Tribute Tower by Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas | Torre del Homenaje

The “Torre del Homenaje” or “Tribute Tower” is an enigmatic architectural piece by Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas that has historically been used as a defensive tower. In 2000, the Government of Andalusia chose to proceed with a task that would recuperate the tower’s fantastic nature and restore its double capacity as a watchtower and a point of interest.

Tribute Tower Technical Information

• Architects: Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas
• Location: Huéscar, Granada, Spain
• Typology: Cultural Architecture /Commemorative
• Material: Wood / Adobe
• Project Year: 2008
• Photographs: © Jesus Granada

I’d like more than to be an architect to be a translator of the issues that occur at the site in terms of architecture.

– Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas

The Torre del Homenaje “Tribute Tower” Photographs

THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT AT THE SERVICE OF URBAN REGENERATION

As in most residential settlements linked to a defense core, the location is not a random choice but is determined by topographical conditions favorable to establishing a territorial visual-control network. The destruction of the “Alcazaba” and the “Torre del Homenaje” curtail made it difficult to read the visual links that structured the population with the surrounding territory. Bounds that can be reconstructed through the stamped urban panoramic views or preserved handwritings from Huéscar.

Thanks to them, we can understand the relationship between the built and natural environment, which in the pre-industrial city was made through figurative bounds based on the set of scales between the monument –as a landmark indefinite extension of the scenery. The monument can be seen as a territorial break to set a milestone used to draw a human settlement in the continuity of the landscape. […]

This is when the architectural project intervenes. It is considered a premise of the relationship between the monumental vocation of the building (the milestone) with its location. The place is understood from a double scale, the immediate or constituted by the morphology and urban structure, and the extension of the territory understood as landscape; this is a resulting situation that comes from the interaction between physical components of the environment and human activity.

The Torre del Homenaje “Tribute Tower” Plans

The Torre del Homenaje “Tribute Tower” gallery