Zooco Estudio creates a new space for the Cantabrian Maritime Museum Restaurant

The Cantabrian Maritime Museum, located in Severiano Ballesteros Street in Santander, was conceived as part of an architectural complex together with the Oceanographic Centre, being designed by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales and built between 1975 and 1978. The original building consists of two square bodies connected by a canopy, with a concrete structure. The interior is distributed over three floors around a central courtyard covered by a vault of paraboloid membranes. In 2003, a refurbishment and extension was carried out which included the extension of the west façade and the roof of the terrace with a pyramidal aluminium structure, thus altering the initial conception of the building.

The intervention is carried out on a new crowning space of the museum on the second floor, which houses the museum’s restaurant and terrace, and involves the creation of a new volume that provides a solution to the pathologies present in the roof and façade of the building at present.

The square morphology of this volume is the result of the addition of 4 triangles that regularise and complete the paraboloids of the original building in plan. Thus giving all the prominence to the interior to the crudeness of these concrete paraboloids.

This geometry thus becomes a recovered element, a vestige of the past, and the main feature of the restaurant’s interior. Treated as an artistic element, it is framed by the triangular wooden false ceilings.

Towards the outside, a glass box that seeks maximum transparency (with textiles in the form of curtains depending on the orientation), allows a total view of the extraordinary landscape of the bay of Santander, giving the sensation of being over the sea.

Project: Restaurante del Museo Marítimo del Cantábrico.
Architecture, Design and Lighting: Zooco Estudio.
Architects: Miguel Crespo Picot, Javier Guzmán Benito, Sixto Martín Martínez
Location: Santander.
Surface: Interior, 570 m². Exterior, 350 m².
Construction: Rotedama Constructora.
Windows Industrial: Technal. Alufasa.
Photography: David Zarzoso.

Furniture and lighting

Indoor chairs: Billiani Veretta Chair y Billiani Fratina Chair de Billiani. Mobiliario terraza: Tables, chairs and benches collection Palissade de Hay. Lighting: Black Foster Micro y Swap M de Arkoslight. Suspension lamp TR Bulb Menu de Audo Copenhagen. Suspension lamp Semi Pendant de Gubi. MMC Lamp designed by Zooco.

Zooco Estudio

Zooco is an architecture studio founded in 2009 by Miguel Crespo Picot, Javier Guzmán Benito and Sixto Martín Martínez, architects from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. The studio covers a broad spectrum of design, from large-scale building to furniture design. The application of solutions adapted to the client and his needs, and the use of a timeless language, free of noise and artifice, are the hallmarks of a studio in constant search of new challenges.

It currently has offices in Madrid and Santander, developing its projects both nationally and internationally. Their work during these ten years includes more than 50 works published in national and international specialised media, some of which have been recognised in various awards such as the prestigious Design Vanguard 2019, NAN Construcción 2019 + 2020, Frame Awards 2020, the European 40 under 40 2020 or the Dezeen Awards 2022. They have recently been chosen by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 most creative Spaniards in the business world.

Their philosophy consists of approaching any type of commission, regardless of its scale, budget and programme, with the same attitude and creative ambition, applying the same process in search of an appropriate and valuable solution, both from an aesthetic and functional point of view. In a world as changing and fleeting as today’s, they seek architectural and spatial solutions that stand the test of time, that endure through the constant irruption of trends and fashions, phenomena that cause most creative proposals to expire immediately. One of its main objectives is to present design as an added value, profitable for the commercial success of a business.

Source: Zooco Estudio.

Project by Zooco Estudio