Center for Preparation for Reuse of Asturias

The new Center for Preparation for Reuse of Asturias is conceived as a key facility within COGERSA’s regional strategy to accelerate the circular economy. Designed as a supramunicipal public infrastructure, the center enables the recovery of municipal and similar waste through sorting, cleaning, repair and reintegration into new cycles of use. Beyond its technical role, the project aspires to become a cultural catalyst: a space where reuse is experienced, understood and celebrated.

The intervention takes as its starting point a singular building of 20th-century Asturian architecture, originally designed as a data processing center for Banco Herrero. Its circular geometry, compact volume and metallic skin earned its inclusion in the Ministry of Culture’s Inventory of 20th-century Architecture. After years of abandonment, its recovery reinterprets and revitalizes a valuable piece of modern heritage, reframing it as a contemporary public facility committed to sustainability and innovation.

A circular, precise and respectful rehabilitation. The project proposes a comprehensive transformation grounded in sustainability, sufficiency and material circularity. The strategy balances architectural respect with technical innovation: the spatial logic of the original building is preserved while introducing reversible, industrialized and low-impact systems. The intervention is conscious, restrained and resource-efficient, turning the building into a built manifesto of the circular economy.

The circular floor plan becomes the functional engine of the program: physical and metabolic flows —entry of materials, repair processes, public areas and educational spaces— are organized transparently and coherently. The building reveals its processes, making every stage of the object’s life cycle visible and transforming architecture into a pedagogical tool.

A civic heart at the center. The project recognizes and amplifies the exceptional spatial qualities of the original structure. The ascending, narrowing access culminates in a double-height lobby flooded with zenithal light. From there, the experience leads to the central volume: the former computer hall, a 25-meter-wide, nearly 5-meter-tall concrete cylinder, free of columns and crowned by a ribbed ceiling.

Once the “brain” of the bank, this space now becomes the symbolic and operational core of the center. Its transformation into a triple-height void visually and physically links the public levels, offering a complete reading of reuse flows. The visitor journey is continuous and immersive: light, materials and circulation speak of cycles, transformation and purposeful permanence.

Architecture as cultural infrastructure. The project positions rehabilitation as a critical design act: not only updating performance, but questioning needs, rethinking use and designing through sufficiency. Passive strategies, reclaimed materials, dry construction systems and reversible assemblies are prioritized to minimize environmental impact and prolong life cycles.

The Center for Preparation for Reuse does more than extend the life of a building: it inaugurates a new cycle of shared responsibility between architecture, community and territory. A place where the past is respected, the present is optimized, and the future is imagined more conscious, circular and collective.