© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

In the island of Lanzarote two ways of volcanic landscape transformation converge: the rhythm of the earth and the rhythm of human life. We can talk about coexistence and overlapping of changing processes that belong to different scales: the geological and the urban one. The agriculture has turned people into powerful agents of ‘displacement of material’, as powerful as the wind which they protect themselves from.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

The project takes the idea of accumulation and overlapping of layers in the landscape construction. We take the reference of a geological section from a site adjacent to our sector for the development of the proposal, planning a ‘perforated basement’ and an architecture that has the ability of recognizing the strata in which it is inserted.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

Several elements that structure the territory were found in the area; “low walls” that protect from the wind, sand barriers, cisterns for storing rainwater for irrigation, tanks for homes, etc.. We consider these pre-existing elements valuable for the landscape development. Moving away from a static conception of the idea of natural heritage, we decided to integrate this “infrastructure” to a new system to facilitate the interconnection of cisterns. A new element called “volcanic ditch”, which is a hybrid of the formerly irrigation water lines and the low walls of volcanic stone, is created.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

Densification of edges is a strategy that can be found both in the preparation of the land, and the growth of the houses built by contiguity between boundaries and agricultural zoning. To avoid an excessive fragmentation of the plots by roads, destroying the identity of the blocks of San Bartolomé, we propose the creation of new public services between orchards.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

The strategy for inhabiting the landscape responds to the logic of the traditional buildings of this village, transformed through a process of occupation of several houses inside a bigger one. In this way, we use as a model an existing house in the area which could shelter five different social houses.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.

© Cuac_arquitectura . Pubblicata il 16 Gennaio 2012.