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2015 ALICANTE

FORMER SENECA BUS STATION
Alicante

The rehabilitation of Alicante’s old Seneca Bus Station was part of a collaborative project with the municipality’s technicians Miriam Jareño and Pedro Riquelme together with the architecture firm Isaac Peral Arquitectos. Our starting approach consisted of architectural recycling in which the historical memory of Alicante province played a major role. There was, however, an additional premise we had not expected: the project’s personal significance for the team members.

We focused on cleaning up and highlighting the best of the architecture, the first concrete building in the province of Alicante. We worked on the former users’ sensations and reflected on what the design of its architect, Félix de Azua, would have been like had there been a tree-lined plaza and not a bus terminal. We examined his initial approaches and the influence of François-Alexandre Duquesney’s East station in Paris, which had given him the idea of warehouse-style halls and the glass roof solution.

In its new, second life, the central hall has become a large roofed area, resembling yet one more old-style bus stop shelter, but on a larger scale. A covered square open to the city, asking to be teeming with Alicante life, recovered from several generations’ collective memory. The old frescoes by Gastón Castelló reign over the space, illustrating the best of Alicante city and province, in a not so distant past. A welcoming place in which to spend some time, in which to remember the travellers who stopped by and the many who remained.

Program

Teaching, Rehabilitation, Architectural recycling, Administrative

State

Built

Client

Alicante City Council.

Year of Construction

2015