The Garganta de los Montes community centre, north of Madrid, is a good illustration of how Stone is finding a place in the contemporary repertoire of materials. The two-storey centre is in a small village where old, stone-built buildings are grouped around a church and the town hall. Sited between the latter, the centre marries granite, wood and concrete. Where the granite is structural, it is exposed on both the interior and exterior.
The centre differs from the traditional architecture by virtue of its construction logic, the dimensions of its openings, and this marriage of materials. Whithout being hidden, the concrete appaears only as beams or pillars. Elsewhere it is maked by Corten steel tiles or by the granite itself. Iroko wood is also used as a mask. Many of the finishings are in wood,like the furniture. Implementation of the materials is exceptional. Their textures –rough-hewn, unsurfaced, oxidised, weathered, while all in the samespirit, are nonetheless used to contrast ruggedness with finesse, to express the centre´s double vocation, one addressed at children, the other at adults.