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ARKxSITE announces winners for Site Cultural Center competition in Portugal

Portugal Architecture News - Jun 05, 2018 - 08:46   22661 views

ARKxSITE announces winners for Site Cultural Center competition in Portugal

ARKxSITE Architecture Competitions has announced winners for the Site Cultural Center in Moura, Beja, Portugal. The jury of the competition selected 3 winners from Vietnam, Australia and Slovenia, with 7 Honorable Mentions from Poland, Germany, Spain, China, Taiwan, USA and France.

This international one-stage architecture ideas competition invited all architecture students, young architects and young professionals with a degree in architecturestudies (≤ 40 years old) to develop and submit compelling ideas for the design of a Site Cultural Center located near the remarkable remains of the medievalwatchtower Atalaia Magra near Moura, Beja, Portugal.

The Atalaia Magra remains are a landmark of great cultural heritage and historicalsignificance with characteristics that must be fully preserved.

When generating a vision for an intervention located within such a spectacular place,it is essential that each design proposal emphasises, respects and celebrates the siteand existing ruins, while providing visitors with a unique experience.

The Site Cultural Center aimed to create a new destination point where diverse activities for the local community and visitors take place; a shaded space withinwhich to sit and engage with the landscape while visiting the remarkable Atalaia Magra remains. The overall design should have been sensitive to the historical remains andenhance the singularity of an experience within this unique setting. There are no limitations in height and excavation.

The jury members composed of Pablo Perez Palacios + Alfonso de la Concha Rojas from Mexico, Aljoša Dekleva from Slovenia, NUA arquitecturesfrom Spain.

See the 3 winners with jury remarks below:

ARKxSITE announces winners for Site Cultural Center competition in Portugal

1st prize: Ba Trung Ngo from Vietnam

Jury’s remarks:

"In service of the Atalaia Magra above-ground visitors’ experience The Gap humbly shows the evidence of itself in an almost impossible thickness of a basic roof element, playing with the horizontality of the view. Does the neatly organised underground really need the view? Or should it only focus to the heavy foot of Atalaia Magra."

"The intervention emphasizes the tower and its natural context. By burying most of the program achieves to disappear and at the same time be present in a subtle and integrated construction, which helps the visitor to understand the site.The best asset and feature this project has is that it doesn’t try to envolve the tower with a solid volume or limit, but instead it integrates it within an empty space in the form of a small plaza and encloses this new public space with the subtile pavillion. The arrangement of the plan is very well achieved. Congratulations!"

ARKxSITE announces winners for Site Cultural Center competition in Portugal

2nd prize: Daniel Pettett from Australia

Jury’s remarks:

"Boldly marking the position of the ruins in the landscape the new Cultural Centre presents the Atalaia Magra’s contemporary horizontal counterpart. Without unnecessary physical contact, the new and the old become one united architectural entity. Carefully conceptualised route masters visitor’s experience entering across the landscape through the immersive ramp and linear sequence of spaces to the framed view at the end of the building, which meets the landscape there again.The intervention allows the visitors to approach the tower and its surroundings in different ways. With a simple gesture it organises the centre in a perpendicular volume which contrasts and dialogue with the tower."

"The concept and intention of this project is very strong and well achieved by it’s representation and plan. It is a strong gesture that the tower interrupts the new volume and the path passes throuh it, and again, no volume or construction interrupts the view nor the relationship of the tower with it’s surroundings. Congratulations!"

ARKxSITE announces winners for Site Cultural Center competition in Portugal

3rd prize: Miha Rijavec from Slovenia

Jury’s remarks:

"In safe distance to Atalaia Magra the ring of the Cultural Centre seeks context intopography and nature of the site’s landscape. While seeking shadow the visitor willplay the game of being inside or outside of the perimeter wall, while observing andconsidering the approach to the tower’s remains."

"The intervention gives value to the tower and the landscape by respecting both indifferent ways. The constructed path achieves, with the minimum impact, a diversity of spaces and points of view around the tower. The asset on this project is the enclosed space in the middle that forms a public openspace. On the other hand, I don’t think the relationship of the tower with the landscapeshould be interrupted or drastically changed with a new object all around it. Congratulations!"

Honorable mentions included:

Dominika Kubicka, Marta Opalinska (Poland)

Willi Wagner (Germany)

Alejandro Guinea Rico, Cristina González Zafra (Spain)

Xuan Wang, Tianze Yu, Zhengxiao Wang (China)

Yu-Wei Liu (Taiwan)

Suzannah Grasel (USA)

Lucie Michel, Adriana Blanco Marote, Paul-Adrien De Vreese (France)

World Architecture Community is Media Partner for the competition. See Honorable Mentions in the competition's website

All images courtesy of ARKxSITE

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