Guallart Architects

APARTMENTS IN CAMBRILS

Cambrils,Tarragona.Spain 2002-2006

Under pressure from the expansion of the urban across the territory, besieged on all sides by architecture and the real-estate business or by the banal, decontextualized condition of theme-park tourist resorts, the traditional locations for the architecture of tourism are losing their ephemeral, light and ludic quality.

This project, however, seeks to recover the festive character of the leisure spaces of the coast by invoking their own nature, history, landscape and culture without having to resort to external arguments.

The immediate seafront is a scarce resource, of great economic and landscape value. It offers an opportunity to propose once again an architecture for tourism in which the fundamental argument is the use and enjoyment of the water, in interaction with a unique landscape.

The first key strategy was to create a new interaction between the interior and exterior of the building that involves dissolving the boundary of the interior with the terrace, literally extending the interior spaces outward and thus attaching more value to the house.

Various proposals have been developed to achieve this:
- the expansion of the bedrooms onto the terraces by way of expanses of glazing and curtains
- the extension of the living and dining areas onto the terrace
- the continuation of the bathrooms onto the terrace to allow open-air showering
- the articulation of the kitchen-to-terrace connection by means of a bar.

The second strategy was to locate the wet elements (such as kitchen and bathroom, usually concealed in urban dwellings) on the façade, facing the sea, so as to make these places where water is an essential presence ludic spaces in direct visual connection with the sea.

Finally, the façade of the building, constructed as a sequence of dynamic lightweight skins, is transformed by sunlight and the colour of the natural surroundings (dawn, the sea, the gardens, sunset, the mountains and the Camp de Tarragona landscape) — a fundamental argument in the building’s relationship with the landscape in which it is set.

Credits:

Project date:2002
End of construction:2006
Client: Inmondial S.L. & Pellicer y Fills S.A.
Site: Cambrils, Tarragona
Architecture: Guallart Architects
Main architects: Vicente Guallart, Maria Díaz
Collaborators: Barbara Oelbrant, Pilar Basque, Cristina Dorado
3D images: Daniel Ibáñez, Rodrigo Rubio
Photography: Laura Cantarella, Luis Ros, Nuria Diaz
Models: Christine Bleicher, Salvador Gil

Consultants:

Structure: BIS Arquitectes
Engineering: Ingeniería ambiental
Technical architect: Estudi alegret, SL

Construction:

Crystallographic advisor: Cricursa
Painter: Salvador Sarrió
Tinted glass: CRICURSA, Alex Sesplugues
Aluminum: Aluminios DUCA
Wood: José Díaz
Carpentry: CARRE
Installations: Instal.lacions VINYOLS, Jordi Pedret
Interior divisions: ESTRUDEC
Acclimatization: AMBIT
Metal: MASDEU
Garden: De la Rosa
Awning: TOLDYSOL
Construction: Bertomeu Iglesias, S.L.