An integral ecological approach to the recovery of the Galician-Roman archaeological sites

The Galician-Roman archaeological sites of Pontevedra have a high scientific, tourism and socioeconomic value whose recovery and revaluation must be addressed in an integral way. Through a public competition, the local authorities together with the government have selected this project, which aims to articulate a scientific understanding of Galicia in antiquity, socially recovering patrimonial spaces and helping to paralyze depopulation, promoting non-seasonal high quality tourism. AGi architects have worked from a strategic point of view that enhances an adequate understanding of each site as fragments of a Galician history, transferring ad hoc knowledge for each of the sites, while integrating them into a unique network for the interpretation of the Galician landscape.

Natural and traditional techniques to restore and maintain an ancient environment

The project understands the human and the natural as a system that works jointly. The sites will follow strategic lines of action that include the cleaning and excavation of the settlements; the establishment of conservation methods; its signalization, diffusion and promotion, and its incorporation into a museum, both in a virtual plane, and in a physical one, for which a guide system has been proposed. Slopes, excavations and plant species will be restored, according to the “ways of doing” of the natural and geological native environment together with the building operability and inherited local techniques. A vegetated intervention will help to create a new reading that clarifies the different local landscape units: closed forest, open wild pastures, scrublands, and vegetated and rock slopes.

Pikes, Grids, and Quadrant; Sound and Light; Paths and Soils: amplifying experience

Museography is based in an orthogonal mesh similar to the archaeological methodology of excavation by strata. At the vertices of the mesh, the generating element appears: the Pike, which narrates the visitor’s experience as well as to creating an alternative visual landscape closer to the world of the uncertain, the unknown and the buried. The pikes become witnesses that tell the historical story of the past through sound. Pavements consist of natural materials related to the territory, having different densities and hardness, colors and textures enhancing perception. This experience is completed with a lighting proposal organized in two levels: a horizontal plane of lightning displayed on the floor in the form of occasional photo-luminescent paintings and a constellation of spotlights.