“A connecting point, a meeting point”

>> AIM OF THE RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE :

We are interested in investigating the formation of a physical space which, devoted to virtual connexions and information, becomes a real ‘meeting point’.  We want to propose through architecture the merging of ‘sites’ for both virtual and material social networks.

Information Technology has re-configured the social relations of human beings. Information has opened up communication spaces, and has given depth and quality to our limited daily time.

Which meeting places of these intangible spaces can be designed from the tangible production of architecture?

Spaces that might be considered part of the “future”, are already common places in the present. We enjoy and share these in our homes and workplaces, where we spend our leisure and free times. These are spaces that re-invent the relationship between collective and private spaces, formation and information, communication and dialogue.

Only on few occasions has architecture proposed a setting in which information and space can interact.  Sometimes attention to new information technologies has wandered between metaphoric formal exercises and pixelized communication prosthesis. The superimposition of matter and technology to incorporate these flows has created a complexity in buildings that sclerosises it. This generates an unavoidable obsolescence that underlines it contemporary condition.

This is the reason why our research is centered around architecture as the medium for multitude programmes, functions and timings: that means, being a programmable ‘hardware’. We are investigating how to propose a ‘pluripotential’ (or multipotential) space, where the flows of users and visitors may enter and where citizens may interact among others. That is architecture that holds active social ‘software’.

We propose to do less architecture to allow more ‘gathering events’ to happen: a principle of basic ecology that makes integral sustainability possible as a constructive, economical and social objective.

All social centres are more than a just a place, they are a process where new neighbourhood forms are articulated with ‘agents’ and ‘places’ that are nearby but also with others that are geographic and culturally more remote. 

The new Social Cyber Centre Macarena Tres Huertas is a place where such categories as collective/intimate and informational/educative spaces will be re-defined.

We think in such places ‘presence’ (citizenry) is more important than ‘permanency’ (buildings), where architecture, in this world of networks and meeting places, is a phenomena in transit. That is why the building is carefully set in its surroundings, put to the residents’ disposition.

>> DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT.

 The Social Cyber Centre Macarena Tres Huertas competition was organized within the process’ frame by administrative decentralization and progressive establishment of the so called ‘tele-administration’. Off which the city government (EMVISESA) firmly aims to make available its advantages to all citizens. This implicitly demanded a new spatial medium to provide the local inhabitants with the necessary equipment for computing and information technologies. 

Chance, necessity and environmental adaptation.

Almost as it happened with Darwing’s evolution theory, chance and necessity converged (the demands of City Government and our research) interceded by local determinations: the surrounding characteristics and the restrained economic conditions. 

The district Macarena Tres Huertas is characterized by its high density (eight-floor buildings) dwellings blocks supported by pilotis that leave open spaces on the ground floor. This allows for visual transparency and free circulation among the gardens, thus avoiding its perception as an opaque and stagnant space.

Therefore the new ‘Macarena Social – CyberCentre’ sits in this place, generating visual and physical movement in order to optimize the accessibility to the surroundings paths and open areas.

The ground floor is freed from the programme in order to create a wi-fi plaza below the building. A small access garden, which together with a porch linked to a cafeteria and a multipurpose room, are offered as a neighbourhood wi-fi meeting and leisure room. Over these spaces, arises a volume lined with red lacquered sheets, where computer labs, workshops and offices are placed.

 >> N-POTENTIAL PUBLIC SPACE:

The main idea is to raise to the power of three the former free spaces now occupied by the building by means of multiplying n-times the tangible spaces: garden-wi-fi plaza, multipurpose and connected spaces on the 1st floor and the flat roof, which is offered to the neighbours as a terrace to hold events and as river viewing point.

>> PROGAMABLE BUILDING

The new ‘Macarena Social – CyberCentre’ is designed as a programmable setting, where functional definition will depend on the timing of its uses and the users participation with the given spaces. Only by thinking in these terms, has a functional determination been avoided, that could damage the survival and natural evolution of these spaces.

The requirements that were initially demanded (administration, services and installations) have been raised up and compacted into a nucleus on the first floor. This allows the rest of the space to be free with flexible rooms equipped with computer connections. On the ground floor, the garden and the porch leads us to the entrance, a multipurpose room and a small cafeteria, in a close relation with the wi-fi plaza. Above it all, the terrace is offered as a motivation for activities and celebrations.

>> MATERIALS

The new building offers a simple but straightforward image.

Its materials are sincere, so it has a very important significance: red-lacked, fold up steel sheet over thermal insulation and brick wall, leaving a ventilated area for climate control.  The steel sheet has different perforation densities that allow different levels of privacy and security. A range of intimacy is achieved by managing the ‘gills’ over the windows (vertical lama or banderols that make the building breath), these are orientated to free spaces, preserving the windows and views to the dwellings’ privacy. 

The building itself is a statement on sustainability in terms of standardised construction, organized by structural units and a standard module, made by a serial production process. This as well as controlled transport and executing time benefits the energy and emission control.  The building follows passive construction on order to rationally deal with the extreme weather of Seville: making the most of thick isolation, natural ventilation and natural lightning. 

Socially the – CyberCentre ‘Macarena Tres Huertas’ is a site where traditional categories meet and are re-defined: an advanced technological site, environmentally conscious, urbanely responsible and socially active.

In 2005 Cañada Rosal Town Council (Seville) launched an architectural competition in collaboration with the Empresa Pública de Suelo de Andalucía (EPSA – part of the regional government of Andalusia) to design a public library. MEDIOMUNDO arquitectos was awarded first prize for their proposal and the construction of the public library was completed in 2009.

When designing the public library we proposed creating a meeting point for information and culture. Under a continuous roof, whose folds create a dialogue with neighbouring constructions, consecutive interior spaces are defined by light entering via skylights. The homogeneity of the materials used in the construction is diminished due to sequences of light and shadow that create an increasing degree of privacy as one moves from the entrance to the most intimate part of the library located near the patio and the children’s area. In this way the library becomes a gradual extension of public space.

The project proposed a very simple layout for the optimal use of space. Visitors enter via a double-height lobby, a place of exchange with the public space outside. In it shelves and a bulletin board hide a staircase that leads to the reading room on the top floor. The elevator and ancillary services are located on the ground floor immediately after the lobby. This transitional area makes way to a reference section, audio books, computers and press. Next comes a children’s area accentuated by an overhead laylight that leads into the rear courtyard.

The reading room is located on the top floor. To reach the administration area visitors must cross a bridge that overlooks the children’s area below. The folds in the roof define the spatial sequence on this floor. Two skylights, the courtyard and the openings in the facade are the sources of natural light. Meanwhile, the walls themselves have been converted into built-in shelves and bookcases to ensure maximum fluidity and continuity of space.

In 2004 SESCAM launched an architectural competition to design a health centre in Membrilla (Ciudad Real). The competition asked participants to design a health centre in a small village near Manzanares. MEDIOMUNDO arquitectos was awarded first prize in 2005. The construction was completed in 2009.

The location of this project on the urban periphery and the absence of other buildings in the immediate environment led us to design a building that fits in with the surrounding agro-industrial landscape. The building comprises different spaces in order to create an intimate relationship with its future users. For this reason the building has been designed on two floors. The first floor is a continuous space while the ground floor is a succession of connecting courtyards that illuminate the interior and break up the building giving it a friendlier and more intimate scale for visitors. Meanwhile, the façade is covered in prefabricated concrete panels reminiscent of industrial constructions in the area that have been adapted to the dimensions of the building.

The different spaces have been arranged around the various courtyards in such a way that the covered areas are enhanced by the open spaces. The building is arranged around a central axis that contacts the various spaces on both floors. There are two entrances: the main entrance on the western side located closest to the village while the emergency entrance is on the north side guaranteeing accessibility and parking for ambulances. By arranging the different areas around a central space the project achieves the ideal relationship between the more frequented services on the ground floor such as the doctor’s surgeries, physiotherapy department and the emergency department. All other outpatient treatment takes place on the first floor, alongside the administrative and teaching offices. All of the doctor’s surgeries have natural light and ventilation, while the waiting rooms are located in well-lit and open plan spaces in order to ameliorate the experience for patients visiting the centre.

The project is a result of an open national competition that MEDIOMUNDO achieved the first prize on September 2010. The promoters of the project were the public body of Andaluz Infrastructure and Educational Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture and Sport of the Junta de Andalucía, in Spain. The project interventions concentrate on the two existing buildings:

In the first intervention the rehabilitation of the existing kindergarten includes new classrooms, a new Early Childhood Center and Primary type C1, and creates a new classroom block consisting of 6 elementary classrooms and common services (administration, teachers offices, lounge is generated multipurpose , library, gym , bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. ..) . The existing building is transformed to comply with the new demands of use, accessibility and energy efficiency, and an access gallery connecting the two buildings. The new classrooms are placed so as shelters and outdoor children protected playground spaces to join the building entry that maintains the traceability between them. It also optimizes the energy demands of the whole set and makes more efficient interventions.
The second intervention is about the rehabilitation and restoration of the primary education facilities of the Official School of Languages, so as to satisfy the standards and energy demands. New classrooms, administrative spaces are formed as well as a new gym, new linked garden and dining room.
Both interventions are connected by a large garden that embraces spaces for recreation and game purposes. It has been redesigned to accommodate playground, sports courts and green spaces for meetings, simultaneously improves the entire environmental performance.

      The new two-floor building is made up of three parallelepipeds set on a parcially transparent ground floor. The visual connection between the new open spaces and the public green spaces behind the school is assured by a big hall, the principal access to the building.
The facade, thought in natural wood, combines itself perfectly with the existing landscape.

      One of the main ideas of the concept is to create a compact building, allocating the required program in two floors and permitting to have an higher quantity of open spaces in the ground floor.

      The second floor, which hosts the three learning houses (one each two years), is thought as a space which is well-defined and flexible at the same time and that permits open air activities thanks to the creation of a patio for each learning house.

      The ground floor is dedicated to the common areas, the specialized classrooms (music, physics, chemistry, etc.) and the administation area. In the southern part of the plot is set the restaurant, that is at the service of the entire school complex and that will be realized in two phases. With its transparent courtain wall and its skylights, the restaurant appears as an enlighted, cozy space.

The New Dance School of Almeria is thought as a building which compacity and porosity manages to arrange best connections between the meeting spaces, teaching area and courtyards, that we name garden-patios (xero garden) and shadowed-plaza. They are tempered spaces which favor the bioclimatic behavior of the total volume, by means of wind flow, the nocturnal cooling, and fluent water.  The two sections-concept of the building explains its bioclimatic behavior to control and manage of natural conditions, to limit the use of the MEP & energy.