Les Hortes de Vilabertran
“Les Hortes de Vilabertran”, an old rural landscape space from five minutes to the Figueres downtown, were condemned to disappear.
It was abandoned, despite its agricultural use layout were preserved: the country house of Mas Torrent, the stone walls that delimit the plots and paths, the water main, the mines, the irrigation channels, the water wells, pools and water cisterns, the water drainage, the windstopper screen of cypresses, the fruit trees, walnuts, fig, cherry trees, the shadow trees, planet trees, ashes, elms... An special atmosphere indeed.
We proposed to adapt the housing development to the existing so that we could catch, with the available surface of green spaces, the more significant existing layouts.
And with it, the atmosphere of the site it does.
It was not worth creating an urban park. The park already existed.
So, two realities are confronted: the existing rural atmosphere and the new urban use. Two realities that can survive and be valued together, leaned on its differences and contrasts.
From this point, the project proposes realizing the minimum necessary to adapt the site to the new use: containment walls to support the elevated streets, paths and footbridges to go all over the wet zones, leaving places...
The new layer superimposed had to be unitary to not replace the existing. The use of only a one family of shapes and materials, permitted to achieve this unity: metallic sheath piles particularly adapted to the land of sand and slimes, and makes up the whole elements: horizontally layed, they build up paths, elevated footbridges, benches and channels; vertically sticked, containment walls and lampposts; and folded up, fountains and deck chairs.
A unique gesture serves to identify what is new but overall to stand out what existed.
