Puertochico Plaza & Market
García-Germán Arquitectos

The plaza, a former elevated leftover space on top of Puertochico Market, and until now segregated from city life, is reconnected to the neighborhood through the construction of a broad flight of steps that also act as an urban grandstand, facing the afternoon sun and the busy street life. This enables an easy access and a renewed use of the elevated plaza, with children’s playground, extensive flowerbed plantings and long perimeter benches. The new intervention deliberately reduces the range of gestures and materials in an aim to introduce an abstract and homogeneous counterpoint to a discordant urban environment, resolving all perimeter benches and plantings with a single detail and the entire paving surface with a single floor piece. The new all-embracing carpet-like paving produces a certain volumetric, Op-Art effect, de-contextualizing the preexisting cultural centre which sits in the middle of the plaza and appears to hover over this carpet, which itself floats over the street. The paving is made up by EcoGranic® prefab coloured concrete pieces which filter NOx and perform as active de-contaminants.

Plantings are laid with aromatic and Atlantic species and little maintenance required. They are organized in parallel bands producing colour fringes and a selective blockage of immediate views from within the plaza.

The project is the first phase of a global redevelopment of the existing market below, which will be updated and completed with outdoor restaurants, gastro-stands and a new image in a strategic location, at the same time close to the city’s centre, the seafront and the touristic enclaves.


Arquitectos: GARCIAGERMAN Arquitectos



www.garciagerman.com
info@garciagerman.com

+34 915 638 845
C/ Arga 23
28002, Madrid, SPAIN

Jacobo García-Germán Vázquez (Madrid, 1974) es doctor arquitecto, Master en Historia y Teoría, y profesor de Proyectos Arquitectónicos en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), así como profesor invitado en numerosas universidades españolas e internacionales. Director de GARCIAGERMAN ARQUITECTOS, su obra ha obtenido, entre otros reconocimientos, Premio COAM, Premio FAD, Premio de la XIV Bienal Española de Arquitectura y Urbanismo o Shortlist del Premio Mies van der Rohe. Es autor de varios libros y de textos de investigación publicados en medios especializados, habiendo sido director de Arquitectura, revista oficial del Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM). Posee una trayectoria paralela como comisario de arquitectura y ha formado parte del Comité Científico del Pabellón Español de la XV Bienal de Arquitectura de Venecia 2016 que obtuvo el León de Oro.