Plaza Cultural Norte | Gonzalez Moix Arquitectura

Background

The municipality sought to reverse the neglect and danger that had taken root in the neighborhood through cultural promotion in this and other parts of the district. In response, the strategy was to preserve a few abandoned lots adjoining public parks by activating a creative process that involved park users, neighbors, the municipality and the environment. The project explores a silent, hidden architecture in order to build a social landscape that adds a proper, timeless and aesthetic sensibility to everyday life. In this manner, it sought a place of encounters, reflection, joy and wonder in a setting that blends with nature. The design materializes sensations, creates dreams, wishes and honors the craft of construction with local handwork adapted to new, contemporary experiences. It creates and contains a pause from a dizzying world within a space whose raw materials are defined by mass and light.

Location

The project was embedded in a lot adjoining the Palmar park, surrounded by a residential area with a welcoming scale, a mix of formal and informal construction that reveals an authentic self-image.

Concept 

The creative process has a deeply rooted vocation to unsettle the timeless qualities in the nature of diverse culture. This is the source of inspiration for our memory, which conveys its mystique through the way light, material and space is used. The project sought to capture the primitive, essential and artisanal and take it to a contemporary tectonic dimension.

 The main volume rests on the north east side of the lot, where an incision in the ground defines the space. The support elements that structure it receive with subtle nobility a series of exposed cement beams that respond to a pattern of functions. Element of closure include slabs of concrete with alternating inclinations are placed between the beams, as well as a green roof with generous views of neighboring buildings. The result is a volume that demonstrated economy of function, form and construction.

 When observing the building from the front access, the spaces invites entry to its interior. After submerging in the latticework of concrete beams, upon crossing a path of many sensations and filtered light, the pause is automatically activated. The space was conceptualized as a transition and expansion of the workshops, administrative offices and services. The waiting areas, landing and games are developed at both ends of the main volume. The interior façade opens toward a patio, while the rear of the volume has a more closed façade, a patio garden suitable for several uses and an urban community garden.

Color 

The vivid colors used in the rear of the volume sought to reflect the life of the place created, dynamic to the eyes to contrast with the static, closed façade. Transparency dominates the interior façade, where colors constantly change, defined by light, furniture and the users’ movement. These are unified by an elegant, neutral architectural framework that clearly defines the depth and figure.

Materiality  

In order to respond to the identity, culture and their expression in timeless qualities meant finding a materiality that accompanies, envelops and contains these ideas in a constructed form that sustains and overcomes the test of time. Without forgetting the context and the fundamentals of architecture as a discipline, the project proposes an image with a strong, tectonic presence that dissolves silently amidst the vegetation and finds its meaning and poetry in its being.