Transitions
2695-SNK-PT-2020
Architects: Studio NK, Oskar Gamböck
Client: ArkXsite
Status: Competition (2020)
Location: Sagres, Portugal
Coordinates: 37.044674, -8.875570
Climate: Mediterranean, Temperate
Material: Concrete
Environment: Seaside
Visualizer: Studio
Scale: 250 ㎡ Small
Types: Intervention, Landscape

The competition offers the opportunity to pay particular attention to the site, the Zavial Battery and its ruins in the Algarve in Portugal, and to sensitively experience it.

The design establishes a new balance between past, present, and future; preserving its history without competing with the existing.

The two punctual interventions each sit in and above the existing ruins, formulating a field of tension between architecture and sculpture.

Through this multiple coding, the visitor of the Zavial Battery is free to approach and experience the site independently.

The project’s identity unfolds through its antithetical attitude towards the site: closed off by its elementary appearance, which is evoked through the reduced construction of only a column and a roof, as well as made of solid concrete; and at the same time open by the absence of limiting walls.

The roofs reach down into the contours of the underlying ruins, visually connecting them and establishing a relation between past and present.

This approach helps to mark and preserve the remains of the ruins and to redefine the boundaries of the former fortifications.

The two columns and roofs do not only serve as spatial boundaries of the ruins. With the help of the brass plaque embedded in the support of the Information Space, information about the site and its history is provided. A staircase to the viewing platform in the support of the Mirador allows interaction and personal confrontation with the existing site and opens up a different perspective.

The proposal is intended to mark, protect, describe, make the place and its history tangible It should be both limited and open, stable and soft, so that the place can develop and reveal its own identity.

Competition: Site Mirador | Team: Erin Nies, Dominik Keul, Oskar Gamböck | Post date: 06/10/2020 | Views: 3.398