In the island of Lanzarote two ways of volcanic landscape transformation converge: the rhythm of the earth and the rhythm of human life. The project, by CUAC Arquitectura, Serrano y Baquero Arquitectos, and Luis Miguel Ruiz Avilés which was a winning entry in the Europan 11 competition, takes the idea of accumulation and overlapping of layers in the landscape construction. We take the reference of a geological section from a site adjacent to our sector for the development of the proposal, planning a ‘perforated basement’ and an architecture that has the ability of recognizing the strata in which it is inserted. More images and architects’ description after the break.
We can talk about coexistence and overlapping of changing processes that belong to different scales: the geological and the urban one. The agriculture has turned people into powerful agents of ‘displacement of material’, as powerful as the wind which they protect themselves from.
Several elements that structure the territory were found in the area; “low walls” that protect from the wind, sand barriers, cisterns for storing rainwater for irrigation, tanks for homes, etc.. We consider these pre-existing elements valuable for the landscape development. Moving away from a static conception of the idea of natural heritage, we decided to integrate this “infrastructure” to a new system to facilitate the interconnection of cisterns. A new element called “volcanic ditch”, which is a hybrid of the formerly irrigation water lines and the low walls of volcanic stone, is created.
Densification of edges is a strategy that can be found both in the preparation of the land, and the growth of the houses built by contiguity between boundaries and agricultural zoning. To avoid an excessive fragmentation of the plots by roads, destroying the identity of the blocks of San Bartolomé, we propose the creation of new public services between orchards.
The strategy for inhabiting the landscape responds to the logic of the traditional buildings of this village, transformed through a process of occupation of several houses inside a bigger one. In this way, we use as a model an existing house in the area which could shelter five different social houses.
Architects: CUAC Arquitectura, Serrano y Baquero Arquitectos, Luis Miguel Ruiz Avilés Location: San Bartolomé, Spain Team: Tomás García Píriz, Javier Castellano Pulido, Juan Antonio Serrano García, Paloma Baquero Masats, Luis Miguel Ruiz Aviles Contributors: Cristóbal Adrián García Almeida, José Enrique Iniesta Molina, Alejandro Pedro López Fernández, Alejandro Carlos Galindo Durán, María de Lara Ruiz, Juan Bachs Rubio, Elena María Lucena Guerrero
