LÓNG WÁNG ATLAS

Posted by Izaskun Chinchilla;

​

A project done by Carlos Gamarra, challenges the modern notions of site looking at programs that intentionally disconnects from external weather but introduce plenty of cultural symbols and natural resources to rebuild a delocated sense of place.

Carlos Gamarra has just won a Magna Cum Laude presenting this brave thesis project, which reflectively disobeys Modern dictates and Spanish academic stereotypes. It has been a great pleasure for Izaskun to be his tutor at San Pablo Ceu University, in Spain.

​

The project settles at Cobo Calleja, one of the biggest Chinese industrial area in Europe almost fully dedicated to cheap products storage and distribution. Carlos is convinced that the Chinese community would opt for other dreams, different from those common in our schools of architecture. In order to build that local jet international dream, he investigates programs such as the casino, in which there is a carefully planned disconnection from the site and the passage of time. But then he produces a relocation of the imaginary and the symbols through the use of figurative, narrative, significant elements for the inhabitant. Also he takes all the water from the roof of all this extensive industrial area to build a lake and other landscape elements that reintroduce a tame notion of time. The project address, therefore, a definition of time, site and leisure that does not pretend to be wild or natural...but carefully curated to meet the cultural expectations of a whole community.

​

Carlos has forced Izaskun to read and think, to revisit Marc Auge, Agustin Berque and Anthony Ginddens.

It is a rigorous project, exuberant, full of imagination, courageous, conscious and a point hooligan ... many of the best values ​​that a young architect can bring to our profession.