top of page

2014 MCHAP

Kindergarten Ciudad de la Allegria, Timayui

Giancarlo Mazanti

Santa Marta, Colombia

Nov-10

PRIMARY AUTHOR

Giancarlo Mazzanti & Arquitectos

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

Andres Sarmiento (Partner architect) Juan Manuel Gil (Partner architect) Nicolás Parra y Daniel Lozano - CNI Ingenieros. (Structural Engineer) Hidroobras (Hidraulical Engineer) ING. ELECTRICISTAS CASTILLO CAMPOS LTDA (Electric Engineer) TOPOGRAFIA Y AMBIENTES GRAFICOS (Topography) Fredy Gonzalez (Ground Studies) INTERVENTORÍA FC (Supervision)

CLIENT

Alcaldia de Santa Marta

PHOTOGRAPHER

Iwan Baan Alejandra Loreto Jorge Gamboa

OBJECTIVE

Architecture is action. We aim to develop the performative capacities of architecture rather than its representational abilities or visual qualities. This is why we are interested in an architecture defined by what it does and not by its substance ("Architecture is not an end in itself" Cedric Price). We would induce action, effects, events, environments, allowing us to develop ways of patterns or material organizations that act directly to induce and to build social actions with the users, an Architecture capable of inducing new behaviors and relationships among the inhabitants of these abandoned and deteriorated areas. Open Architecture. This interest has not lead us to find open architectures capable of changing and adapting to new social and cultural challenges. We are interested in organizational systems made of parts or modules as an intelligent organizational mechanism, which is not closed or finished. Their adaptive capacity allows them to grow or adapt to diverse situations, thus allowing us to develop various models based on the same rules of organization that can be repeated in different places of the city, making more economical and sustainable projects. Multiply use. The Indeterminacy as a design strategy allows us to think that our Architecture is capable of multiplying the uses for which it was originally intended to (not as effectiveness, but as a pledge of new relationships). The disposition and configuration of the buildings cannot leave places not defined functionally, this means that communities can own and multiply the initial use.

CONTEXT

This project is part of the political concerns of the municipality of Santa Marta and the Carulla Foundation to improve the educational and nutritional conditions of the communities displaced by violence, and settled on the outside perimeter of the city. It is meant to develop infrastructure to improve the conditions of early childhood and low-income neighborhoods to the most vulnerable population between ages of 0 to 5 years old. These areas are characterized by violence and lack of public infrastructure. This project supplies a balanced and dignified diet to help improve psychomotor conditions of children for their later developments. We define some strategies used in the project that are part of the objectives of our workshop that allow us to build architecture in deteriorated areas to act and also to be used in multiple ways by their inhabitants, but especially, by allowing them to become an element of pride and transformation in the communities where they are inserted.

PERFORMANCE

The building is conceived as a visible structure, a landmark building, representing a symbol of the neighborhood, as a primary element of the area, which by its form is different from the context that surrounds it, with no context and urban planning this will become an agglutinating element of pride for the community. The image of the building refers to the geography of the region, rather than an object. We intend to develop an architectural landscape building that is related to the geography and topography, where it is inserted. We find rules of organization to develop projects that promote a "new natural contract” by reformulating the relationship between figure and background, an approach in search of alternatives capable of promoting that “new natural contract” in tune with a landscape and a natural order. The modules are implemented as a field of three-petalled flowers that are chained and distributed, allowing maximum use of the lot area designed for the preschool, an open project, with yards that are connected with the interior-exterior in a smooth way.

bottom of page