Professional career freelance employee

Freelance consultant for Schneider Electric for their SpecBuilder software (Spain and Portugal’s versions)

Collaborator in the publication “Room for Polderwater: an exploration of the Dutch polder-boezem landscape and its future”, authored by Prof. Inge Bobbink, alongside Emma Ottevanger, Olivier Hoes and Ken Chen Chen

Finalisation of my employment in eadAT, an engineering offce based in Madrid to pursue a Landscape Architecture Master at TU Delft

Promoted to Director of the Facilities Design for the project of the Spanish pavilion for the 2020 EXPO Dubai’s Kingdom of Spain’s Pavilion

Beginning of my employment as an architect in eadAT, an engineering offce based in

Intership at Cabeza&Sastre, an architecture studio based in Madrid. Actively collaborated in two projects: a large mall in Dantxarinea (Navarre, Spain) and a golf clubhouse in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands, Spain)

Projects

Architecture:

- Academic:

-Children hostel by the Llauset Water Reservoir (Graduation project ETSAM)

- Built:

-IJsselmonde Pavillion for the Architecture Month of Rotterdam Month (Veldacademie/TU Delft)

Landscape architecture:

- Academic:

-All Hallows’ Catholic church and cemetery in El Pozuelo megalithic area

-On the rocks: a breakable heaven (Graduation project TU Delft)

-Built:

-My parent’s house’s garden

-Landscaping for the domes no 8 and no 14 in the Kingsdom of Spain’s pavillion for the 2020 Dubai’s World Expo

Geographical situation

This Children’s hostel is my graduation project from Madrid’s School of Architecture (ETSAM), which made it ellegible for the BEAU (Spanish biennale of Architecture and Urbanism) being one of the 16 fnalists from all over the country. The building is placed in a remote valley in the Spanish Pyrenees, in the Aragonese former county of Ribagorza and close to the Dales of Aran and Boi. This valley is one of the many picturesque locations interconnected by the GR11 route- a mountain hiking route that runs from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea-, and ironically, owes much of its beauty to a rather drastic human inter-

Children hostel by the Llauset Water Reservoir

Llauset Water reservoir, shire of Ribagorza, Huesca, Spain//ETSAM//Graduation project/ mentor: Jose Antonio Ramos Abengozar

Venn’s diagram showing the idea behind the design vention: the construction of a dam . An impressive work of engineering in the 1980s, the dam was terribly costly in money, workforce and even human lives, yet, strangely, it didn’t extend its toll to the environment; once the works where fnished and the valley got half fooded, it became even more beautiful and biologically rich than before. The resulting scenography is superb: a landscape of rock peaks and natural spires and waterfalls that cascade down from glacial la- goons to the greater levee. Furthermore, it also indi- rectly restricted further human alterations; since the dam blocks the only natural entrance, now it can only be acceded through a tunnel drilled in the mountain’s granite rock during the construction. Such a secluded, beautiful, fairytale like realm seemed like the perfect place for children to spend their holidays to me.

The project is addressed from three different felds: frstly, as mentioned, the site. For me, this notion does not encompass only by the scenery and its natural landmarks- but and also vernacular and historic architectur. eIn this case, provided that the building was certainly not going to have a domestic scale, I drew my inspiration from the larger buildings; the beautiful Romanesque churches and the ruined castles. Secondly, the built architecture: given its situation, this hostel would likely resemble a mountain refuge, which, in the last decades, tend to have mineral, geodic-like shapes. And, in the third place, the theorized mountain architecture par excellence: Bruno Taut’s Alpine Architektur. All of these ideas are intertwined by the concepts of “tower”-present both in the historical local architec- ture and in Taut’s work- and crystalline, glass-like sha- pes-which both Taut and the built refuges seem to tend to, and even encouraged by the spirelike, sha rd-like elements that are inherent to the mountain’s identity. A fourth condition superimposes to these three: the user’s cultural conditioning-primarily chil- dren- formed by a fantastic imaginary transmitted in books, movies and uncountable other media. This is refected in the building’s complex, varied-sometimes even windy- interior rooms, creating memorable places such as the ever unpredictable, inter-crossing, inter-connecting staircase and the “secret tour” a series of hidden rooms, passages and stairways, crea- ted so the children fnd the different parts of it room after room; also, the dormitories have been shaped as amphitheatres so they become places of leisure and playing.

Dormitories are defned as an English, The Globe-like theatre of beds, so to foster play and pillow fght. Toilets and showers are concealed in the lower level, under- neath

Stairs are a determinant part of the design and one of the most memorable elements of the building. Their fights are full of unpredictable turns and twists linking different lobbies and corridors that lead to the different rooms. They are designed to become a source of bonding between teachers, caretakers and children, providing them with a sense of fun, unexpected, crossed sights and inviting to hide and seek games.

The maze of passages, hidden playrooms and stairs that form the secret tour are likely the project’s piece de resistance and the author’s favourite feature, a series of thematic rooms including a movie theatre, a ballroom, a common room with bleachers, a room dedicated entirely to the game of twister and another only for board games, a children library, a bowling arcade, one room whose foor is a elastic net and a ball pool, connected to each other by narrow and winding stairs, a panoramic lift and a helter skelter encompassing two stories. These rooms’ entrances are hidden, so that the children can discover them as they spend time in the building.

Geographical situation

IJsselmonde Pavillion for the Architecture Month of Rotterdam Month

Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands//TU-Delft/Veldacademie//group project/mentor: Otto Trienekens and Andrea Fitskie/made with; Thomas Bollen, Pooja Mishra, Yuequi Zhang, Rosalie Granata, Luca Van Loevezijn and Femke Snel

Assambling process of the frame, step 2

Assambling process of the frame, step 3

The 1st year’s fourth quarter for the Architecture and Urbanism students from TU Delft Bouwkunde is designed as an interdisciplinary experience, in which students from any track can enroll in a subject from a different one; in my case, I decided to take a taste of the famed Dutch Urbanism taking the Resilient Rotterdam subject, which was a partnership between TU Delft and the Veldacademie in Rotterdam, under the mentorship of Otto Trienekens and Andrea Fitskie. I was the only student from the Landscape Architecture track; my classmates, Thomas Bollen, Pooja Mishra, Yuequi Zhang, Rosalie Granata, Luca Van Loevezijn and Femke Snel belonged to either the Architecture or the Urbanism ones. The goal of the course was to build a pavilion in the main square of IJsselmonde, an extense windswept plain surrounded by the high and narrow Le Corbusier-esque buildings that plague South Rotterdam for the Rotterdam Architecture month; this constrained the design time to a single month, and to be focused in fast assembling and dissembling of the building; to speed up the process, a small contest was held at the beginning of the course and my classmate Poojah Mishra and I were chosen as the heads of the design. Another design constrain we soon found out was the political weather. The quarter started in May 2022, shortly after the beginning of the war in Ukraine and the rampant increase of the prices of several products and construction materials; this prompted our teacher Otto Trienekens to buy a large amount of plywood before the prices increased even further; moreover it limited us the amount of tools, building materials, etcetera that we could purchase with our assigned budget.

The project consisted of two elements. The frst and main one was a pergola-like structure which was the actual pavilion building; due to the vastness of the square, I insisted repeatedly on making it as big, and, especially, as high as we could possibly make it, so to make a noticeable impact in the enormous square; to achieve this relatively big structure whilst still enabling a fast assembling and dissembling process and at the same time to make it lightweight, we resorted to a series of porticos whose construction de-

Assambling process of the frame, step 4

All Hallows’ Catholic church and cemetery in El Pozuelo megalithic area

El Pozuelo, Riotinto county, Huelva, Spain//ETSAM// own project

Geographical situation

This cemetery located in the Southern Spanish Municipality of El Pozuelo was frst proposed to me as an academic exercise back in 2012 as part of a series of projects to be placed the region around the Río Tinto (Red River), a place renown for its mining history, as it is evidenced by the remarkable amount of megalithic burials. One of them is the Dolmen number 7 in El Pozuelo, which was given as the “starting point” of the project, being one of the best preserved in the area, likely because of being adopted by the successive peoples and cultures. (Pre-indouropean natives, Celts, Romans, Muslims and Christians). From the beginning I sensed the huge potential of this project as a landscape intervention, a sensation that was confrmed once I could see the actual site, but this was dismissed as“gardening” concerns by my professor at the time. However, it haunted me for years and in 2019 I decided to re-take the project. The project revolves around the dolmen-albeit not touching it- and the notion of the many valid backgrounds that conformed its undeniable allure as a sacred, spiritual place. Dolmens, despite its crude looks, were carefully and deftly built to face sunrise in signifcant religious festivities connected with the death, which in turn became the Christian festivity of Hallowmass referred in Spain as All Hallows, (1st November), with families focking to cemeteries to honour the dead and decorating tombs lavishly with fowers. Given the nature of the Spanish climate, it is also usually one of the last warm autumn days.

As a child, I loved holding my grandmother’s hand as we crossed the cemetery gates in All Hallows, a fairy-tale like realm of blazing fowers that seemed to burn in a colour wildfre and serene cypresses – the traditional Spanish cemetery tree-towering against the Castilian sapphire-blue sky. In an attempt to recreate this impression, and also as a tribute to the Celtic religion, which considered confned water bodies as an entrance to the Otherworld, the access to the cemetery is made through crossing an artifcial lake, created by damming an existing streambed, and after that going uphill to reach the church, designed as another “Christian dolmen”, facing All Hallows noon’s sun-the time where religious services are usually held, a place of transition between the dead and the living resting on an esplanade of olive trees, a species of great signifcance in both the Roman and the Catholic religions; after crossing yet another water stream, one fnally plunges into the realm of the death, a slow climb uphill marked by three stops: the monuments of the Gender-Based Violence Victims, of the Deceased Children and the Fallen in the Spanish Civil War, that fnally connects with an existing path that heads up to the dolmen. The tombs, niches, pantheons and columbaria are all designed to have a “crude”, megalithic-like appearance and most of the original monte bajo (bush) vegetation is preserved, incorporating a series of non-indigenous species used in this project that reach their peak performancebe it by their fowers our fall foliage- around the late week of October and the frst of Novem- ber in Southern Spain. Another remarkable spaces are the Miners Remembrance Garden, a maze of yew hedges enclosing vine-covered “halls”, inspired in the nearby mines’ galleries and the Ceremony Island, a small island in the lake with an amphithe-

The trees chosen for this project are largely native species in the Iberian peninsula; the foreign ones, such as Liquidambar or Gynko biloba, have a longstanding tradiion in the Spanish gardening. The bushes follow the

Landscaping plan: shrubs same pattern as the trees, with a number of native spe- cies such as Genista or Cistus blending with foreign species that have proven themselves resistant and acdequate to the Southern Spanish climate, such as Rosa, Hortensia or Bouganvilla.

The two criteria for choosing these species were their resistance to the dry, sometimes almost arid Southern Spanish summer, and their ability to be showy in late October and early November, conciding with the festivity of Hallowmass, when the cemetery is believed to be the most visited.. The fact that most of these plants should not pose important care problems has also been taken into account.

On

the rocks: a breakable heaven

Guadarrama Mountains, historic region of Castile, Spain//TU Delft//Graduation project/mentors: Inge Bobbink, Ulf Hackauf

The present design was my Graduation Project for TU Dleft Bouwkunde, which I did under the guidance of Professor Inge Bobbink and of Professor Ulf Hackauf. Professor Bobbink’s lab, aptly named Circular Water Stories is centered on the topic of water; but, within this framework, she gave us the opportunity to choose whatever location we found most appealing, encouraging us to choose a site in our home countries; consequently I chose a location in the area where I was raised.

The Guadarrama Mountains are a mountain range crisscrossing the Spanish highlands, dividing the historic region of Castile in two. This project explores the possibility of addressing the three main current challenges in the area (climate change, energy crisis and urbanistic disparity) and the complex relationship with the city of Madrid through a drastic landscape intervention in the water system.

Climate change has caused droughts and severe wildfres in the area, but also catastrophic foods and snow blizzards.

Geographical situation

These huge fuctuations take a toll not only in the site’s nature but also on the area’s reservoirs, which are the sole suppliers of drinking water for the city of Madrid, a factor that is enhanced by the fact that the largest reservoirs are in the lowest, more southern areas, and consequently endure a much higher evaporation than the small high mountain reservoirs, which hold water throughout the year but overfow in periods of heavy precipitation. This also has direct effects on the amount hydrological power that can be produced, which is also a critical factor for the city. Another side effect of the proximity of Madrid is the very unbalanced urbanistic development in the area; the towns that are in the southwestern part of the site have greatly overgrown, thanks to the fast connection to the capital provided by a freeway and a railroad, whilst the northernmost part, which lacks of any comparable communications with Madrid, has steadily been losing population since the 50s. This is also refected in the local economy, which has been historically based on cattle farming, stone quarrying and timber extraction; now the main drive in the southwestern part is (by large) the construction and real state industry whilst in the north one the depopulation prevents any kind of economic development; in both cases, the traditional activities are dwindling when not lost, leaving a valuable industrial heritage to decay, especially in the case of the stone quarrying sector.

The common leitmotif of all the three problems in the area seems to be unbalance; there is either too much water or too little, and the same can be applied to population. This unbalance is translated especially through a growingly different, but equally as deteriorated landscape, and can be understood as a lack of connection; which is something that can also resolved spatially. My proposal consists of an over 120km long waterway linking all the reservoirs and a plethora of intermediate water bodies- thus, allowing the redistribution of the water during the heavy precipitation events, as well as an additionally buffer area. This waterway can, depending on the topography, take the shape of either a canal or an aqueduct. Once the precipitation event is over, the water is pumped up to the old, abandoned quarries above the 900m contour line, where

Legenda Legenda

Existing canal (gravity)

Existing canal (pumping)

Existing reservoir

Proposed canal (0% slope)

Proposed canal (pumping)

Dam = pumoing sta- the balance between precipitation and evaporation is 0 or negative, which will be used as the main water storage, so preserving the water during the dry spells. The pumping is powered through photovoltaic energy, provided by the urban tissue, which will undergo a drastic change.

The existing towns in the western side will be reduced through its division in smaller towns through the demolition of intermediate sections and introduction of forest masses in their place, and by the enlargement of the existing reservoirs; in this way, not only the water would reach the source of pumping power, limiting the energy loses by transportation, but also allowing them to participate in the water system and adding a recreative value.

The inhabitants of the demolished parts will be relocated to new towns built in the lower altitude, larger quarries, which are also integrated in the pumping system. Its urbanism it’s a combination between the traditional Castilian towns and the new mobility trends. There are two sets of streets, a long, linear one that allows the circulation of electric vehicles- designed to ft a fre brigade truck. Another, perpendicular set of pedestrian-only streets where the bulk of the pumping is done through a series of cascading ponds allow for alternative routes. Squares are largely for pedestrians and modelled on the old Castilian towns, harbouring larger pools for water harvesting; the architectonic style is an expressionist rendition of the traditional stone houses. Connection between towns is provided by a cable car integrated in the waterway.

The farmland will also experience changes. The waterway is largely built in the existing farmland, so to compensate the farmers who have to give up some of their lands by giving them a bigger plot of farming land in the depopulated northern part, thus providing them with a summer and a winter pasture and allowing them to use the lands adjacent to the canal to travel from one to the other. This strip of land will also adapt to the food-drought cycle; around the canal, there will be a foodplain that can be used as a water storage during heavy precipitation events, with the water slowly receding into the canal, a 15m-deep cut in the bedrock; some of the extracted rock shall be crushed into boulders which will be laid in the bottom of the canal, so, when the water level drops in summer, it is protected from the solar radiation, thus reducing the effect of evaporation. During this time, to keep the grass green during the cattle migration, water will be sprayed at nighttime from sprinkling towers. This strip of land will be planted so to create a continuous tree canopy that protects the grass from the excessive sunlight (what in Spain is known as a dehesa). The tree species are adapted to the water of the foodplain.

This will be completed with a new system of sewage water treatment that allows the extraction of methane -which will be used for boiling the milk, thus contributing to the farming recovery.

My parent’s house’s garden

Alpedrete, historic region of Castile, Spain//private comission//own project

This is doubtlessly, my most personal work. I started designing my parents’ house’s garden right after the house itself was completed, when I was barely ten years old. Back then, all my lore on gardening came from decoration magazines, which in turn were heavily infuenced by Anglosaxon landscaping; thus, I frst envisioned endless lawns dotted with tall deciduous trees such as beeches or linden, criss-crossed by winding paths, featuring rose gardens and ponds where grass would go down to the very water’s edge. Evidently, all these grand Capability Brown-esque schemes crashed, and quite heavily,

Geographical situation

with the harsh reality of the dry Castillian climate and the stony soil- my town’s name, Alpedrete, comes from Latin “Ad Petrum”, which can be roughly translated as “(made) in stone”, and its renown for its granite quarries. It took me a couple of years to learn that the only way to succeed was to imitate the local natural spaces; shadowy woodlands crowded with bushes, rather than the neat, sun-kissed lawns in the British and American gardens featured in the magazines I loved so much. It took me even more to appreciate some of the local species- the evergreen, silver-leaved holly oak, the sticky rock rose with its paper-like white blossom in May, the fragrant wild lavender and rosemary- and almost a decade to learn which of the species so praised in the gardening books written by English gardeners for their rainy homeland would actually work in the sunny stone heart of Castille; no rhododendron or azalea would ever thrive in our dry- and water proof- lands, but I got to have my coveted rose garden, and although hydrangeas would practically be razed to the ground by the winter’s frostbite-just like Carthage by the Romans, my mother used to say- they would grow back and bloom in lovely shades of pallid blue, due to the acids in the soil, a by-product of granite’s slow decomposition. Camellias would be a perfect bet if placed in the shade and protected from the harsh northern windwe were actually the frst people in our neighbourhood to successfully grow camellias-and, despite Japanese maples wouldn’t really progress, peonies and junipers would indeed give the desired oriental touch; besides, the latter proved themselves to be the best groundcovers, successfully overcoming the weeds, and would look lovely against the purple Berberis, which sort of made up for the northern-European dogwoods in winter. Trees from warmer areas, such as Koelreuterias and Liquidambars, would surprisingly feel at their ease in Madrid’s mountainside; our Liquidambar defnitely gave a most welcome surprise when it grew back after a windstorm ripped up its tip. But the greatest surprise came with our blue fr, which we bought when it was barely a meter and survived three different transplant operations; now, with its towering 4 metres, its easily the most beautiful Christmas tree in the area, albeit also arguably the hardest one to place Christmas decorations on. We even got to have a little lawn, although our fght against weeds remains as ferce as the frst day. I also began to appreciate some foreign trees that had a longstanding tradition in Spanish gardening, and were part of my daily landscape; the big and ghostlike Lebanon cedars, which could come in shades of gray and blue; the short, stout and always lovely olive trees-although our olive production is, to this day, negligible and the tall and narrow, column-like cypresses that line up our cemeteries’ borders. And, of course, the fruit trees, especially those from the Malus, Pyrus and Prunus genera, which I consider the most versatile and useful kind of trees in Spain. In winter, they don’t block the sun, they have an impressive bloom in springtime, provides with a most needed shade in summer, when they also start to bear fruits; and, in addition, most of them have great fall foliage. And that, surprisingly, some palm species do withstand our bitter cold winters. Another of the highlights of the garden is the swimming pool, which is inspired in the region’s mountain lagoons- with deep aquamarine tiles and featuring granite-stone rocailles with waterfalls. The swimming pool specifcally was published in a specialized magazine about pools

All in all, I consider this garden to be my great experiment in the feld of landscaping; the one that has suffered my inexperience and the one that has rewarded me for my devotion every passing year; also, the one thing that convinced me to pursue a landscape architect career.

Geographical situation

When the 2020’s Dubai Wold Expo was announced, the world beheld it works with impatience, as this was designed to be one of the grandest and most lavish world Expo ever seen. People from all over the globe started getting ready for the six months of opulence and unrivalled splendour fuelled by oil revenues-as the expo would be lasting from October 2019 to May2020. Little did we know that a pandemic outbreak would sweep away all those visages of magnifcence in the very year when it was to be held. However, all that dreams of stately grandeur are not lost, as, rather than been cancelled, the expo was just postponed to 2021.

Landscaping for the domes no 8 and no 14 in the Kingsdom of Spain’s pavillion for the 2020 Dubai’s World Expo

Dubai, Emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates// State comission//own project in collaboration with Amman, Canovas & Maruri (Temperaturas extremas)

The Spanish pavilion, designed by the Madrid-based studio Temperaturas Extremas, formerly known as Amman, Cánovas & Maruri, is likely going to be one of the biggest and most outstanding highlights of the exhibition. The architects-one of them my former Artistic Drawing professor at the ETSAMwere very concerned about the pavilion being eco-friendly and sustainable, and as green as possible, including in their project two “vegetal domes”, this is, two spaces with ceilings formed by rings of plants. The greatest challenge was to overcome the imposing geometry of the circles, and to “naturalize” them somehow, which, in my opinion, involved the need of “uncircling” them, and also how to reinforce the buildings’ message. After all, it was a national pavilion, which aims to refect and highlight all the virtues of the country that is representing.

Situation of the domes withinof the pavilion

The plants were chosen based on their resistance to the hot, humid Arabian winter-which is, on average, hotter and more humid than the Spanish summer- and their availability, which was a matter of great importance since the Emirate, like every other Arab county have a very recent and still undeveloped gardening tradition and infrastructure - and so, reliable literature or any other information sources are virtually non-existent. We were to get whatever was there, to put it plainly. So, the intervention was based in the extensive of use of the few available plants that had proven-through empiric experience- both the examination of the existing particular Dubai gardens and placing on site. Another problem was the imposing presence of the colours used in the exterior PVC enveloping, which dye he space in a deep orange.

Dome 14:

Romerías are yearly traditional Roman Catholic religious festivities that happen all over the country. They are generally held in May and consist in a short-distance pilgrimage to a chapel or shrine where the statue of a saint, or, more usually, Virgin Mary, is kept. Besides the strictly religious celebrations, such as masses and processions, the participants often engage in other festive activities, such as singing or dancing, with romerias being considered a remarkable valuable source for anthropologists researching on traditional folklore, music and dances. Another typical activity in romerías is having a communal picnic in the shrine’s surroundings, which are typically placed in the countryside. Provided that this dome is to cover the restaurant’s outdoor terrace, I felt like it was only ft bringing this atmosphere to the diners; the peaceful, easy feeling of a large meal amidst grasses and poppies, feeling the breeze moving the branches of the holly oaks above and the perfumed scent of the blooming rockroses. To better recreate this feeling, I have used the four levels in the structure to represent the different layers and planes of closeness; the uppermost one represents the trees; here, White bouganvilleas are to be provided with a branch-like structures, in order to give a glipse of the willowy Spanish holly oaks. The tree area extends down to the lowest level, as to symbolize younger trees which aren’t tall enough yet to measure up to their predecessors. Here, wild bushes such as the fragrant rockrose, represented by the not-less fragrant Spanish Jasmine- wild lavender, Spanish broom- symbolized by the yellow bouganvilleas- mingle with the moss-covered rocks expressed by ground-covering asparagus (Asparagus densiforus sprengeri).; from other, sun-exposed rocks represented by the White-and-purple tradescantia zebrina, sprout the frst grasses, (Pennisettum setaceum). Finally, the lowest level intends to give off the sensation of being in a Castillian meadow in May; wild wheat (represented by the very similar indigenous Pennisetum) mixes with a variety of fowers represented by English lavenders .A cascading waterfall links the four levels, its water represented by the deep blue Ipomoea fowers against the surf of the white bouganvilleas in the background.

Besides from trying to bring to this far-away land such a typical Spanish scene, other considerations have been taken into mind for this design. Some are as equally symbolic, trying to highlight the cultural links between the Spanish and Arab cultures- some of the species chosen have a long tradition is the Moorish gardening- such as the jasmine , others can be easily found in both countries, like bouganvilleas or to refer to the gastronomic character of the space below- wheat is very much the basis of the Spanish cuisine- whilst others are mainly practical, since the shade conditions are very diverse depending on the specifc location in the dome where a plant is to be placed.

Asparagus densiforus sprengeri

Bouganvillea glabra ‘Snow White’

Bouganvillea spec- tabilis ‘White Stripe’

Bouganvillea glabra ‘California Gold’

Ipomoea indica

Jasminum grandiforum

Jasminum sambac ‘Grand Duke of Tuscany’

Lavandula angustifolia

‘Royal Purple’

Bouganvillea glabra ‘California Gold’

Tradescantia zebrina

Dome 8:

Muqarnas known in Iberian architecture as Mocárabes, is a form of ornamented vaulting in Islamic architecture. It is the archetypal form of Islamic architecture, integral to the vernacular of Islamic buildings. The muqarnas structure originated from the squinch. Sometimes called “honeycomb vaulting”or “stalactite vaulting”, the purpose of muqarnas is to create a smooth, decorative zone of transition in an otherwise bare, structural space. This structure gives the ability to distinguish between the main parts of a building, and serve as a transition from the walls of a room into a domed ceiling. The muqarnas domes were often constructed above portals of entry for the purpose of establishing a threshold between two worlds. The celestial connotation of the muqarnas structure represents a passage from “the functions of living, or of awaiting eternal life that is expressed by geometric forms.”When featured in the interior of domes, the viewer would look upward (towards heaven) and contemplate its beauty. Conversely, the downward hanging structures of the muqarnas represented God’s presence over the physical world.

Besides, muqarnas where often used in the reception halls and antechambers of the Spanish Moorish’ kings palaces, as most of the surviving examples can attest. This “threshold” feature about them is considered very ftting for dome 8, as it is the atriums’ previous space- an antechamber for a throne room, the last “air world room” before the descend to the “earth world” of the gallery and the theatre. The poliedric, paper-like cascading fowers of bougainvillea are considered to be uncannily similar to the geometric, yet organic shapes that compose the muqarna; to imitate their depth-like effect, two shades-a lighter and a darker one have been used. However, the author considered that the representation of how muqarnas look like today was far more sincere and realistic than the mere vegetal rendition of how they were in a distant past; that’s why he colours chosen for bougainvillaeas were relatively tame-magentas and pale pinks- to refect the sun’s and time bleaching effect- leaving the much darker tradescantias as remains of the original-or, most times, 19th century restorations-painting.

Asparagus densiforus sprengeri

Lavandula angustifolia

‘Royal Purple’

Tradescantia pallida

Pennisetum setaceum