The plot is in the middle of one of the most humid valleys of northern Navarre. A valley of gentle but sturdy hills, where the green pasture and oak trees configure a landscape of strong character, whose color changes with the seasons. A valley dotted with a system of small and relatively closely-woven urban cores, configured in an apparently random way. The buildings are formed of large unitary and isolated volumes that seem to touch, but that in truth compete with one another to show their bold architectural character. A boldness that draws on the climate conditions, but also on the production system – stockbreeding –, which in past times forced to accommodate in one same house people and animals. A boldness that is particularly evident in the roof, whose role is to bring together all the different contents. Boldness, in the end, of ‘Navarre’s buildings’. This is the context for an elite equestrian center specialized in dressage and with boarding stalls for horses: one of the strongest and most sophisticated forces created by nature.
Collaborators: David Martínez Grande, Janka Rust, César Martín Gómez.
Client: Private.
Awards: X Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urban Planning. Finalist, FAD Awards 2009. Architecture and Interior Design category. Finalist, COAVN (Basque-Navarrese) Awards 2010, Industrial Construction category, Consolation prize, 7th Fassa Bortolo International Award for Sustainable Architecture, given by the School of Architecture of Ferrara, Italy. Finalist.
The project tries to reconcile the privacy of the dwellings with attention to goings-on outside the block, so in the floor plan, the units are arranged in such a way that on the south side, towards the area that will accommodate offices and the ‘City of Justice’, a public zone will offer cafés, restaurants, stores, etc.; a recreational hub that will also be representative and vital in terms of exchange of functions, and therefore urban and with economic potential.
This home is set on a typical building of the Ensanche (19th century expansion) of Valencia. A typology of square urban blocks with chamfered vertices, that generates long and narrow housing units which are lit by inner patios.
The market, since its origins, has been a large covered place.
We conserve and repair the beautiful structure that supports that roof. Beneath, we dig into the site to introduce new services that complement sales activity: logistics, parking, installations.
It is an installation made with cardboard tubes with a metallic appearance atop a mosaic made of 96,000 wooden pieces.
During the Fallas festival in Valencia held every year the ultimate goal of these installations is to be burned to celebrate the arrival of spring. In this context we built a structure entirely of cardboard and wood joints. The purpose was to investigate to what extent we could carry up this type of structure, and also to place in a traditional context a contemporary image to provoke the debate between tradition and modernity.
The auditorium’s duality arises from the contradiction of its site. On the edge of town, the auditorium faces two realities: the beauty of the coastal landscape and the harsh and fragmented urban context.
This low-cost projectof anuncertain time frame and lots of good will starts as a pretext to redesign for the new use an empty commercial property, situated next to a restaurant of the same owner. The commission set out for us is to adapt a part of this property to be used as a terrace of the restaurant. The condition is that neither the pavement, nor the false ceiling (installed some months before) can be removed, in order not to compromise the unforeseeable future of the property.
The project consisted in the refurbishment of the Portocobo hotel located in the town of Santa Cruz de Oleiros (A Coruña). The existing building had an open plan layout sharing the site with two surface parking lots, a large terrace that could be covered, green areas and an outdoor pool with a sun deck. The back of the site had views of the sea. The interior remodel was aimed at better accommodating the existing functions as well as some new ones. The most important objective was to achieve full transparency on the ground floor, since in its original state the reception area blocked views of the sea. To this end, the ground floor was redesigned allowing the enjoyment of the views from the moment one enters the building. The remodel served to organize the interior layout: The rooms were reconfigured and adapted to new regulations. New areas dedicated to businesses such as private dinning rooms, classrooms and meet- ing rooms were created. The restaurant and bar were improved and the kitchen, storage areas and freezer were upgraded. Also, a removable canopy was designed to create a new banquet area for 500 guests. Finally, a spa specializing in thalassotherapy was located on the basement. It includes salt-water pools and spas, massage rooms, saunas, steam rooms and specialized massage rooms.
Building a dream is not easy, but that was the commission. Yes, as usual, but that time it was like never before.
We had to renovate an old building in order to create a space entirely devoted to chocolate. That was the sweet dream of Jordi, the chocolate maker. We had to do it withemotion, with metaphors, with a sense of humour… We had to be at the level of Easter cakes and chickens!
The Sunflower house sits on a privileged condition of limit; in the border within the water of the Mediterranean sea and the hard rock of the Costa Brava, between the wild nature of Cabo de Creus and the urban settlement of El Port de la Selva, a small fisherman village in the border of France and Spain. A place where the Pyrenees get into the water, generating an exceptional wildlife richness, both in the coast and in the water. The house wants to identify each of the particularities of this magnificent landscape; with its geometry, the house frames a multiplicity of different and specific views, and builds up content spaces that inhabit great big framed views.
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