Bosque de Acero | Belen Moneo Feduchi

This enclosed pavilion and surrounding park is situated on a 35-acre site bordered by the Júcar and Moscas Rivers and the historic Spanish city of Cuenca.  The park project rehabilitates the abandoned natural landscape with the construction of performance spaces, a skating rink, a bar and restaurant in a cluster of historic buildings and a grand pavilion to be used for events and exhibitions, and during the city’s weekly markets and annual fair.

The pavilion, the primary architectural gesture of the project, is placed across the street from the historic city and is meant to act as a filter between the city and the park, diffusing the urban periphery into the natural landscape and acting as a theater for the activities of the park.  Composed of 23 pentagonal modules that together form a structural network, this steel and glass pavilion addresses the relationship between the natural beauty of the landscape and the adjacent urban fabric.

The geometrical form of these modules was born of a search for an equilibrium between the repetition of a unit element and a composition of a whole, which in the end creates a modular structure in which the module is no longer distinguishable. The resulting space appears forest-like from the interior but crystalline from the exterior.  It is a building seemingly composed of fragments, but which creates an open, unified and continuous space.