L'illa (The island)

The island is a project that transforms into several at once, evolving and varying in scale as it travels the plot with an organic growth, from the degraded urban front to the water of L'Albufera. In this way, the three pieces unfold in length around an axis that breaks on itself to shape the architectural complex, regenerating the decadent through nature.

The motivations that have led to the realization of this project have been linked from the beginning to the idea of integration with nature, leaving the proposal to be born from the channels that surround it; in addition, sustainability has been taken into account, seeking to make architecture a reflection of the need for natural learning with greater environmental awareness, promoting healthy habits and allowing a climate of personal development, both collectively and individually, framed all within the Slow Movement philosophy. The island proposes an architecture that is unleashed by means of a great expressive force through the introspective gaze of oblique and abstract geometry of the earth entrails from which it emerges, a landscape sign that dialogues with its surroundings, without stridency or arrogance, while embracing in its interior a unique historical heritage to which it owes its existence. In the same way, agriculture related to the Albufera Natural Park recovers its historical value lost in recent decades, and it will be a constitutive part of the project idea in itself, because in a place with such cultural and economic roots it must rise again with the splendor that never should have left behind. The gastronomic experimentation center is made up of three independent volumes among them, but connected in turn by pedestrian ways that vary in route and direction to open up a whole range of sensory possibilities to be exploited during its discovery. Furthermore, the three patrimonial elements that are integrated into the project composition are also part of the proposal as a cultural center for the inhabitants of town. The volume most linked to the urban center will house the administrative and civic uses; the second volume, which is sited in the central area of the plot, is devoted to gastronomy. Finally, the third of the volumes, more associated to L'Albufera, will have a tourist use, housing a visitors reception, a public jetty and a natural refuge. In short, the island is a place to discover Valencia's gastronomy during the day that lights up at night as a beam of light before an awakened nature.