New Landscape in Badalona's coast ("Patí Català" School Club)
Demolition as a way to build
It has been a challenge to confront the sea and its brutal immensity. I could understand that by respecting broad views and flowing hollows the space opens to the sea, and the horizon wouldn’t be lost. University gave me tools to respect and work from the environment to think architecture, for a better holistic view.
The Catalan coast is full of industrial old buildings and fishermen houses that talk about our tradition, and ancient nature traces that reveal our past. We’re losing these ancestors, the natural surroundings have lost its meaning in the reading of the city. Return nature to the city to formulate the new landscape. The streams and traces remind us of the geographical city, which responds to a landscape with a conscious context of its evolution.
The aim of the project was to define a landscape. To bond the city, infrastructure and nature I tried to define a constructive system based on demolition process, to transform the preexistent buildings in open spaces to let the sand gains terrain. At the same time, preserve part of the story, and give space to palms and changing dunes as public spaces. The form system consists on bounce the existing party-walls with hot-dip galvanized steel structures. The structural set restrains the horizontal wind push. The resultant intermediate spaces (courtyard-party wall, porches) work as hydrothermal regulators (microclimates). This cold modulated structure is understood as logical language to coexist with preexisting walls, a structure that by repetition build space fixing the party-walls without competing but modifying its initial existence meaning. And these reverse of space-meaning is also (I hope) a revolution of life for people. These spaces between walls are covered with curved roofs, and filled with sand. Some of these spaces are occupied by wood skins, also under the covers. Order have been fundamental to make flexibility possible for light and multipurpose spaces. The system is governed by a module that harmonizes all parameters (demolition, construction, facilities and plantations), then the structure defines the space, not the distribution. So that then it’s possible to explain the system in general terms with a detail and text instructions. To create comfortable hydrothermal environments the constructed elements are carefully passive designed because of the climatic context. The new landscape works as climatic regulator, and that links it to place tradition. A possible use for these roofs, respectful with the place, is a center for “patí català”, a type of sailing. The most I appreciate of this process is the flowing idea that a landscape is never finished.
