Abraham Castro and Carlos Pita designed this football field in the Village of Bandeira in Silleda, Spain. The stands and sports facilities are resolved with with simple geometry and untreated materials.
Abraham Castro and Carlos Pita resort to "simple gravity" to compose the bleachers and changing rooms, with inverted T beams as the key structural element, forming a "house of cards".

Located in the limit between the urban and rural parts of town, it aims to signify and characterize the place. As a visual metaphore, the concrete structure seems to be gradually overtaken by the grass, creeping up the base.
 

Description of project by Abraham Castro and Carlos Pita

"A morning flight of pigeons greets the solid walls that teach geometry to the air, and to the whole valley"

Trips through Galicia. Alvaro Cunqueiro


Geography and landscape

The Football Field of A Gandareira is located at the limit of the town center of the Village of Bandeira-Concello de Silleda, in that undefined space between the rural and the urban, in that dispersed geography, which so characterizes the Galician habitat.

An anonymous piece, without birth certificate or author, immersed in the timelessness of the Galician rural landscape itself while acting as the limit of an urbanity that advances irremissibly, although now in a bewildered lethargy.

Public facilities

Built to cover the needs of a modest local sports society, which competes in all regional football categories, it is proposed as a low cost and minimal maintenance public facility, which tries to signify the place, giving it order and identity. Geometry and gravity as the only tools to achieve it. A true monument, following the Octavio Paz definition, since it orders and signifies the space in which it is inscribed. A determined and firm way to postulate the poeticization of common spaces and times of the people of the region.

Construction 

We start from an objective, concrete architecture, far from the inspiration, from self-expression, which implies as a value the honesty and ethics of the material. This is, of its own construction. An architecture of great carnality, without details where the finishes are the very consequence of the construction processes.

A necessarily realistic architecture, without remnants, alien to all fetishism. Just two project actions: the delimitation of an enclosure following the regulatory measurements and the location of bleachers and changing rooms in a half-buried piece of on-site concrete walls, with great inertia, which supports, by simple gravity, a deck of inverted T prestressed beams. An absolutely architrave construction, a house of cards in pure balance that wants to be a place. A place where playing football is a celebration.

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Architects
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Abraham Castro Neira, Carlos Alberto Pita Abad
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Collaborators
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CARLOS PITA ARQUITECTOS. Collaborating architects.- Jose Carlos Iglesias Fernández. Xoán Manuel Pérez Lorenzo. Technical architect.- Mónica Balado. Srtructures.- Francisco Carballo. Grupo Rodiñas.- Daniel Hermosilla.
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Client and builider
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Silleda Town Council
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Area
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8.415 m²
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Budget
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589.264 €
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Dates
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Basic project.- April 2015. Execution project.- March 2017. Finishing date.- October 2018
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Location
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Bandeira, Manduas Parish, Silleda, Pontevedra, Spain.
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Photographers
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Juan Rodríguez. Bandeira Sociedad Deportiva. Project authors.
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Abraham Castro Neira.- After finishing his Architecture studies, he begins to practice the profession at the end of the year 2012; between 2013 and 2014 he works as an Advisory Architect in the Department of Urban Planning in his native town, after a brief period begins his advisory with the town’s General Urban Plan, being currently in the process of final approval. He has worked for the Consellería de Medio Ambiente in natural spaces of Red Natura 2000 and natural environments of Special Protection, as well as in the rehabilitation of infrastructures, urban spaces or patrimonial protection.

In October 2016, together with Natalia C. and Martín P. elaborates the project "Semente de pedra", selected by the Xunta de Galicia for the organization of Obradoiros de Emprego on the subject of Stonework and Gardening. From December 2016 until May 2017, he will be its Works Director and Coordinator. In October 2017 he won the competition for the transfer and new creation of the Silleda Town Hall building. From the year 2018, he has been in charge of the urban management of the town of O Irixo.

He has been given many grants by the Hijos de Rivera Corporation to participate in the 12 Miradas Riverside Workshops taught by masters such as the architect Toni Gironès or the designer Curro Claret.
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Carlos A. Pita Abad.- Architect born in A Coruña in 1964. Licensed by the ETSA of A Coruña. In 1995 he opened a studio in A Coruña where he exercises the practice of architecture, developing this in different directions: teaching, studio, editorial work and dissemination.

Professor of the Department of Architectural Constructions of the ETSA of A Coruña since 1997, he has been guest professor and taught courses in several European and Latin American universities. Collaborator in different publications and editorial projects, he has been co-director of the architecture magazine Obradoiro.
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Published on: July 10, 2019
Cite: "A Gandareira football field by Abraham Castro and Carlos Pita" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-gandareira-football-field-abraham-castro-and-carlos-pita> ISSN 1139-6415
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