The
project
attempts to express, with an architectural gesture, the beauty of the geography
of Algeciras: the bay, The Rock and the Straits of Gibraltar, the proximity
of Ceuta and Africa, the oak forests that surround the city… For this we propose
a construction that, from one single body, splits into two towers from one great
public viewing platform. This body opens strategic holes in the most notable
topographical accidents, establishing a physical relationship with them, while
the section is organized as a building-up of privacy which increases with height.
The programme feeds itself from this relationship with the physical medium:
a museum of the Bay of Algeciras and the Straits of Gibraltar make the base
of a publicly managed Industrial hotel that is meant to promote new industries
and businesses that are linked to the the port’s activity. On top of it, there
is a sports club that is dedicated to physical culture. A group of residential
or professional lofts crown the whole. A mixed façade is envisaged, with strips
of glass alternating with others that are made of recycled cellular polycarbonate,
which protects ventilated wall cavities or end translucent areas. When it forms
a wall cavity, this element protects a sheet of natural cork that serves as
insulation in such a way that the whole acquires an ambiguous and evanescent
presence, transparent and translucent -with the associated nocturnal effects-
but also natural and artificial, tectonic and immaterial, a conglomeration whose
image wants to represent the sensibility of contemporary society towards the
city and the land.