The scheme ‘Claustro,’ drawn up by Sebastián Arquitectos and Estudio Hábito, has won the competition to restore the buildings west of the former Archbishop’s Palace in Alcalá de Henares. The site is within a larger area being worked upon, with its high historical and archaeological content. The disappearance of the old Central General Archive of the Kingdom after a 1939 fire left a void and ruins on the spot of what will be the House of Archaeologists, a research and culture center linked to the activities of the Regional Archaeology Museum.

The winning scheme is thought up as a cloister that completes the existing architecture, all the while respecting the ruins. Two elements stand out. The first, partly buried, is a work space and a depository for use by archaeologists, and closes up the new cloister, connecting with the town’s old wall. The second, a suspended solid supported by preexisting arcades, contains more public areas and links up visually with the cubes of the old town wall, closing up the archdiocese’s orchard.

The different parts of the new cloister are organized around the new cloister: the entrance hall; the double-height cube for public uses, which incorporates the existing arcade at the lower level, where the most public uses are (café, dining room, foyer, WCs), and the upper floor for the skylight-topped multipurpose hall; the L-shaped archaeology bay for research facilities, seminar venues, and offices; the archaeology tower, a vertical depository for storing pieces dug up; and the archaeology plinth, an abstract and simple rectangular volume, partly buried, with a workshop and a transition depository, where a brisoleil allows placing archaeological objects in vitrines towards the cloister.