BRIDGE BETWEEN SANTA CRUZ AND LA MARINA

Final Master’s Thesis - ETSAM Tutor_Guillermo Sevillano

February 2022 - January 2023

Site Analysis

A global city, where you can enjoy a wide cultural variety, impressive natural landscapes, green areas and a warm climate. A city that receives more than 500 cruise ships a year and in the last few seasons has had more than one million cruise passengers. A city on an island and like any island, the sea has marked its history, its tradition, conditioning to a large extent its functioning; however, being the sea such a protagonist element, it seems to have been forgotten by the way in which the city has been developing over the last 70 years. A city that has been marked by industrial use.

Nowadays, the entire coastline is inhabited by port and industrial areas, most of which are almost unused. This problem has led to the city’s distance from the sea. The city has focused more on what is happening inside than outside.

Analysing the structure of the city in more depth, it can be said that 3 strata can be clearly differentiated: the city, the promenade and the port. Each stratum is situated at a different level, which makes it even more difficult to join them together.

This is why the project aims to create a link that takes up the link that existed at the beginning of the last century, bringing the sea closer to the city and vice versa, establishing a connecting element that unites both worlds, the land and the sea. It aims to provide both the inhabitants of Santa Cruz and tourists arriving by ferry with direct access from one area to the other.

We are approaching the marina of Puerto de Santa Cruz, where the opportunity to connect it to one of the most singular points of the city, the Plaza de España, is being contemplated.

This project forms part of a series of public spaces such as the García Sanabria Park, the Plaza de la Candelaria and the Plaza de España. However, this is the only one close to the sea, and where city and port are integrated, so it will become a new focal point of the city, a new leisure and sports centre, which will attract both the inhabitants of Santa Cruz and tourists.

In order to generate a more sustainable life and make changes, not only in the architectural models, but also in the social ones, the urbanistic gesture of connecting and extending the city towards the sea is proposed, avoiding the obstacles that appear from the breakwater of the port to the Plaza de España.