BAT + Arquitecnica + LaSuma Paisajistas shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the Eco-Zone competition for a center for cultural and linguistic diversity and an energy platform (renewable + energy efficiency technologies), including all their necessary content of museographic character. Their proposal aims to value the pre-existing built and landscape of the estate Zabalegi in San Sebastian. The architects seek to remember through their intervention, raising some core structural sections that are born from the house of the Indian, that the first stone or seed of this project was planted by Mr. Arteaga when he to donated his plot performing an act of social responsibility. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The example of Mr. Arteaga reminds us that to change things all must take sides. From the main house shall be established a visual dialogue with the new intervention, establishing a symbiotic relationship, so that could not be understand one without the other, uniting past and future.
Limits
In an ecological crisis situation, climate and energy has to talk about limits. Limit to the consumption of non-renewable resources, limits to deforestation, limits on occupation of the territory limits to pollution and CO2 etc. The planet that keeps us is not unlimited, as would an engineer, has a “limited capacity” to which we are approaching irresponsibly. Time to put limits on our actions, and thinking about the entire planet. We therefore propose a performance perfectly defined, and its form we remind our “Earth Mother” or “Amalur”, said in basque. We have chosen an elliptical, or distorted circle generated by a plantation of Miscanthus. This geometry together with the axes that born from the porch of the house of the Indian will give us a network to order the project. The superposition of the two yields a distorted landscape, mirror of the situation we live in and we have to correct.
Time
We propose a project in which the 4th dimension can be visualized and experienced. We must analyze past to understand the present, and we must study the present to improve the future. We want to give a message in a positive sense. The spaces generated by Miscanthus planting will vary with the seasons both in shape, size and colour and will help us understanding that we live in a changing landscape, where the action of man is decisive.
The internal geometry being adaptive allows us to generate new exhibition spaces and give a renewed each season for visitors.
Architects: BAT + Arquitecnica + LaSuma Paisajistas Location: San Sebastian, Spain Competition Status: 1st Prize Year: 2012
