He Hortensia Herrero Art Center (CAHH) was a winner of the first edition of the +Historia Readers’ Awards, organized by the National Geographic History magazine. Specifically, the winner in the Best Building Rehabilitation category was the Valeriola Palace, located on Calle del Mar in Valencia.
This award, as the magazine points out, is “recognition of the commitment to caring for culture and heritage”. After a selection process carried out by experts from the publication, a voting period was opened in mid-August for the six categories selected, the entity said in a press release.
The category of best rehabilitation of a historic building awards an architectural project for the recovery, expansion or rehabilitation of a historic building. The main condition was that this rehabilitation, total or partial, be “faithful to its origins” and attempt to rediscover its “most significant” characteristics.
The director of the Hortensia Herrero Foundation, Alejandra Silvestre, said she was “very happy to receive this news”: “We have barely been open to the public for a year and we are happy to see that, in this case, the readers of National Geographic Historia magazine appreciated the enormous effort behind the opening of the Hortensia Herrero art center. “It’s a year of opening to the public, but more than five years of work to rehabilitate a building which was in a very precarious situation.”
For its part, the ERRE Arquitectura study, responsible for leading the rehabilitation, said it had approached the initial project “with great enthusiasm and knowing that it was essential to respect the essence of the building, which contains part of the ‘history of the city’ of Valencia.
The Hortensia Herrero Art Center exhibits more than 50 works in its 17 roomsthe building itself, seen from the street, is “just another room,” according to ERRE Arquitectura partner Amparo Roig.
For his part, the artistic director of CAHH, Javier Molins, thanked the magazine’s readers for this recognition. “Hortensia Herrero’s collection is magnificent, but the packaging by ERRE Arquitectura is truly spectacular. “It made it possible to establish a dialogue on the Jewish, Roman and Islamic past of the city with artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Sean Scully or Anish Kapoor, among others,” he assessed.
