Extra-Ordinary Gate
Associates Architecture
Plaza del Revellín – Concéntrico 08
The project EXTRA-ORDINARY GATE, realized for the 8th edition of the Concéntrico festival in Logroño (Spain), is located in one of the most historically significant sites of the Spanish city and more precisely at the point where the Calle Marqués de San Nicolás, the way of the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela, meets the defensive walls that used to surround and protect the city. Here a significant breach stops the continuity of the walls to ensure the passage of cars and pedestrians.
The project EXTRA-ORDINARY GATE suggests, through a temporary and extra-ordinary installation, a possible mending of the city walls of Logroño with the addition of a threshold-element that emphasizes the action of physical passage through the walls of a city. The portal, made of green painted wood, recalls the image of the temporary portals, built in the city of Logroño, during the Fiesta de San Bernabé as well as the shape of the nearby gate of Revellín, thus seeking a relationship not only historical, but also morphological and material with the city and the collective memory of its inhabitants. EXTRA-ORDINARY GATE introduces to a small square that is now an unsolved place of passage where people don’t stop. Here, through the insertion of a temporary staircase, facing the scene of the ancient walls, the square is transformed into an open-air theater where you can stop or watch performances and plays but also the everyday life. The project works in the dialogue between two elements, one that invites you to enter and the other that invites you to stay.
Associates Architecture
Associates Architecture is an architectural office founded in Brescia in 2017 and directed by the Italian — South African duo composed by Nicolò Galeazzi (Brescia, 1987) and Martina Salvaneschi (Johannesburg, 1989).The office works in the field of architecture in multiple scales and currently has carried out projects in Italy, Mexico and Portugal.
The studio develops its work in the dichotomy of thought and action, trying to demonstrate how the role of the architect requires a critical awareness of the contents that support building, which are then transposed into the realization of the works themselves. A responsibility towards society and therefore the client, developed through an approach that puts people and life at the center of the process.
In 2018 and 2020 Associates Architecture received the prestigious nominations for the Medaglia d’Oro all’Architettura Italiana – Premio T Young Claudio De Albertis at the Triennale di Milano, for the Eu Mies van der Rohe Awards (the youngest of 17 selected Italian architectural firms) and for the Piranesi Award. In the same year the office won the Big See Wood Design Award, awarded in Ljubljana, in the City and Community section and in 2020 received a mention for the award In/Architettura (National Institute of Architecture of Italy). The office was also invited to participate to the 16th and 17th Venice Architectural Biennial in the Italian pavilions Arcipelago Italia and Comunità Resilienti, to the 12a São Paulo Architecture Biennial Todo dia/Everyday and to the 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennal in the exhibition Economy of Means.
In 2017 the office was invited to give lectures in the main Italian Architecture Universities and was also invited, as visiting professor, by Casa Da Arquitectura in partnership with Porto Academy in Porto, Portugal, and by Goa College of Architecture in Goa, India.
With the collaboration of
