The Centro Ágora was completed in 2009 by César Portela — the Galician architect best known for the Cemetery of Fisterra and a body of work that consistently addresses the relationship between constructed form and landscape. The building occupies the Monte San Pedro site above the city and is primarily a cultural and civic gathering space. The interior is the architectural argument: sloping white concrete planes at diagonal angles, a pine-slatted ceiling that mediates between the geometry of the walls and the natural light, a polished concrete floor that extends the spatial logic without interruption. The exhibition spaces at the far end of the main corridor are reached by traversing this sequence, which conditions the attention before the artworks begin. Portela's buildings reward this kind of slow approach — the architecture is not presented but discovered.
Monte San Pedro, La Coruña, Spain