Appropriations and recycling in Punta Begoña, diverse uses, diverse logics: a transdisciplinary approach

Abstract

This essay takes an anthropological approach to the appropriation and recycling of urban architecture and the non-explicit logic that drive this type of process. The case study focuses on a place that have had various uses over time, the Punta Begoña galleries and the cliff on which are built, at the Biscayan town of Getxo. The research has uncovered several logics that have guided the successive processes of reuse that have taken place in this location, with the agents and socio-cultural context of each period as the principal reference points. The study of the changes in the building and its location have shed light on the relationships between urbanization processes and the socio-cultural environment, the connections between public and private spaces, the processes of industrialization and deindustrialization, of functional uncertainty or the creation of heritage. The study concludes that the different repurposings in this location have reflected the transformation of economic or social structures, of cultural order, or ways of thinking. As far as the present moment is concerned, despite the difficulty of contemporaneity, a certain logic could be seen in the latest appropriation of Punta Begoña.