Living Traces - Huellas vivas

The "Living Traces" (HUELLAS VIVAS) project in Santa Pola, a tourist municipality located on the southeast coast of Spain, is conceived as a living and dynamic system that establishes a continuous dialogue between the traces of memory, architectural gestures and landscape forms. The approach seeks to heal the wounds of land and sea, combining the vital energies generated by water, earth, air and energy, which serve as conceptual and compositional drivers.

The competition invited proposals that enhance places like the Varadero, releasing its tourist, cultural and sports potential through a nature-based vision. Design reflections interpret the relationship with water from the protection of fragile underwater ecosystems, such as Posidonia oceanica meadows, to the creation of marine gardens and ecotourism snorkeling routes.

On the surface, the waterfront is transformed into a continuous and barrier-free platform with pedestrian priority, including rain gardens to manage runoff and favor aquifer recharge, especially in response to extreme phenomena such as DANA. The old Quarry, which represents memory through absence, is reused as a rainwater retention basin and is integrated with solar energy landscape installations. Through light infrastructure powered by sun, wind and water, wounds and absences become regeneration matrices, offering Santa Pola a resilient and sustainable framework.