ART AND HERITAGE RESTORATION REGIONAL AWARD AR&PA 2002

"For the methodology of scientific knowledge of the monument employed by the architect Fernando Cobos in the castle of Ponferrada."

Ponferrada Castle is one of the largest and most complex fortresses of Spain, the result of a long evolutionary process between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, with more than thirty different masonry bonds and thirteen large construction stages. Mythologized since the nineteenth century as a fortress of the Templar Knights, however in 1994 remained a building as unknown as ruined.

The Master Plan commissioned by Junta de Castilla y León to the architect Fernando Cobos in front of an interdisciplinary team, involved a rereading of the monument. The applied methodology allowed an effective interplay between historical, archaeological, architectural and diagnosis data from several studies contained in the Master Plan. This integrated interdisciplinary reading of the monument has been the basis on which the intervention criteria applied have been defined. Accordingly the scientific keys that have guided issues, such as healthy techniques, strengthening and underpinning the recovery of functional paths rounds or the principle of respect and stratigraphic continuity reading of the masonry brickwork, have been established”.

Official document of the jury of AR&PA award 2002