Aleph

Lanzarote is one of the islands that belong to the Canary Archipelago. Today it is torn between a duality: the inevitable tourist transformation and the preservation of a natural past. This situation makes up the local reality; a delicate contrast between South and North. In the middle of this struggle between the tourist and the native, the capital city of Arrecife appears. The city has experienced a loss of identity that has affected its development. It has grown in the same direction as an oil spill, expanding aimlessly. This involution has led to a forgotten past and an uncertain future.

The building responds to the needs of the city and, at the same time, is in line with the identity of the island. These guidelines are the main idea of the project, so that the architecture responds to a scale in terms of its programme, but becomes a symbol on a larger scale. These conditioning factors are linked to the site, materialising in the proposal. How to give history to a place that has lost it? This is the argument of the intervention. It is necessary to determine the relationship between the city and this object, as the aim is to fill Arrecife with all this imaginary. As such, it must become part of the city, integrating into the urban fabric. Likewise, the building reconnects the sea with the city, generating an identity of its own. The hierarchical relationship between city and building is dissolved. The profile of the building is unified with the site, as a construction that seeks out the rocky nature of the island. There are no barriers preventing users from leaving the built environment. The continuity between place and construction is achieved through an exercise in interpretation, abandoning the organic dimension and synthesising what the material represents. The rock is not imitated, but its concept is transformed, reinventing it without losing its essence. The limits of the building and the terrain are completely broken. The building interprets, it does not imitate, it uses the autochthonous as an archetype to create an abstraction. It deconstructs the essence of the island and reconstructs it in the object: a cultural, fantastic, introspective and rocky entity. A fleeting moment, a drawing in the air trapped by the heavy matter that composes it. It represents the culture and the static nature of an island living in a fluid time.