BOCAMAR: The Seams of the Water

Team Point of View

This project aims to revitalize an old industrial harbour in order to transform it and to provide a new ecosystem. All the man-made infrastructures are adapted and given back to nature, thus becoming the substrate of a new life.
It fosters the restoration and preservation of natural landscapes, through the restoration of marshes and the recovery of natural areas. This process includes a methodical study of the renaturation of ground surfaces from anthropogenic material to natural soils.
It endeavours to adapt the Nalón estuary to climate change by developing renewable energy production and implementing strategies to mitigate the effects of storms and floods.
It aims to create an example of adaptation of such infrastructures and to root it in the territory, the history, and the memory of locals.

Jury Point of View

This proposal concentrates the intervention in few selected areas and returns to a more natural state most of the water edges. One of the areas of intervention -San Esteban port- includes a new harbour front consolidating all the businesses and activities in a new modular building, liberating the connection of the new and existing marshes with the river and the edge of the port. This building is a continuous permeable structure that can be occupied as needed, given plenty of flexibility to administration and users. It also provides order and visual identity and will be easily recognizable. In the other bank, L’Arena, the proposal of a structure with similar language can solve the main needs, although the “garden-square” may need a different resolution to host the intense use expected.