NEW ICE CREAM MUSEUM

ALACANT GROUP

Client: Alacant Group Date: 2023 Categories: Ethnography, Permanent Exhibition

Location: Sant Vicent del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain Design: Rocamora Diseño y Arquitectura Photographs: David Frutos

Grupo Alacant is a national company dedicated to the manufacture of ice cream, almost centenary, and born of the ice cream tradition of the mountains of the interior of Alicante, in towns like Jijona or Ibi.

Its main headquarters, the object of this project, is in San Vicent del Raspeig, near the capital of the province. With this remodeling that has been carried out, the facilities that have served this company for more than 50 years are transformed.

The vocation of the project has been to redefine the work space and its relationship with the production of ice cream in the same complex, all this also intertwined with the interest and social vocation of the company, to communicate its history with a new museum space, with intimate relationship with the reception space. An architecture built through the enhancement of its history, the history of ice cream in the province of Alicante, and a decidedly contemporary business vocation.

Another of the main points of the project has been the commitment of the business group to the environment through the use of recycled water produced in the industrial process, now used to irrigate a new vertical garden, the vegetation on the roof in the parking area, or all the water used in the interior wet rooms of the remodeled areas such as toilets, dining room, office areas, etc.

In short, the project has created a new image that speaks of naturalization and technology, culture, social commitment and commitment to its history and tradition. Natural wood and aluminum, aromatic gardens, varied flower beds, and an ethnographic museum that serves as a distributor of the reception areas, a new dining room for workers, a new management and administration area, a technical office, an assembly hall and a new ice cream parlor-laboratory, along with the urban surroundings and the new façade envelope, complete a comprehensive remodeling that will be the new image of the ice cream group in the coming decades. A new image built on the value of memory and tradition, taking a decisive step towards contemporaneity, social and environmental commitment.

The project has developed both the architectural and museographic intervention, the exterior urban intervention, as well as the graphic and audiovisual design of the museographic space where the development of historical contents has also been carried out. In addition, applications and interior signage have been made in the work spaces, as well as branding applications. The project communicates with the visitor and the user through a contemporary graphic diction, through the memory and DNA of Grupo Alacant, its history and the entrepreneurial character that characterizes them.