Air Dome

The first project was made to completely cover the Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona, during the days of the Encounter organised by the Alea Group. It was not a question of creating a more or less original fair stand, but of an urban planning action through perishable architecture, within the value of space-time. For this purpose, a network of cables was projected underneath the treetops and, on these cables, the plastic film was stretched and inflated. In this way, a nuance was achieved in the spaces, which are already hinted at in the square, by the greater or lesser height of the plastic and the differentiation of the colours, which are very pure and simple. The problem and the intention was to change momentarily, in this case during the days of the Encounter, the urban aspect of the most important area of the city, in the same way as, for example, the appearance of the streets of the Corpus Christi procession in Toledo is changed every year. It is not, therefore, a question of indiscriminately covering an entire city, as Fuller proposes with his immense vault over the whole of Manhattan, but rather of going for a nuancing of urban areas because each space in a city has its own value and significance. For example, now that Preciados Street in Madrid has been closed to traffic, there is a special opportunity to cover it, to insinuate its urban values for the benefit of the citizens, and to change and control its climatic conditions, giving a new impression of this area. El primer proyecto se hizo para cubrir en su totalidad la Plaza del Castillo de Pamplona, durante los días del Encuentro convocado por el Grupo Alea. Se trataba, no de hacer una caseta de feria más o menos original, sino de una actuación urbanística por medio de una arquitectura perecedera, dentro del valor espacio-tiempo. Para ello se proyectaba una red de cables que iban por debajo de las copas de los árboles y, sobre estos cables, se tendía la película de plástico que se inflaba.