Extra-Ordinary Gate, Logroño

A breach in the city’s defensive walls offered an opportunity to come up with a temporary entrance, a threshold space between the everyday and the festive, where the ephemeral architecture would define an operating procedure to meet the city’s demands.

Any description of the Extra-Ordinary Gate project can only start from the story of the myth. In 1521, the French army, under the leadership of commander André de Foix, stormed Logroño in an attempt to reach the lands of Castile. According to legend, the city survived thanks to the wine stored in the cellars, bread made from wheat kept in the granaries and fish caught stealthily in the Ebro River during the siege. On 11 June, Logroño defeated its enemies, and residents celebrated the triumph by taking a vow to Saint Barnabas, who became the city’s patron saint. Every year, on that same date, the victory is commemorated with a feast of fish, bread and wine at the Puerta del Revellín, the sole remnant of the medieval city walls.

Exactly in this place – at the point where Calle Marqués de Sn Nicolás, on the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), meets the passage that today interrupts the continuity of the city’s defensive walls – stands the project by Associates Architecture, created for the 8^th edition of the Concéntrico Architecture and Design Festival. The intervention pays particular attention to the contextual conditions, heritage, and traditions, and prepares for a possible mending of the walls of Logroño, interpreting the sense of expectation and temporal suspension that only a threshold space can present.