1st Prize Festival “Mucho mas Mayo” 2008 / Cartagena (Spain)​​

 

- Festival: “Mucho mas Mayo”

- 1st Prize, Architectural intervention / Carlos Bausa Martinez

- Budget: 58.000€

- Area: 500 m2

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“Mucho mas mayo” it’s an annual creative festival that takes over the whole multicultural city of Cartagena in Spain.  All sort of artistic installations can be found during these two week festival and all across the city, blended with the roman archaeological remains, transforming all the public spaces mixing performative art, installations and temporary architectural interventions.

At that time I was still an architecture student when I submitted this proposal, supported by of the University of Alicante. I won the architectural 1st price of the festival, with an idea for an intervention to transform a public square located on the fisherman’s neighbourhood of Santa Lucia, nearby Cartagena’s harbour.

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This area was famous in the 19th century because of its prolific glass manufacturing industry that exported during more than a century, exclusive hand crafted tableware glass pieces all across the country. Nowadays only some of this beautiful elements remain alive, carefully preserved on private collections, and in the history museums of the city. The intention was to create an installation that could bring up the splendorous memory of the place, to let visitors and new generations of inhabitants know, why this area won its place in national history books.

 

I decided to crystalize the concept building up a fisherman net that captured glass fragments of the ancient glass industries, retrieved from the bottom of the sea of the Cartagena’s lost memories. The glass bits on the net, symbolized fragments of the history of the place.  It was the intention to resurrect them. Let them be alive in the neighbourhood of Santa Lucia, once again, transforming the place with its reflections, bringing back the colours to the streets.