Port of Santander – ISAF Sailing Facilities

Architecture Award COACAN 2014

Location: Santander, Spain

Client:  RFEV (Royal Spanish Sailing Federation)
Date: 2014 Completion
Total Area: 2,500m²
Budget: €4.5 million

Team credits:

AZPML: Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Robert Berenguer, Ravi Lopes-Calamita, Cristina Castellvi, Carles Figueres, Ramón Subirá

Contractor: ASCAN

Construction Management: Riancho y Herrero, FUORMA3, Ana Gutiérrez Zurdo

Engineering: OVE ARUP and Partners

Quantity surveyor: Punto Arquitectura

The project for the storage facilities of the High Performance National Sailing Centre, located in Santander, consists in consolidating the existing obsolete storage buildings for a single container over which we have planned a public rooftop. The project presents the problem of integrating in a limited space two activities that must be physically segregated, – i.e. private of use of the CEAR and public use of the canopy – while simultaneously creating a whole whose parts harmoniously coexist. Our proposal is to extend the public space above ground level, ensuring both storage and public space functions can be combined through an unconventional approach to public space design.

Conscious of the privileged setting where the project is sited, and for the choice of Cantabria as the location for the new headquarters, this project is an opportunity to bring both city and citizens closer to the harbor through a design that integrates an elevated rooftop viewpoint; a design in line with the public space masterplan; general wide and clear views to harbor and the bay of Biscay.

The elevated viewpoint in relation to the dock’s height may be read as an intensification of the public space, which in Santander is very much determined by the local terrain. With this we reappraise one of the main features of Santander’s urban fabric: topography.