PUERTA DE LA CORIA & PLAZA MORITOS, TRUJILLO
1st Prize Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition 2018
ALZADA RESUCITA
TAL OTRA VEZ LA CASA;
LOS TIEMPOS SON IDÉNTICOS,
DISTINTAS LAS MIRADAS.
Luis Cernuda, La realidad y el deseo
1st Prize Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition 2018
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Thinking on a project is unavoidably an exercise of remembrance in which those architectures we love most come to our mind, fragments of an analogous memory, always personal, we have built with passion and perseverance. In a project composed by fragments from many others, those architectures we remember come to life once again, taking now a shape in which memories of different times brought to a single one can be recognised under a renewed light. Architecture thus becomes an homage to herself, an homage to all the architectures one cherishes.
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Making such an exercise in a place like Trujillo, where those echoes of architectures thought from the fragments of many others can be recognised, is a tribute to the city itself. To its architectures that bring souvenirs of others, but also to the more characteristic and personal touches of the local tradition. A tribute to everything this city has of particular and universal at the same time, to what it shows by itself and also by reflection, a persistent memory that the most important thing are not individual displays but the succession of collective achievements through time.
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Thus, this proposal for the area of Puerta de la Coria and Plaza Moritos evokes fragments of architectures we love most. A choice always personal but closely tied to the local tradition, to its memory. Instead of pursuing the vanity of differentiation, a will to integrate is here imposed; instead of originality, the serenity of known models; instead of fashion, the desire of prevailing. That is, the desire of building something that appears to have always been there.
This is precisely the wish of this competition entry: continuing with the inherited tradition, such a daunting task in a world willing to kill its memory and force to exile all those who try to give this memory new life. However, continuing, enduring, extending this memory today is the only way to find something that is always unavoidably new and the same.
