Easonenses Stratifications

Looking into current problems of Añorga, 3 spatial realities are considered: the creased, the scraped and the fragmented, that are merged into a tower integrated in its stratified environment. This artefact is considered as a reference, an identity of the place, framework of relationships, conflicts and essences of those easonenses stratifications.

A main premise is assumed: recovering the identity essence deteriorated by the progressive loss of industrial roots in the Donostian area, and outlining the programmatic condition by the creation of a referential centre for cement research. This study is carried out by an analytical reading of the interlacing of organic and inorganic strata around Añorga, according to the guidelines for its implementation and categorization on the context. To apply the theoretical inheritance of the phenomenological strata of Colin Rowe and the Smithson, the environmental samples collecting at the surroundings are grouped into five stratum categories: connection, pause, protection, fiction and finally, possibility, as a common link of all of them. Understanding the environment spatial arrangement as an entanglement and not a stacking, the activation element is introduced in a cross direction by materializing the layout of the artificial piece in a tower conceived not as a succession of strata but as an architectural artefact of reaction with the context, to break it through and go inside the own element. The material-conceptual intersection between nature and artifice will activate three reaction mechanisms configuring the spatial scopes of the creased, the scraped and the fragmented as an answer to the management and continuous dialogue of the element with its stratified context. The tower is partially embedded in the footprint burned on the ground, inducing different relationships between these three mechanisms and their influence on the surrounding environment. A spatial introspection is carried out through these three discordant complexities as a result of three opposite structural systems, but built under the same conceptual, material and atmospheric guidelines. In three words: stratification, kneecap and identity; the tower is materialized as a principle of activation of the interrelation between nature and artifice, past and present, industry and identity, architectural theory opposed to its action.