extension to 50,000. Externally, it will look as a nest with a Mudejar style cover. At its highest area, there will be a half-moon shaped shopping area with natural light. A 100 metres tower for tertiary uses will be built at one of the corners.
The project also includes the development of the avenida Tenor Fleta until the fourth ring road. The new stadium will have the most advanced devices for other kind of events -mainly big shows- using the least of means and provoking the lowest number of perturbations.
Projected by Sicilia y Asociados, the new siege of the Arts School of Zaragoza is being built between Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and María Zambrano streets. The objective is to revitalize the surroundings of Rey Fernando, remodelling the central area of this district.
The complex includes three buildings interrelated and linked through the ground floor, with library, classrooms, assembly hall, gymnasium and sports courts. The Design High School, which will have four workshops, fourteen classrooms, six departments, a library and a photographic laboratory will be built in the north plot.
The Arts School will occupy the central plot and will have a big lobby, a library and 27 classrooms. The terrace will include an indoor gymnasium and sports courts.
The south plot - the closest to the river Ebro and the most visible-, the auditorium and the expositions hall will form the big gate to enter into the complex.
With its 115 years of age, this building planned and managed by the architect Ricardo Magdalena, is the only one considered as Cultural Heritage from all the university buildings, and has become the institutional image of the University of Zaragoza.
It was one of the most important buildings of its age in Spain, contributing in a decisive way to the renovation of the Aragonese architecture between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
The restoration of the building, planned and managed by the architects Luis Franco and Mariano Pemán, forms part of the Infrastructures Plan of the University 2006-2012. The fantastic University Library has been extended, the indoor courtyard has been recovered to be used as a small public square, wide exposition halls in the ground floor and the basement have been built for exhibitions of contemporary art, and the rotunda at the south facade -opened again to the outside- has been recovered, allowing us to enjoy a bigger fluidity of space and a better working order of the building. A cultural café also will be built there.
This museum faces a new age with the exhibition in its three floors of 333 paintings and 244 engravings made by Goya. The works reflect the art of the transit period from the 15th to the 16th century until the 1970's, with a central element that gives a touch of distinction: the complete collection of engravings made by Francisco de Goya, that, for the first time, are exposed in a museum.
The collection of Goya's engravings occupies the middle floor of this old Renaissance palace, with an introduction in the noble hall -the "Golden Hall"- devoted to the Aragonese master
The rest of the museum includes, in the first floor paintings and sculptures from the 16th to the 18th century -the centuries before Goya-, and in the third, works from the 19th and the 20th century -centuries after Goya.
The new museum will be a 40% bigger than the old one. The reform -which includes the building at calle Torrenueva 20- has make possible the extension of the collections and of the original models from the sculptures made by Gargallo as well as boosting the offer of services as multipurpose cultural center.
The museum is placed in a beautiful Aragonese Renaissance palace and forms part of the actions boosted by the new stage of the Comprehensive Plan for the Old City 2005-2012 (Plan Integral del Casco Histórico-PICH) to revalue the historical heritage of the city.
Projected by José Javier Gallardo in 16th century Franciscan convent of la Victoria, the Museum of Fire and the Firemen will cost 7.1 million euros, and will include the adaptation of the whole building for the following uses:
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· Fire station
- · Museum of Fire and the Firemen including the cloister: inner facades, courtyard, and south and west wings
Julio Clúa, Alfonso Torres and Jaime Clúa are the architects of this project placed in the emblematic building of the old sugar refinery, on the left riverbank, and close to Casa Solans and the old Estación del Norte (nowadays an active cultural center).
The building includes a digital library and an area for alternative activities.
The works have focused on recovering the consolidated building, using materials such as white drilled concrete, and, inside of the building, plasterboard for making more rational the internal circulations and the distribution of functional equipments among the different areas and uses.
Thanks to CUBIT, Zaragoza places itself at the avant-garde of this kind of equipments, and will count with a library similar to those of cities such as Helsinki, Finland; Los Angeles, United States; Phoenix, United States; Singapore; Dresden (Germany); and Olzstyn and Breslau, Poland. More than a fifty percent of the materials are in digital form, and are especially addressed to young and dynamic people, disposing of a platform with the newest information technologies.
The Technological Library for young people "Cubit" is the result of a specific funding agreement of 2.1 million euros, between the City Council of Zaragoza, Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada and Bertelsmann Foundation.
Made by the architect José Manuel Pérez Latorre and boosted by Feria de Zaragoza, this pavilion will increase a 20% the exposition surface of the Fair Trade. This new multipurpose pavilion of 23,000 m2 and 42 m high will have an open-planned floor for 30,000 people.
This project has been boosted by the SGAE, mainly for the organization of lyrical shows, and also for pop music and modern musicals. It will also have additional areas such as, maybe, a digital cinema. Therefore, Zaragoza will be equipped with a theatre only for opera in the place of the old El Portillo railway station.
This old Rationalist theatre that si being rebuilt, will hold the Film Archive and Aragon Drama Center, and it will be -as once was- a great film theatre.
The Pabellón Puente, the Torre del Agua and the Conference Hall are the last buildings of this list of new cultural equipments launched by Zaragoza in order to renovate its offer, boost its new cultural model and promote its candidacy for European Capital of Culture 2016. The above mentioned equipments place Zaragoza over the other candidates, since no other city has so many and varied first-class equipments and infrastructures.
One of the greatest projects of Zaragoza has been the long awaited recovery of its main river and its riverbanks for the citizens, thanks to a sustainable and exemplary project to turn 8 km of riverbanks into the most important street of the city in order to serve as a sports, culture and leisure area. The riverbanks also include playgrounds, leisure areas, benches, cafés overlooking the river, and an outdoor amphitheatre for hosting 7,000 people.
