João Álvaro Rocha, Arquitectos, S.A.

Ecija - Square "El Salón"
Ecija, Spain
2005

What frequently makes cities even more fascinating is the fact that they are always the result of different times of construction – in successive overlays or in a heterogeneous continuity.
The square has always been, to the city, the place of affirmation of the moments that made, or still make, its history – and there is no technology or globalization that can change this way of being, while people remain needing a place for meeting in which they can express their communal sense.

We wanted all the action to be based in that city which is permanently in change so that the project were to be the result of the natural incorporation of fragments from different origins, distinct times, in a tight and indivisible whole.

The parking, although violent in its insertion, should be kept. We took out a part of the first underground floor which becomes a small museum – a Domus, to where the roman booty that had been removed will return.
We dug up part of the ruins so that they would become visible and we intended to connect them to the museum, in order to establish a sequence, a walking route. In the surface, in a somewhat more conservative approach, we decided to include everything that is “usual” in a square: the shade, which results from a light structure that also contains the lighting; the movement of the water; a symbolic tree, because the ancient city didn’t have any trees; a few seats that rise from the pavement without stop being part of it; and, finally, a viewpoint, to see and be seen, an allusion to the andaluzian tradition.