Project Name: Parayso Cerrado. Albayzin’s southwestern hillside restoration.
Location: Albayzin, Granada [Spain]
Author: Ester Lara Moreno
Realization: June 2020
"Parayso cerrado is a project looking for a reconciliation between the local population and the tourist, a collective that has not stopped growing since the Albayzin of Granada was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994, a sector that has reached its climax in 2019, where the first signs of tourismophobia have begun to be shown, condemning the Albayzin, and especially the southwestern hillside, the Albayzin which looks at the city and not at the Alhambra, to oblivion, abandonment and to be a victim of urban speculation, leaving the hillside of the Zenete (as it is known locally) in ruins and practically uninhabited.
With this premise is established a damero of strategies that seeks to Reconnect, Recover and Repopulate, all through a series of urban, social and architectural mechanisms. Acupunctural interventions which are established throughout the neighborhood and that allow its reactivation.
Among these is the strategy "Nuevo Carmen atemporal", a domestic space that is closed to the outside by a wall, but once you cross it there is a dichotomy garden-house, house-garden. A garden composed of two connected courtyards around which the space is hierarchized in degrees of privacy, moving from the most public and outdoor space, to the most intimate and domestic; promoting interaction between users. A courtyard that fulfils a double function, climatic and social. It recovers not only the neighborhood, but also its community and traditions, as well as the craft of the artisan, including in the building workshops on the ground floor where the fajalauza, plasterwork and taracea granadina is worked.
Without losing the character of belonging to the place, it stands as a landmark of the landscape, a domesticity wall, a wall that merges with its Carmen. A closed paradise."
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