The first phase of enabling better visitor access to the Tracas de Pontevedra archaeological site has been completed. The Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize winning “Bio-Palimpsest” project delivers an ecological approach to archaeological sites and offers an immersive experience to visitors on the Galician coast of Northern Spain. With the aim of sustaining local heritage and tourism the project by AGI architects will enhance eighteen ancient sites distributed around the town of Pontevedra. Instead of focusing on the ruins as objects separated from their context, the project re-embeds them within a whole environment.

The days when the sustainability of a construction project was a matter of ad hoc measures are over – sustainable construction has become systematic and specific. This was emphatically shown by the results of the Holcim Awards in region Europe: The first prize was shared by two projects in Brussels, both of which excel in terms of their multi-functionality.

This project addresses archaeological sites as whole environments far beyond the excavated artifact. A series of fortified Galician settlements in Pontevedra are being redesigned for visitor access. The project proposes the reinstatement of the vegetation from Roman times when the ruins were inhabited. Cruciform posts are set on the same grid used for excavation, the archaeological method. The same posts provide audio tracks telling histories, give written information, and contain lighting. A series of paths leads the visitor through the landscape and between the poles from site to site. These layers of intervention – landscape, grid, and path – produce a rich context for archaeological contemplation.

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.