The project is a reflection on memory: the pass of time and the evolution of architecture…
The proposal is a way to intervention in a 19th century building … the traces of the past are engraved in the new buildings, like a memory of ancient geometries … It is an unfinished architecture that the time will end up composing in the place …
This project aimed to re-organise an existing nightclub, whose leitmotiv was grounded in sparkling, coloured lights inside a dark box.
The nightclub is then conceived as a light, sound and movement tuner. Therefore the plan is based in a gradual composition of those three elements. The central part is shaped as an area for dancing and maximum vibration–convulsive, intense. The floor, walls and roof in the farthest zones–sober, welcoming–appear as golden boxes where the sparks of the central part can be captured and reflected in nuanced glittering lights A long bar going through the whole premises provides the backbone of this space gradual composition.
The design of the cellars reflects the three necessary steps for wine production. The first pavilion is a wooden gable roofed structure which shelters grapes as they are fermented in huge steel shells. A second buried space hosts the barrels in a grid of 3×3 concrete vaults of a great tectonic nature. In this spectacular place time detains both for the purpose of wine maturation as well as for a spectator who finds himself in these surroundings. Given that the space is buried, a constant temperature is achieved without need for inputs of heat or cold. Finally, the third pavilion is identical to the first one, it is the home to the last process of the wine production. Here, the bottling and storing of the wine takes place before bringing it to the surface again for its eventual distribution.
Gorraiz, on the outskirts of Pamplona, is a recently developed upscale residential area whose architectures draw inspiration mainly from those of the past. Rare here are the houses with an autonomous and contemporary design. The only peculiarity of the plot where this house rises is its elevated position, affording views onto the golf courses of the lower part of the housing development. The design scheme starts from an abstract interpretation of the urban codes, by which at least 60% of the roof must have at least a 35% slope. Understood in strictly geometric and abstract terms, the codes define a section where exactly 60% of its linear progress must have a 35% slope, the remaining 40% of the roof being almost flat. With this initial section, the project attempts to make the most of the features of the resulting volume. The higher level contains the living areas, whereas the bedrooms and indoor swimming pool are beneath the flat part of the roof. A series of incisions articulate the different areas of the house and bring natural light into those that are farther apart from the perimeter, the largest of which is a courtyard that goes all the way down to the basement.
We can talk about the perception of space as an educational proposal on its own, since education is mainly based in human contributions, but also on environmental ones, that affect the development of children’s potential, as well as the interaction between them and the environment. In order for a nursery, with children aged 0-3, to be able to ease or speed the learning process, it needs the building to be capable of suggesting new perceptions to children, and at the same time to satisfy the educators necessities. For these reasons the centre must be:
A place of suggestive and easily recognised circulation, with galleries to avoid crowds and show the child the relative position of spaces.
A clean and secure place, where neither the materials nor the installations involve the minimal risk for children.
A peaceful place, where everything, from the materials to its design, absorb noise and reverberation.
A bright place, where it is possible to enjoy as much natural light without sun glare, as the transformation of some spaces to generate shade.
A suggesting and stimulating place, where light, colour, sound, vegetation and space are elements that make it easier for the child to learn and play.
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.
Surrounded by various buildings, the only interesting sight offered at the back, sloping meadow crowned by the castle and the ruins of the church (at the time of writing the project). This situation pushes introversion: A south facing L, defined by a concrete volume of copper cover, which protects against northern winds and noises of the street, hugging a main courtyard to pouring the day area, bounded in its two remaining sides by elongated pond, leaning against another wall, and a small guest pavilion.
The plot of an almost rectangular shape has an approximate size of 15 meters wide by 29 meters long, with a Northeast-Southeast orientation in its longest axis. Its upper part runs alongside an access road, and its bottom part with another on which there is a rising slope, defined in the first section by means of a talus; the other parts adjoin similar plots. It belongs to a series of closely built houses, with very little space between them: it is part of a series of consecutive, adjacent plots of similar characteristics which, as a group, are one of the building developments of the Castillo de Gorraiz housing estate very near to the city of Pamplona.
The agricultural foundation Fundagro is an institution for the promotion of organic farming and the recuperation of biodiversity in local garden vegetable seeds. The foundation is located in Aranzadi Park, which is a recovered meander of the Arga River, on the high course of the Ebro River basin as it passes through Pamplona. This meander was strongly affected by human activity during the twentieth century, during which sports, religious and social facilities, building lots with private dwellings, and land movements to contain the river, had transformed its morphology and landscape away from a natural meander.
The building occupies a singular geometry plot, the available space has the form of an almost equilateral triangle whose facades give urban roads of different character. On one side is the Avenue of Merindades that is the only way that surrounds the building and therefore must accommodate the road access, the building also offers street facade of The Almoceda having pedestrian nature, while its third façade overlooking the park leading down to the shore of Queiles.
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