URRACAS TOWER 2.0
A WOODEN PALLET TOWER AS A TWIN OF THE ORIGINAL MEDIEVAL ONE IN COVARRUBIAS
Placed at Doña Sancha´s square, in Covarrubias, as part of a workshop for the International Festival of Art and Construction - IFAC 2013- a tower of 5 meters high was created with the same scaled proportions as the S. XI Doña Urraca´s Tower, eclipsing the view of the original or transformed into its twin.
As part of the International Festival of Art and Construction (IFAC2013) celebrated in this Spanish villa, a construction workshop building with wooden pallets was proposed. Several buildings were made during the 10 days of the festival, the most important being the creation of a tower at 1/5 of the tower of Doña Urraca, located in the Plaza de Doña Sancha, facing the real tower, creating a formalizing a visual landmark. The tower is complete with an inner porch and a perimeter pavement with a bank, creating their own environment. The projected gaps responded to the various views that are intended to capture the square.
Covarrubias is a medieval town in the Spanish Castillana province of Burgos (Spain), known among other things for its popular architecture made of wood and adobe. It is this precice wooden latticework that generated the idea of using pallets to build the tower structure.
To do this he enlisted the help of a group of architecture students from around the world participating in the festival, which provided ideas and contributed to the actual execution of the same style, with only the help of table pallets themselves and screws steel, without use of any auxiliary element, allowing that the pallet was used as the single element and enclosure structure. First, the support raft was built. This is a slab of 20 European pallet, stick together with wooden boards, so that they create a made integral base on which the tower can be fixed.
Then a first ring of pallets, bolted to the base and each other is created. They are American pallets of 1m x 1m, with three interior runners and seven boards on one side and five on the other. To place the next ring, tables 1 meter long are introdeced (the same ones that are manufactured pallets) screwed to the runners, in a way that a half meter protrudes upward, a way of waiting to receive the next ring of pallets, and reserving the gaps that stay open free for doors or windows. In the corners the pallets were fastened together with screws longer than the outer united runners.
With this system and the support of an unstable scaffolding module five rings that form the perimeter of the tower were built. For the cover two pallets were assembled with the same system as the walls, using a table of a meter that connects them, creating a 2 meter plate light that could be supported directly on the walls. Another plate was attached to the previous one, creating the top closure. In this way a stable structure tubular was created. The interior porch was attached to one of the walls to give more stability to the assembly, overhanging one end to create an outdoor balcony. An inside screen was reinforced to be scalable, allowing children to colonize inside without the danger.
The new tower, depending on your point of view, became a twin tower of the original one, or eclipses it completely from another perspective.
Finally three bulbs were introduced into the interior, to illuminate it at night, so as to act like a giant wicker lantern perched in the center of the square, projecting lights and shadows.
Co-designers: EFIMERARQ. Pallet Project.
Javier Sánchez- Javier Arias- Pedro Sánchez- Javier Blanco- Luis Pastor
