"New" Brutalism Overlooking the Sea

Zooco, winner of the Architecture Masterprize 2023 award in the “Small firm of multidisciplinary interior design” category, proudly introduces its latest completed project: The Cantabrian Maritime Museum restaurant. Located on Severiano Ballesteros Street in Santander, Spain, the restaurant was conceived as part of an architectural complex that also includes an Oceanographic Center designed by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales, built between 1975 and 1978.

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

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 renovation and extension was carried out which included the extension of the west façade and the roof of the terrace with a pyramidal aluminum structure, thus altering the initial conception of the building.

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

The project provides the museum with a new space on the second floor to house its restaurant and terrace. To accomplish this, the project involved the creation of a new volume that provides a solution to the pathologies present in the roof and façade of the building.

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

The square morphology of this volume is the result of the addition of 4 triangles that regularize and complete the paraboloids of the original building, thus directing the protagonism towards the interior to the rawness of these concrete paraboloids. In a sense, the geometry becomes a recovered element, a vestige of the past, and the protagonist of the interior of the restaurant. Treated as an artistic element, the triangular wooden false ceilings frame it.

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

Restaurant MMC
Photo credit: David Zarzoso

The exterior features a glass box seeking maximum transparency (nuanced by textiles in the form of curtains, depending on the orientation), allowing expansive views of the extraordinary landscape of the Bay of Santander, lending to a feeling of being at sea.

Zooco

Zooco is an architectural studio founded in 2009 by Miguel Crespo Picot, Javier Guzmán Benito, and Sixto Martín Martínez, architect graduates of the School of Architecture of Madrid. The studio covers a wide spectrum of activities from a design perspective, from large-scale buildings to furniture design, with solutions adapted to their clients and their needs.