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Architects: Estudio Huma
- Area: 151 m²
- Year: 2020
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Photographs:David Frutos
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Lead Architects: José Amorós Martínez, Alberto Amorós Martínez, Alberto López Camachos, Francisco Denia López
Text description provided by the architects. To serve beyond being served as materialized meaning. The building owes itself to its function, to serve above all. Changing rooms with laundry serve all those who arrive at the port from distant lands to the city by the sea: British, Italians, French, and Dutch.
Far from home, in the swaying of the sea with its continuous rocking, they long for solid ground that will return them to their natural condition. The space created, thousands of miles away from their homes, is the solid ground longed for after the shipwreck. Its mission is to recover the friendliness found in the home, starting from the most basic function: personal hygiene. To domesticate the public space, in the warmth of its intimacy, making it cozy.
This recognition of oneself through every day: brushing teeth, combing hair, taking a hot shower, or shaving, is serving the cause in a recognition of oneself in the mirror, from where one always returns home. This serving is making a home, welcoming it into one's embrace.
The dressing room building, in the vastness of its context, surrounded by large and solemn buildings by the sea, is perceived in the beauty of its smallness, like a boat surrounded by large ships in the ocean. Its shape from the surface reveals the service provided. The building hides its sailors inside, preserving the intimacy of its mission, only the sea, like a faithful friend, can see them.
The light sculpts the volume through two large grooves that pierce it from within, generating two interior courtyards that provide lighting and ventilation to the users who remain safe inside. The skin is moving shade. Built of natural resin slats, it changes depending on the light, creating the dynamism sought on land, reproducing the waving of the rigging in the wind.
The sailors never leave the sea behind, even on solid ground. A large open room serves as a waiting area with its large window, oriented towards this purpose that unites them: the sea. This window is not for looking, but for transcending loneliness. This friendly sea becomes part of the inside, and the inside becomes the sea.
The architecture folds and approaches, as if it wanted to sail, hovering over the cliff with the intention of jumping. But it remains suspended, in balance, sustained in time, knowing its function, which is to create solid ground in the midst of so much mobility. The access through a long ramp highlights this suspension over the cliff.
Within these walls, the stories that happened out at sea are told. A sea brought to land in its memory. The building pays tribute to all these architectures that once approached the sea to serve humanity: baths, dressing rooms, and changing rooms, which helped man so much in living in the sea.
Yielding to its silent function, surely fulfilled, from the anonymity of its presence; today we know that this architecture never sank, it was always anchored to others, in the timeline, in its continuous revival, from that sea of joy so full of life.
