Adaptation of the Ancient Roman Deposit of can Tacó
The archaeological Roman site of Can Tacó is settled in “Turó d’en Roina”, facing south and 50 meters above the point where the rivers Congost and Mogent meet, in the birth of the river Besòs and 20 km far from its confluence with the Mediterranean sea.
This place is part of the complex named “els Turons de les Tres Creus”, a natural center that structures the biodiversity in a highly fragmented metropolitan area. This particular situation arises the need to project the refurbishment of both areas of interest: the naturalistic and the archaeological.
Walking through a little wood full of oaks, and at the end of a tranquil and curvy path, we discover the remains of an historical Roman villa, with a clear and strong geometry of its former spaces and with areas of great interest to which value has to be given.
Built by successive terracing and partly made of local licorella stone, what had been an important settlement prior to the construction of the Via Augusta, is today a natural viewpoint to the region of “el Vallès”.
The project intervenes in the backfill of the Roman traces, enhancing the content (the space) and highlighting the container (the walls). The soils that over the time had covered the remains are withdrawn during the archaeological excavation, accumulated apart and used afterwards as one of the main materials. Therefore, these soils, just like the gravels and the rocks of the thought-to-be old Roman quarry, are selected and tidied up with a new disposition, giving them a new lease of life.
A first steel mesh contains the new stones; these subsequently contain soil and gravel, and jointly they will reproduce the successive horizontal planes where the Romans used to transit. A second denser and thinner mesh is arranged like a curtain over a period of time, a backdrop in which the various archaeological remains are projected. Consequently, stone and steel, mountain and industry, live together in these landscapes of accumulation, in a dynamism of contact between fragments. Interpreting the preexisting, enhancing and activating, adding and not erasing, and at the same time co-evolving with the environment trying to optimize resources.
