The project integrates the archaeological site of San Esteban in the city by means of a protection roof over the whole intervention that characterizes the place through its morphologic, programmatic, spatial and constructive conditions, making a new public and emblematic place in Murcia.
Its main values are:
- Compatibility of the archaeological site with the public space-square-garden.
- Recover the medieval memory with an urban project that enhances the future of the city.
- Recover San Esteban garden as an urban fragment that connects the garden network of Murcia.
- Attention to the surroundings: Maximum respect to San Esteban Palace / Location of the constructed volume in front of ‘El Corte Inglés’.
- New inner and outer habitable topography.
- Inner space like place of open work and ongoing process.
- Passable and accessible outer square.
- Connection between outside and inside in all levels.
- Outer space public program for everyone: leisure, cultural, relaxation, sport, infantile…
- Great green cover, combination of original natural garden – by roots and species of medieval time – and hydroponic plants with contemporary culture techniques.
- Houses courtyard that raise to the outer square: they order the garden / provide natural light to the interior / transfer the archaeological site to the public square making it visible from the street.
- Modern museum with internal work rooms and multifunctional exposition areas.
- Program opened to the study evolution and investigation of the archaeological site and its contents.
- Museum opened to the archaeological site and in permanent relation with it.
A contemporary project that feeds on the old memory – the medieval Murcia – and recent memory – garden of San Esteban -, to produce a new place that appears like an urban reference (a garden), architectonic (a museum and a public square) and cultural (one of the more extensive and intense archaeological sites of Spain) for the Murcia of the future.
