Ulysses Began his Odyssey

Team Point of View

In the Homeric poems, Ithaca is the homeland of Ulysses, whose homecoming is the central theme of the Odyssey. From a general point of view, the project proposes a romantic drift that seeks to restore the vitality of yesteryear to the Txonta neighbourhood, incorporating a new life to the abandoned industrial development through residential development and the reorganization of the mount.
The project attacks the need to operate in the urban environment with the respect that the heritage value of the AIBE industrial building deserves, while vindicating its urban image, the public space, the habitability programmatic solution and the circulatory relations between the neighbourhood of Txonta and the natural orography of the city of Eibar.
Activate through reusing and reinterpreting the “ruin”.

Jury Point of View

The project introduces an impressively simple and self-evident orchestration of object, site and territory. Promoting the relational triangle of “the hill, the architecture and the plaza” demonstrates a multi-scalar concern which is acted out in a subtle but highly precise way. The proposed transformations and interventions are based on a comprehensive understanding of the area’s urban structure whose vertical complexity follows the longitudinal flow of the topography. The project gives these geographical peculiarities a promising second life merging the scales of territory, place, and object. Inasmuch as its thoughtful handling of resources repairs the fabric and the territory through the repair of the object, the project acts as well as a second life-prototype for the future transformation of Eibar.