19.06.2024

Last weekend, Rita Piçarra attended the gala of the XXXIV edition of the Pladur® Construction Solutions Competition, held at the Royal Glass Factory of La Granja, where she was a member of the jury representing Openbook.

This year’s Pladur® Construction Solutions Competition received more than 300 projects from a total of 885 architecture students from Portugal and Spain. The challenge was to refurbish and expand the Elorrieta Refuge, a shelter for mountaineers in the Sierra Nevada, Granada, at an altitude of 3,184 meters.

According to Rita Piçarra, “there were some very interesting, creative, and well-thought-out proposals. The Pladur Building Solutions Competition is an excellent opportunity for students, and it was a great pleasure for me to be on the jury.”

 

History of the Elorrieta Refuge

The Elorrieta shelter was designed in 1929 as part of a plan led by engineers José Almagro San Martín and García Najera to reforest the Lanjarón river valley. The engineers had planned to build several mountain refuges that were erected between 1931 and 1933. The highest and most ambitious of these was the Elorrieta shelter, semi-buried in the rock at an altitude of almost 3200 metres and located next to the Fraile de Capileira peak, the only shelter in the Lanjarón valley to be built to a design drawn up in Madrid with total ignorance of the terrain and materials, according to the book “Sierra Nevada: Una gran Historia de Manuel Titos”.

The Elorrieta Refuge was completed in 1931 and functioned as a hostel for forestry technicians, where a meteorological observatory was installed and watched over by a guard. It was called “Tajo de los Machos”, but soon adopted the surname of the Director General of Forests, Hunting and River Fishing – Octavio Elorrieta. It was equipped with heating, water and electricity and had capacity for 24 workers, as well as medical and surveillance staff.

When the civil war broke out, it was occupied by Nationalist troops and, once the war was over, it began its gradual deterioration.

In 1963, this refuge, along with El Caballo, was transferred to the Spanish Mountaineering Federation, which in turn passed it on to the Andaluzia Federation.

 

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to PLADUR ® ALGÍSS® for the invitation.

 

Find more information about el Elorrieta shelter at https://premios.pladur.com/pt/01-propuesta-pt/