The building is meant to be seen as an extension of the urban public space. It offers a sheltered environment for the town square, onto which it opens. The intention was to offer a flexible delimitation of the spaces outlined in the brief, using mobile partition walls to allow for a free, modular configuration of the space for different uses and activities, thereby ensuring its integration as a singular meeting space and its extension outward to the square.

This configuration, which allows for an intense, varied use of the space, is what lends the new centre its character as a public place, fostering the use of the urban space around the chapel and square as a meeting point and place for social interaction, while maintaining the small chapel as a unique element, an essential part of the whole.

The building has been constructed by means of a dialogue between two skins; a continuous, abstract, exterior wrapping in white and a warm, interior wrapping made of wood.

The building’s exterior wrapping folds at times to allow access to the centre and frame the view of the surrounding landscape from the square, and vice versa. It has been finished with a continuous, manually-applied coating of rough plaster using the local volcanic aggregate. The micro-alveolic nature of this aggregate offers a high degree of insulation from the heat, and the light colour of the finish dissipates the sun’s intense rays.

The interior wooden skin unfolds into multiple configurations, allowing for an optimal use of the inner space. The space between the two skins, of variable thickness, houses the fixed installations and the storage rooms.

The orientation of the main entrance and the window frame defining the building’s edge blocks the entry of direct sunlight into the main room, making it luminous and cool—a shady, protected place on the square.