CREUSeCARRASCO solves all the drawbacks in a practical and fluid way, replacing the stairs with a gentle slope that allows you to stop and has views of the city as you progress along the route. The structure takes advantage of its curved shape and turns as transition spaces. Surrounding nature accompanies the journey and advances until it reaches the city.
The ramp is 111 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, improving the quality of time for walkers and a functional and comfortable improvement for moving from the mountains to the city. It is built with concrete and stone at the ends, supported and separated from the ground with 25-meter spans. The U-shape has a slit where the lighting is located and expansion cuts for the drain and water drainage.
Arrival ramp of the French way to Santiago by CREUSeCARRASCO. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.
Description of project by CREUSeCARRASCO
The entrance of the “Camino de Santiago” into the city meets between the sacred hill “Monte do Gozo” and the high-speed infrastructures that surround it. Until now, a long and steep staircase solved this slope, built following the lines of the tracks, breaking the continuity of the route and making accessibility difficult for people, preventing mobility in a wheelchair, bicycle or on horseback. The ramp recovers the idea of the path and replaces the staircase, taking advantage of the cuts made to the slope. Its gentle tilting allows stopping and observing the city that appears along the way. The curves, with their twists and turns, can be used as transitional spaces in which the change towards the urban takes place, but also the memory of the nature that is being left behind. In this sense, the serpentine route of 111 meters long and 2.5 wide, in addition to functional improvement, plays a role that registers for the walker a change of time (arrival) and space (between the mountain and the city).
Built as a U of concrete and stone at its ends, it rests as well as levitates from the ground with 25-meter spans, alongside a line that holds the lighting and expansion cuts that serve as a drain. The whole of it is both line and duct, a piece that appears, accompanies and disappears for the pilgrim who enters the city and whose next aim is reaching the cathedral.
