ArkxSite has announced the winners of its international architecture ideas competition.The competition has invited all architecture students and young architects to develop innovative ideas for the design of a Site Mausoleum located in the Jaspe Quarry, ‘Serra da Arrábida’, Portugal. The site is of great natural power as the remains of an old quarry are carved into its landscape, along with massive cliffs that drop dramatically into the Atlantic Ocean.
The competition committee wanted participants to develop an intervention that emphasizes, respects, and celebrates the site, all while providing visitors with a unique experience of movement between enclosed and open spaces.
1st Price Winner: Giulio Pinci - Italy
Giulio's winning design proposal aimed to give visitors a solitary and personal space, where they can be inspired by their surroundings. He chose to close the quarry with a retaining wall and redirect the visitors towards a long and dark passage overlooking the cliff.
MEMORY ROOM
In the Arràbida natural park there is a place Where you can dig into your own memory, estranging oneself from the surrounding landscape. Finding it is not easy. A steep and hidden path accompanies us to the entrance, balcony to the sea. A long and dark passage removed from the rock inextricably links the sea to memory. Finally the light! A grazing light that strips the old quarry now deseated. We are in an open air room, the only sound is the noise of the sea. Memories resurface…
The strength of this project is that it disappears into the landscape. It provides a new program that is visible from every point but it blends with the surroundings making evident the particularities and contrasts between nature and a man made structure but avoiding an imposing structure in the site. - Competition Jury
2nd Prize Winners: Emma Bonilla Albornoz, Daniel Elsava Tavor, and Santiago Castillo Reina - Colombia
The architecture students reinterpreted the quarries as "a wound inflicted on a mountain waiting to be healed". Their inspiration was a crack in one of the rocks, provoking them to develop paths that appear and collide in the mausoleum, eventually leading to the horizon.
A mausoleum arises from the wound inflicted on a mountain. It reveres those who worked its slopes and what existed within its hills. It is a memorial to the cliffs and peaks that have been vanquished from the horizon because of mining. Reinventing man’s footprint on this landscape, the mausoleum highlights the intrinsic beauty found in the quarries, creating spaces that leverage and elevate nature’s elements...
An extremely conscious proposal that reveres the core idea of its nature... the infliction of a wound. In a very elegant and conscious way the project understands the language of the quarry and uses the same grammar for a beautiful result. Maybe not as bold is the relation with water, that is more limited to the rock’s water-surface than to a potentially more transcendental relation with the sea horizon. But in the end, a successful new human footprint, so aligned with the past that disappears. - Competition Jury
3rd Prize Winners: Eiji Otsubo and Takashi Nishizuka - Japan
The architecture graduates believed the value of the site is revealed by gaining a dynamic experience within the space while standing still. The chose to harmonize the landscape and architecture, providing visitors with a unique panoramic view of the site.
A well calibrated intervention in the landscape that solves all the conditions of the contest with great synthesis and forcefulness is valued. The project is developed as a continuous and suggestive route crossed by multiple atmospheres that demonstrates a skillful handling of the lights, shadows and scales. This intervention transforms the place into an authentic phenomenological experience that concludes with a powerful panoramic view of the landscape. - Competition Jury
Honorable Mentions:
Maximilian Brack, Dominik Brys and Jannik Aulenbacher (Germany)
Antonio Turmo and Víctor Ferran (Spain)
André Simões, Sofia Alves and Rúben Guerreiro (Portugal)
Matthias Prüm and Philipp Wigge (Germany)
Diego Esparza (Mexico)
Marco Sironi, Davide Conversa, Francesco Pasi and Federico Pellegrini (Italy)
João Freire Aragão, Gonçalo Santos and Jorge Silva (Portugal)
Jury:
Joaquin Alarcia + Federico Ferrer Deheza (Argentina) / alarcia-ferrer arquitectos
Fernanda Canales (Mexico) / Fernanda Canales Arquitectura
Mesura (Spain) / MESURA
