Giles Davis

The Hydrological Cathedral anticipates future aridification of the Amblés Valley, the geological landscape of which Ávila is the custodian. Although a city in miniature, Ávila casts a strategic hold across its outward landscape and to preserve the city’s hydrological vestiges The Cathedral itself becomes the new steward of the hydrological cycle. This thesis explores the scale of the city through a doubling of the Catedral del Salvador de Ávila, a Romanesque-Gothic fortress cathedral which anchors the city wall to an elevated rocky outcrop. An extraction and procession of the Cathedral as seen through a chromatic, acoustic and geological lens elicits the dragging, catching and pulling of fragments as they striate through the city grain.

Embedded within the Adaja River, parallel to the western wall of Ávila, an archipelago of chapels for scientific discovery emerges from a [re]defined and [re]formed hydrological landscape. Through the explication of the current vertical hydrological section of the Amblés Valley, the chapels offer ecological strategies for measuring, analysing and sustaining Ávila’s fragile environments. On completion of each research cycle, the seven chapels recalibrate to a series of choreographed workshops, provisioning the city with seed and soil for the cultivation of its myriad walled gardens and ruined enclosures. 

The Cathedral connects the archipelago of chapels through an elevated pier structure whilst [re]carving the watercourse of the constructed hydrological landscape to provide new channels of enquiry. By storing, studying, and [re]activating the currently vulnerable vestiges, Ávila solidifies its position as custodian over the land against its hydraulic temporality. 

This is an entirely collaborative project with Sophie Lewis-Ward.