Bilbao Social Center: The Memory of Water

Bilbao surges from the water. Why? Since its foundation, the water has been the main element making it possible to develop. With the change in citizens social conscience, only the sea and the ports would maintain in the essence of the city scheme. Is the water then the real ally of Bilbao?

Bilbao Social Center is a project whose main purpose is to provide an area which will have a lot of housing in the future and thus life. It will be a place where one can meet for social purposes as well as for leisure and relaxation.For this reason, the general nature of the program will be public.\nFrom a material point of view, Bilbao is composed by two worlds: the horizontal world (heavy architecture),the architecture and everything related with the social, the concrete, and promenade on the side of the river that has become a place of encounter for Bilbao’s citizens; and vertical one (light architecture),of the man and the relation with his progress, associated with the technology, with development. The desired image is that of a strong base that welcomes the linear walk that surrounds the creek, which supports a light, tectonic, imperceptible piece.\nThe proposed site is so special because two of the most important natural elements on the surroundings meet: the river and the mountain. It is intended to interrupt nature as little as possible. As Zumthor says, "Nature is beautiful in itself, good architecture is therefore the one that less interrupts". That is why the tectonic piece will rise like those cranes that created it while chasing a dream, a progress; with the objective of allowing visual permeability from the square. This decision therefore leads one to generate stereotomic vertical projections that provide a visual gesture that will make the project recognizable. These stones evoke limit, sea, rock.\nThe modulation and its variety of sections give the project a perfect harmony. The result is a longitudinal piece that fills the profile, designing a limit that provides a series of situations or moments which change at the mercy of the contextual situation.