An architectural feat drawing from both brutalist and maritime inspirations, The Cantabrian Maritime Museum restaurant is nestled beneath a concrete canopy. Located in Santander, Spain, the restaurant was conceived by Zooco as part of an architectural complex that also includes an Oceanographic Center designed by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales, built between 1975 and 1978.
The original building consists of two square bodies connected by a canopy, with a concrete structure. The interior is distributed over three floors around a central courtyard covered by a vault of paraboloid membranes. In 2003, a renovation and extension was carried out which included the extension of the west façade and the roof of the terrace with a pyramidal aluminum structure, thus altering the initial conception of the building.
The project provides the museum with a space on the second floor to house its restaurant and terrace. To accomplish this, the project involved the creation of a new volume that provides a solution to the pathologies present in the roof and façade of the building.
The square morphology of this volume is the result of the addition of 4 triangles that regularize and complete the paraboloids of the original building, thus directing the protagonism towards the interior to the rawness of these concrete paraboloids. In a sense, the geometry becomes a recovered element, a vestige of the past, and the protagonist of the interior of the restaurant. Treated as an artistic element, the triangular wooden false ceilings frame it.
The exterior features a glass box seeking maximum transparency (nuanced by textiles in the form of curtains, depending on the orientation), allowing expansive views of the extraordinary landscape of the Bay of Santander, lending to a feeling of being at sea.
Photography by David Zarzoso.
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