Madrid-based studio Zooco has completed an extensive renovation and extension of a 1970s concrete structure in Santander, Spain. The Cantabrian Maritime Museum restaurant has been constructed inside an architectural complex that also includes an Oceanographic Center designed by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales, built between 1975 and 1978.

The original concrete structure sees two square forms connected by a canopy. The interior spans three floors with a central courtyard covered by a vault of paraboloid membranes, while a 2003 renovation and extension saw the addition of a pyramid-form aluminum structure to the western facade and roof.

For their 2023 overhaul of the scheme, Zooco inserted a new space on the second floor to house a restaurant and terrace. To facilitate the restaurant, a new volume was constructed to resolve issues with the roof and facade, while on the exterior, a glass box seeks to improve a sense of transparency within the space. The resulting restaurant overlooks the coast sheltered by the concrete structure in an act that the designers call “Brutalism over the sea.”

“The square morphology of this volume is the result of the addition of four triangles that regularize and complete the paraboloids of the original building, thus directing the protagonism towards the interior to the rawness of these concrete paraboloids,” the studio explains. “In a sense, the geometry becomes a recovered element, a vestige of the past, and the protagonist of the interior of the restaurant. Treated as an artistic element, the triangular wooden false ceilings frame it.”

The design is one of several renovation projects to feature in our editorial recently. Last month, MVRDV completed their colorful HAUS 1 office conversion in Berlin, while in November, EVOQ completed a renovation of Montreal’s Maisonneuve Library featuring glazed extensions.

Also in November, a two-year renovation of the Louis Kahn-designed Graduate Theological Union building was completed, while SOM completed their restoration of the Lever House in Manhattan.