Antonio Abellán: The Agitator of the Murcian Huerta

The orchard was something like the Comanche of Children, the dismissed and magical space in which I went to the child Antonio Abellán (Murcia, 1973) following t

Antonio Abellán: The Agitator of the Murcian Huerta

The orchard was something like the Comanche of Children, the dismissed and magical space in which I went to the child Antonio Abellán (Murcia, 1973) following the rumor of the ditches, tracked these "hybrid odors between the natural and the human "Or undertaking between banks an unequal" Battle of newly started lemons "against a rival gang.

But the Murcian orchard fell for years in the boredom and abandonment. A platform of denunciation arose "very clear and brave", Huermur, although a vision of the future or a proposal to regenerate that landscape came unless. Until Antonio Abellán, architect and agitator to equal parts, had the great idea of "Bizarre Huerta", with that quence for "the weird, how uncomfortable and the audacious" suggesting the same name.

"We started with very crazy activities, when they told us that the orchard was dead from the productive point of view and that there was nothing to do," says Antonio. "Things have begun to change in recent years, and there we have for example the creation of the Office of the Huerta, although I do not have the full turn, it seems absurd that something like Murcia-river, for that To imitate Madrid, when it is very clear that what is hits here is Murcia / Huerta, opening the city to that mosaic of pedanes traveled by the acequies. "

"The Segura River is pure shit." That was one of the sayings that Antonio Abelán recalls from his childhood. The river has improved a lot since then, everything must be said, and on the fly we checked it in its passing through the vicinity of the ñora, the hamlet that we travel in the company of Alberto himself and his uncle Pedro Ortín, School and Huertano Director part time.

The two lead us from entry to the ñora wheel -clared well of cultural interest in 1982- from where the water of the ditch is raised to other minor channels to water the orchards. On the fly they speak to us of the good man's council, the customary court that has been watching more than 800 years for the distribution of waters and resolving conflicts between the irons. In a matter of minutes, we felt mysteriously welcomed by this space of human scale that smells like a field, "where everything happens very stuck," in a mosaic of plots, with small houses and in a labyrinth of vericuetos and shortcuts.

Following the tradition of self-sufficiency, Uncle Pedro tells us how it cultivates in its small plot tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, watermelons and even papayas for family consumption. The garden was at the same time playing and solaz, and in the calorous months there were up "beaches" where they bathed from children. Antonio regrets the habit of overtaking the ditches, and depriving them of its natural and aesthetic value: authentic liquid veins that have fueled since times immemorial these unsuspected parameters surrounding the city.

"We vote the living garden," warns Antonio. "But we face the fact that there are many plots abandoned by disidia or due to lack of economic departure, we take advantage of all the spaces, up to a disused pool, and we give it a new value. We have tried to throw him imagination and creativity and approach the Huerta from a different angle. "

The regeneration of the agricultural fabric in one of the objectives, but not much less the only Bizarre Huerta. "We would like to be a Huertan Entrepreneur nursery, and have a network of local and ecological producers. We also want to promote ecotourism attractiveness, with twelve routes to surf the orchard, initiatives such as sound orchard or proposals such as" 24 hours of relaxation Huertano ", which we did with the students of architectural projects from the University of Alicante."

Although the authentic passion of Antonio Abellán is all that has to do with culture and education, with the goal of converting the garden "into an open classroom and in a space of exploration and adventure", even if it is with the help of that Curious periscope anchored to a wall to see beyond the last urban plot of Murcia.

Two the most sounds of Bizarre Huerta have been precisely the "Chirinbici" ("drop-down cooking towing to serve a picnic in any sensitive place without altering it") and his sister the "sling", a mobile classroom to carry out school and playful activities In the Huertan landscape, faithful to that idea of "architectural service without building" that Antonio himself develops in parallel to his professional career (then we will talk about the house of the earth).

His daughter "almost 14 years old" has been one of the sources of inspiration from Antonio Abelán, who comes from family of carpenters and hence his lovely for wood. And also by the histories of rural Murcia, such as the Periago Wolf of Manuel Moyano and Juan Navarro, starting point of the "Escape Room Huertano" with which Antonio wanted to surprise the children at the departure of the confinement, mixing the experience of Outdoor adventure games with a gaming and technology dressing.

Although the "Huertana Action" moves these months to the heart of the city, the Huertolab de Santa Eulalia, that urban space that has become a short time in something like "the Board of Welcome to Murcia". There, there is not only shared orchard and ethnobotanical garden, but also a crochet and shadow workshop and endless activities, in addition to the newly incorporated "invernalibros", pocket greenhouse that serves as a library.

"As much as the care of the Earth matters there the care of people," emphasizes Antonio. "Space is managed by neighbors in a collaborative way and is already an authentic laboratory of urban coexistence."

The future of Huertolab is however pending a thread, since it is a temporary cession of private soil. The neighbors have mobilized themselves to request their "declaration of public interest as a social project", and have claimed their expropriation and transformation into a green zone.

Antonio Abellán has been moving for a long time in a space that goes beyond the "usually architectural". Two of the most recognized works of Him are the Center Frash and the Museum of the Cathedral of Murcia, two projects of their youth, twinned by their attempt to "lower the aesthetic pressure" and look for an architecture "more fragmented, fresh and uninhibited" " .

Near the Ñora we know on the ground your intervention of conditioning of the archaeological remains of the gunpowder mill. In Alhama, in Aljucer or Mota del Río are some of his best-known housing projects, although his favorite work is the house of the land in the brave, in which he has tried to incorporate "a certain modernity" to a bioclimatic housing .

"Let's say that what was learned in architecture schools (space, shape, beauty) and what is often practiced when one approaches the world of bioconstruction is too far away, and what I have tried is to shorten those distances. The house of The Earth also includes a very ambitious proposal for the use of natural air conditioning through solar chimneys and refrigeration towers that has deserved the study of a group of experts in fluid dynamics from the University of Cartagena. "

The architects, according to Antonio Abelán, is going to touch "Rethink" the daily life "in the transition towards a greener civilization of all all possible." And that happens not only for a radical change in the way of building "towards sustainability", but in interventions of "urban acupuncture" and in a broad perspective, beyond the buildings themselves ("so exclusive of the non-human and so harmful With nature almost always ").

Architecture, Vaticina The Infatigable "Agitator" of the Huerta, will have to "open up many other scales and practices that are beginning to attend and that we have not occurred to us, but that they will appear."

Date Of Update: 07 December 2021, 15:46