San Lorenzo Church. Valdemaqueda

The church of San Lorenzo is located in a small village in the mountains of Madrid near Robledo de Chavela. When the intervention took place, the church was composed of a gothic chancel from the beginning of the 16th century and a recent nave of poor architectural and constructive quality that must have replaced a pre-existing one. The project consists of replacing that nave with another one that is architecturally more suitable.

The construction is based on a concrete structure supported by the perimeter walls, which are load-bearing and made of stone and brick, and a single concrete pillar. This last element fragments, complicates and, at the same time, orders the space by adding a certain symbolic and, in a way, enigmatic content. Two skylights perpendicular to each other introduce the light that glides down the walls, providing an intense atmosphere that is intended to evoke a sacred character due to its severity and essentiality. The walls have a rough treatment formed by a rendering that allows the brick with which they are built to become transparent. Another structure of wooden beams rests on the rough and coarse concrete structure as a whole, which reflects in its texture its construction by means of a wooden formwork, suggesting a temporal sequence of the building's construction. There are only two openings in the walls, one window that allows only light to enter but not views to the outside, like Romanesque windows, and another very small one, whose light is reflected in the basin of holy water. 

Outside, the church has a wall finish made of stone "tablets" with an irregular pattern and texture and a single Renaissance doorway, which, after the construction of the nave, has been isolated from the walls of the church to recover its value as an architectural element. From the doorway, a sequence of interior paths is generated after the initial perception of the single pillar, which juts out from the illuminated wall in the background, and continues through the confessional until finally discovering the altar in the half-light.