Architecture and emotion share a table at the Restaurant “el mercao”

In this issue, we are going into the details of the excellent refurbis­hment completed in the Restaurante EL Merca’o – a building measuring 990 m² loca­ted in Pamplona – by the studio Vaillo&Irigaray which features Antonio Vaillo i Daniel and Juan L Irigaray Huarte as the two lead architects on the project with Daniel Galar Irurre as the directing ar­chitect.

To find out more about this work, we contacted these creators. With respect to their original idea, they told us that “we like restaurants which change, which are different every time. We feel that they change with your emotions, with the type of experience you want, with the atmosphere you want to.

They explain that “we like places which speak about their location, the climate of the area, what you can find nearby… restaurants which have ‘appropriable’ areas, meaning rooms which can be made to measure for each desire”. In light of this, they say that “we rarely find this to be the case, and maybe for that reason, we have accepted the challenge of making this res­taurant fit the local market area”.

ARGUMENTS

According to the studio themselves, these are always the same as they are always looking for “abstract metaphors related to what is hap­pening around the project, the customer, the place, the use”. They advised us that the use of elements related to market-food-cooking, taken out of context and laid bare such as Warhol’s pain­tings, empty bottles (or drinks), pans, butchers’ cutting blocks and sheets which are not plain but ‘architectured’: a lattice made with green glass bottles, lights and acoustic roofs with bowls, ta­bles, benches and floors made of butchers’ blocks.

Another aspect highlighted by the project authors is the search for “an atmosphere which is warm, cosy, simple, timeless, changing, ele­gant….with an oriental touch (in the tiles bathed with light) where light can accentuate day and night, party and intimacy, but which colours the plates and doesn’t just bathe everything indis­criminately”.

With respect to the place itself, the restaurant is divided into two floors: the first connected di­rectly to the market, and the second, located in a semi-basement. The staircase provides access from the street and includes a central landing. There are two areas available with two different styles: one is an everyday style, open, flexible, linked to the street and the market organising the foot tra­ffic and access through the bar, and another which is deeper, minimalist, linking its atmosphere to the idea of an underground cellar (even showing the building’s own foundations) and offering a re­laxing, quieter experience.

Those responsible at Vaillo&Irigaray+Galar also tell us that the spaces are divided using cur­tains. Those that run parallel with the light are made of velvet “as they have great acoustic pro­perties and a nice feel”, while those that run per­pendicular allow light to pass through and act as huge veils, hinting at the views behind them. “An almost theatrical scene blurs the lines (there are no actual partitions or closed areas) so an am­biguity created through a succession of veiled spaces is generated”.

With regard to links to the outside world (street and market), this is generated through fil­ters: glass fish tanks filled with green glass bottles which filter the light and sights… The roof, which has channels like a large corrugated sheet, “ac­centuates and accompanies the spaces through wave-like gestures which reflect geometrically what is happening below: the bar, the tall tables, the benches…”.

THE FURNITURE

As there are a variety of spaces, we are infor­med that the tables also have varying styles: low, tall, large and small, square and long… and the same happens with the seats: chairs, long ben­ches, high or low benches, either individual or shared, make up the different ways of eating.

And the objects, located on wooden surfaces (tables and benches), combine colour and textu­re through the widespread usage of lumber-cored iroko wooden boards. From the studio, they in­form us that “the western brain is trained to value any object located within a glass vase: pillars, drainpipes, walls, foundations… These are all wrapped in transparent glass structures being therefore exposed and reflecting the en­vironment”.

This is, no doubt, an innovative and surpri­sing refurbishment job which has learned to adapt to and work with the environment, a wonderfully changing environment, filled with emotion.