Los viajes del agua (I)

- Recreational infrastructure for rainwater collection, treatment and visibility -

The Añorga quarry in San Sebastian is located within a territory where water and hydraulic infrastructures have played a determining role in the definition of the site.
However, these architectures are often invisible and remain alien to the pulse of people and the physical context. Valuing as an opportunity the high rainfall in the quarry as well as its topographical condition - a large impermeable surface where the water flows -, a large recreational infrastructure is proposed.

It collects, treats and uses this rainwater understanding the potential that the infrastructures and the water itself have as the germ of programmes and spaces.
The intervention reactivates the quarry with water as the protagonists, where with its different qualities, qualities and speeds, it runs through permeable and hydrophilic architectures that make it visible together with its processes.

1. Strategy

1. Rainwater collection

A system of irrigation ditches and filtering soil that collects rainwater in a first level of intervention, related to the treatment of the land.

A treatment circuit for this rainwater, where each of the parts is made spatially explicit and where the elements are transparent to the water and its movement.

2. Rainwater collection

3. The pools

Swimming pools located in the base of the intervention, where the water is contained in a cave-like space made up of vaults and concrete vessels.

4. The natural pools

A number of wells and natural pools that colonize the quarry hollow creating a new hydraulic landscape.

2. Plans

Egyptian view

Cross sections

Longitudinal section