Avanzada

This temporary exhibition pavilion was built as part of EASA, European Architecture Students Assembly, in Cadiz, Spain, during a two week period in 2011 by a team of 29 students.

The concept was inspired by the maritime history of Cadiz, and in particular the Galleon sailing vessel. Most people enjoying a stroll through Cadiz harbour would not be aware of the historical significance of the area: that it was used as a launching pad for the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, and that the type of ship needed for the task was built on the very ground they are walking on.

The team saw the opportunity to highlight the history of the site, and created a temporary exhibition pavilion whose design was partly inspired by the material palette of the Galleon. Rope — always a material relegated to servant duties — is allowed to relax and becomes a skin, expanding and contracting to reveal the artwork inside. The impressive carpentry of a Galleon hull is realised in the pavilion through the use of exaggerated timber structural member sizes, along with fully revealed joinery. The inversion of apparent mass between rope and wood offers a welcome change to normative realisations of boat-inspired architectural concepts.

The pavilion hosted exhibitions by young artists who displayed their work in turn during the course of its lifetime, with the artwork responding to the maritime theme to create a strong conceptual relationship between container and contained.

The morphology of the project is based on a folded and stretched container — a reference to the activities of the modern shipyard. Key axes and lines of sight determine the angles of the arms of the pavilion, along with the use of shade as a device to make the public places around it more enjoyable.