Channeling Flows

This channels essential flows such as water, people and road traffic, boosting resources and forgotten elements, favoring the proper functioning of the ancient city of Cuenca.

The scope of this intervention includes the surroundings of the historic center, focusing mainly on the creation of some thermal baths, being the cornerstone of the project. This responds to what happened in a territorial analysis linked to rivers and their deep connection with the elements of the structure of the Cuenca territory. The building is located next to the city wall, on an empty plot, which spills over into the mouth of the Júcar river, mesmerized by its natural course of long lethargy. The water, whose spring is located in the vicinity of the city, supplies the needs of the building by flowing through an old medieval AQUEDUCT excavated in the vertical rock, which supplied drinking water to the city since the 16th century, nowadays in disuse. The channeled water flows again, revitalizing the aqueduct and its adjacent paths, once traveled by poets on the edge of precipices carved by time. This project is also time, rethinking and deepening, thus project strategies emerged such as composition through the void and 'locus involvo', a process by which the building is wrapped with the same material that is excavated, the rock (called Tormo). The most necessary ingredient for life, water, was just around the corner, rehabilitating the 16th century aqueduct that supported the medieval population and supplied the thermal baths with mineral-rich water from a spring 9 km from the city. The material that is everything, the light carefully enters the spaces, according to what you want to transmit in each room. The entire project is a balance of light, space and matter. That this was palpable in the graphics and in the presentation of the project was an important reason for me. Bringing the same rock, the same water to the project room, so that the atmosphere was faithful to reality.