Vigo, Spain | 2016 | Speculative
The revitalisation of a historic fish market, once on the waterfront and now marooned between a busy highway and row of semi-derelict historic buildings. A new direct route links the existing waterfront of the old city and stepped walkways above, down into the new Plaza de O Berbes, creating a new network of connected public space while linking the city with its old historic waterfront arcade.
The existing square is defined only on two sides, energy and life dissipates from the remaining two exposed sides leaving a lifeless, exposed space. A new continuous inhabited wall is proposed which would define and enclose the new space, and act as a barrier to the highway to protect the space from noise and pollution.
This inhabited wall would comprise a series of units (their frontage mirroring the buildings opposite), which could be used to reintroduce the fish market to the area (now unconnected on a dissociated concrete pontoon away from the city), and as studios and shop fronts when the market is not in use. A combination of permanent function and temporary capacity.
A solid base of local Mondariz granite provides a timelessness and sparkle to the enclosing inhabitable wall; White concrete canopies which use the inverted forms of the roofs of the buildings on the opposite side of the new space and provide variety of form; while a new 18m high tower defines the southern edge of the square, a focal point facing out to the ocean beyond.