Plaza de las Concepciones in Soria

Date: 2018
Design/direction: Eduardo Delgado Orusco
Team: Javier Rincón Sánchez

The SOIL and the CLOUD is our proposal for the Plaza de las Concepciones de Soria, an urban void linked to the consolidated routes of the city. Specifically, it is a widening of the road to the bullring crossing Tejera Street. Thus, the gap so far occupied by the provisional market and consolidated by the configuration of the adjacent homes is tangent to Sagunto Street.

So, our proposal begins by recognizing the space that is offered to us as a crossroads, a crossing of routes that must be attended to. Thus, the provision of activities of all kinds - children's games, leisure for the elderly, including commercial ones such as small markets, etc. - must be atomized to facilitate permeability.

In addition, the climate of the city and the region - extremely cold in winter and moderately hot in summer - invites us to temper it in a relatively exposed space like that of the Plaza. However, the proximity of the Parque de la Alameda de Cervantes makes it impossible to compete with its trees and other facilities, in some cases, centenarians.

 

 

Thus our proposal arises whose fundamental element is an artificial installation that shelters and shades all those activities trying to reproduce the presence of trees in the villages: it would be a question of generating a point of social cohesion, where all generations -from children to the elderly - find a place for your activities together with others. A "technified" tree, capable of emitting freshness through simple systems of water fogging, solar and / or wind energy collectors, container of plants of average size but whose juxtaposition generates the same effect as a large tree, but with an accelerated growth . The structure we propose -the tree- can be support for other elements, such as screens and projectors -for summer movies or sports broadcasts-, lights and garlands -for parties-, gymnastic and balance elements -for circuses and athletic exhibitions-, etc. In this sense, the limit would be set by the users themselves.

This presence is combined with a coherent and complementary floor treatment that offers a grandstand that follows the slope of the square itself, and the arrangement of "areas of movement" for intermediate scale pieces -sands, petanque games, game tables, banks, kiosks, market areas, even water games, etcetera.

In any case, the dimension of the technified tree and the distance to the existing buildings has been studied to guarantee the rest and privacy of the neighbors, given that the artifact's own conditions - its natural leafiness, the creation of the interior open space, etc. They also function as sound and environmental isolation.

 

 

As explained above, our proposal results from the meeting of two realities that would allow, as a minimum, a construction in two phases: the soil and the cloud. They would be the tectonic and the stereotomic, as one of our most beloved teachers explains.

THE SOIL consists of a treatment of the natural topography of the space - the square has a slight oblique fall from the Plaza de Toros and towards Sagunto Street, which is consolidated and, therefore, poses an easy construction without conflicts. It would be like laying a towel on the beach, assuming the natural falls of the same although being able to act punctually to generate a headboard or a better accommodation for the legs. Thus we propose minimum folds that would not increase the cost of construction and, however, serve to welcome some of the uses more kindly.