Biography

José Luis Muñoz Muñoz. Granada, 1978.

In an eminently rural environment, the need arises for the construction of a building dedicated to the study of seeds native to the area as well as scientific dissemination. This building was created to accommodate a new program aimed at raising awareness, protecting and publicizing the agricultural heritage of the region of Loja (Granada). The Center for Agricultural Biodiversity is associated with a vast cultivated land. It brings together a training area (for farmers, schools and researchers) with an area for the treatment of species and seeds characteristic of the area. It is an agricultural laboratory and display in the middle of an experimental cultivation site.

As opposed to the mere establishment of a building as a direct result of a program, the project aspires to inscribe itself in the spectacular landscape. To do so, he works with certain pre-existing elements that he assumes as construction materials. On the one hand, the ruin of an old farmhouse determines the position of the project. This location is strategic, in the corner of the plot, as it maximizes the cultivation area by leaving it free of paths. The idea is to build on what is built while minimizing the impact on the territory. The ruin determines part of the geometry of the proposal since it is the negative of the pre-existing wall elements.