Volcani-City

“We’re only tourists in this life,
only tourists but the view is nice.”
(David Byrne, Everybody’s coming to my house, 2018)

WHAT IS A PLAZA TODAY?
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are the public space of the 21st century. Places where the ‘private’ experience becomes public domain. Tourism, above all, still represents the private activity par excellence. For this reason, we propose a plaza in which Arrecife, despite its instagrammatic beauty, will not be just a passive background in the visitors and residents experience, but rather an active force in their daily life.

OVERTOURISM vs. RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
Tourism in Lanzarote is like its ancient volcanic activity: just as incessant eruptions forged the territory for millions of years, allowing the island to create its habitat, similarly nowadays tourism is violently re-shaping this place. In both cases, the perfect combination of construction and destruction is essential for the survival of the island. Tourism obviously has socioeconomic and environmental benefits, by creating new jobs, generating extra tax revenues, promoting preservation of local traditions and natural resources, as well as creating cultural exchanges between residents and visitors. However, the striking disparity between tourists and population growth can be critical.
In this scenario, thus, is it possible to improve life quality in Lanzarote by integrating the local community and visitors without stressing the environment and its resources? The idea of simply boosting the tourism is not sustainable. At the same time, lowering the number of visitors would be a contradiction in a globalised world.
Mass tourism needs to be rather shaped by clever strategies and not just disrupted. A more sustainable approach interwoven with conscious programmatic architecture will create new synergies between tourists and the existing habitat, maintaining the island’s identity intact.
So, how can we mitigate the erosive charge of an ever-rising number of visitors, transforming today’s Instagram Tourism in a more responsible and sustainable phenomenon?

CONCEPT
Few places in the world were able to keep the uniqueness of their natural context like Lanzarote. Its untouched volcanic landscape together with the clear sea are the true essence of this island. For this reason, our proposal aims to reiterate these traits within the urban enclosure, where artificial elements inevitably erased any natural sign. We profoundly believe that, rather than transforming Lanzarote in a mere touristic utopia, architecture should contribute towards a right BALANCE within the threshold between uncontrolled human interventions and inhospitable wild environments. To achieve this harmony, we consider the built environment as its natural equivalent: if vegetation can resist in this lunar landscape, life is still possible within the saturated and speculative urban context of Arrecife. In this way, the artificial becomes natural while the city becomes landscape and vice versa. Thus, we think the built like a volcanic block, where the existing urban voids are potential ‘craters’ in which different activities can happen. Plaza El Almacén is therefore just one of these volcanoes, namely part of a greater system of squares which can regenerate the city of Arrecife—or, as we call it: VOLCANI-CITY—as well as the whole island, by means of a new program where art, culture, leisure and nature merge. But how can we bring life in this dormant plaza?
We do think that the answer lies in the Lanzarote’s most successful geotechnical invention: essentially, in a land with just 14cm a year on average, mixing ground, water and picón (ash or tephra) allowed a very rich horticulture in a very dry soil. Therefore, following this winning recipe we literally reproduce those natural elements together with the new program for Plaza El Almacén. This striking mix will form the ‘primordial soup’ that will give new vitality to Lanzarote.
From craters, life origins.