Urbanisation of the village of Ullastret

Today, the Empordà is made up of small autonomous villages, which preserve the traces of their past, dedicated to agriculture and tourism. Ullastret is a village with a medieval walled enclosure which is almost intact, as well as many Gothic and Renaissance buildings, constituting an area of great historical interest and listed as a National Monument.

The commission consisted of the development of the village, considering the need to define the infrastructure as a means of avoiding the damage caused by neglect and the nascent tourist picturesqueness of the place.

Ullastret, like so many other mediaeval towns, is characterised by the juxtaposition of disconnected elements resulting from different actions and logics.

The development project sought to follow this characteristic fragmentation of the medieval city, trying to emphasise the uniqueness of each element. This led to the use of different material forms, which were considered suited to the place and the specific problem, without wanting to follow a presupposed ideal order juxtaposed to the world of things.

The project is also strict with the engineering logic that public works entail, in which the slopes, water collection and construction are seen as a deep structure that unifies the variety of finishes, distancing us from the scenographic picturesqueness of so many interventions on old constructions.

In short, the project explored the possibility of the coexistence of a systematic, ordering, abstract will with sensitive attention to each of the concrete forms and places with which reality is constituted.