Even a brick wants to be something
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
The project, located on the Mediterranean coast, consists of using the resources of an environment with a wonderful culture and construction technique, to create a natural place connected to the surrounding urban environment and the Mediterranean Sea, through a green infrastructure in which places of relationship are created for people that allow the mixing of cultures and knowledge.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
We understand the Mediterranean as a way of life, a culture with a very strong history and relationship with the natural environment, which in certain places has been seriously affected by processes of overcrowding and excessive speculation, as our coasts suffer today.
It is for this reason that we need to connect Els Rajolars with the Mediterranean Sea, creating a natural corridor, following the green infrastructures that are currently being developed around the world. Els Rajolars will become a place of experimentation and coexistence between the inhabitants of the site and the people who come to train and develop certain experimental jobs.This place allows us to establish small spaces of temporary residence in which all of these different people, from all over the world, will establish synergies and know this rich culture.
These small interventions use the resources and materials of the place. We can find in it, dirt roads between areas of crops and orange trees using ditches or areas through which the water no longer flows, living and relationship spaces under an olive tree, or even spaces, created using the natural topography of the place, who look at the sea. All of them are made trying to use the minimum and with the intention that the people who visit it enter the reality of the special culture that surrounds them.
Els Rajolars will maintain this wonderful atmosphere that this space in ruins presents, made entirely with ceramic pieces, made in the same place, and with nature overflowing and entering its limits. In it, we understand that the space has to belong to everyone, that the industry will become a place of experimentation, and that the orchards, which are introduced inside the complex, will be that social space that we all must maintain and look after.
Key objectives for sustainability
The process we have followed is to connect this old abandoned work center with the most predominant natural space in the area, the Mediterranean Sea.
Connecting it with a green corridor that also invades the place and creates spaces for people to interact. These spaces will be colonized by the inhabitants of the place and the people who come to train, who will use the resources at their disposal to gradually dignify it, but always with the Mediterranean architectural tradition, which is very rich.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
It is necessary to respect the existing architecture, which has great value and history, but we have to introduce new means to revitalise this place. A new material, which is integrated and respected, in addition to providing greater value to the intervention, such as this solid piece of glass, which as if it was a ceramic brick, colonises the complex allowing greater luminosity and porosity in all the spaces of experimentation and creation. This glass brick will be the common element in the entire intervention in combination with the old brick that is already in the place.
Key objectives for inclusion
The place will be for all people, people with less resources will be able to have a place to live, and work for the maintenance of this place.
In terms of culture, the contact with researchers and people from other parts of the world who come to live this experience will enrich them and give them a more global vision.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Giving vs. visibility to the project and creating initiatives for people to come and live and work on site from all over the world. The world is more global than ever and this type of cultural relations are the most important that exist.
