Architect: Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas
Revaluing Homage Tower in Huéscar
A place of military observation which, annulled after the conquest of the city in 1434, became domestic.
The aim is, 600 years later, to restore the vision of its horizon. Climbing till the sight reaches the landscape. To restore here is, mainly, to be able to see.
A viewpoint that evokes medieval fences, a new watchtower.
Like most residential settlements linked to a defensive nucleus, fences are not a matter of choice. They are determined by topographical conditions that favor the building of a network for the visual control of the territory. All this formed a mesh of fugue lines at two levels: on the ground, through the doors, that framed a certain focal point; and on the terraced platforms in the tower system, which provided a panoramic vision of 360º. The destruction of the moor castle in Huéscar and the annulment of its Homage Tower prevent the reading of these visual links, the relationship between the natural and the built surroundings, between the monument (as milestone) and the indefinite extension of its landscape. The project values the place at these two scales: The nearest one, highlighting the milestone in the urban mesh, and the farthest one, raising a platform in the manner of a viewpoint that connects city and territory, domestic space and landscape.
It is our modern sensitivity that values the cultural heritage -material and non-material- that exists here. It gives importance to the Roman headstone field, to walking along the alley on the top of the walls, to the walls themselves that form the tower, to the horizon….From this perspective, the past does not exist. It is built thanks to historiography and through the project. It is always from the contemporary that we intervene.
We are to understand the project as an evocation, rather than as the restitution of an unknown morphology. Always with the utmost respect for the construction as document open to future readings.
Fences here are not a matter of choice. They are determined by topographical conditions that favor the building of a network for the visual control of the territory. But, the destruction of the moor castle in Huéscar and the annulment of its Homage Tower prevent the reading of these visual links, the relationship between the natural and the built surroundings, between the monument (as milestone) and the indefinite extension of its landscape.
The project values the place at these two scales: The nearest one, highlighting the milestone in the urban mesh, and the farthest one, raising a platform in the manner of a viewpoint that restores the connection between city and territory, domestic space and landscape.
The intervention shows how modern sensitivity values the cultural heritage–material and non-material–that exists here. It gives importance to the Roman headstone field, to walking along the alley on the top of the walls, to the walls themselves that form the tower, to the horizon….From this perspective, the past does not exist. It is built thanks to historiography and through the project. It is always from the contemporary that we intervene. For that reason the revaluation of the Homage Tower must be understood as an evocation, rather than as the restitution of an unknown morphology. Always with the utmost respect for the construction as document open to future readings. This evocation, this recovery of the horizon, means highlighting the defensive character of the Tower. To that aim it is necessary to make its specific memories (those that come from the military imaginary) visible. That explains why medieval fences are evoked though a construction in wood that returns the lookout presence, permits ascent through ramps, and creates new visions and spaces, without forgetting that before its defensive component the place already had an identity as landscape, and expressed its own geographical and territorial condition.
© Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas
Links: Antonio JÃmenez TorrecÃllas
