port

medialab

valencia dipl. thesis-2011

In the outskirts of the city, nearby the soon to be demolished former main hospital, this urban proposal offers a new active center to act as a substitute.

At the urbacn scale, there’s a reinterpretation of block housing in order to densify and to give some homogeneity to this very chaotic neighbourhood.

The research center I designed is devoted to both production and research in the Arts field.

Its situation, peripheric albeit just a short walk from the Modern Art Museum (IVAM) was key in deciding its program and volumetric configuration.

It works mainly as a cultural container, the interiors are structured by functional strips in which installation systems, restrooms and other auxiliar uses are included. A series of thin columns following a strictly gridded plan are used both for structural reasons and as a way to create different spaces.

The volume, carved to generate three different pieces, responding to three different uses (library and ateliers, conference venue and cafeteria and offices), opens up to a central patio which acts as an open air lobby.

the red flood valencia urban installation

The first idea came up from a simple observation while walking around the central area of the river park.

In this part, one of the first ones to be designed, every function envisaged has its space, its closed, “gated� space. There are places to practice sports, places for temporary events, a cafeteria surrounded by bushes, a cycling path, several pedestrian ways and a playground; all of them strictly kept appart from the others.

The most striking aspect was, for us, the playground case, completely surrounded by bushes, and border creating urban furniture

elements, the place devoted to children is basically nothing but a big sandbox with three identical rope pyramids as only attraction. This is surprising as, given the few parks existing in Valencia, and hence the lack of opportunities for urban kids to spend time outdoors, one would think the biggest and most central green area in town could be used as a place for them to play without the many restrictions they are imposed everywhere else, primarly because of the danger generated by the car presence.

The river urban planning (at least this part’s) reproduces excatly the same patterns of closed space after another as everywhere else in the city, with a severity that is hard to understand in a large park.

From this very easy and basic perceptive idea, we thought our art project should try to resolve this problem. We would break the inner limits of the river, to create, not a homogenous space (as that would be as unnatural as the current situation) but a connexion between areas and functions and social groups.

For instance, and this is just a very practical example, the playgroung area is separated from the nearest cafeteria by several bush borders, a pedestrian way and a walking path; it is impossible to see what’s going on in any of these two areas from the paths, or from one to another.

Parents taking care of their kids (and any other care taker) can’t have a coffee while controlling the children. Or if one of the children wants an ice-cream, he can’t buy one by himself, even if both areas are very close, because the visibility is completely interrupted.

To a larger scale, and much more theoretical approach, we realized that there’s a constant lack of freedom coming from the way cities are planned, public space tends to be incerdibly fragmented and organized in an unflexible way, there’s no a fluid connection between zones and every activity is enclosed in its own ghetto. Living under these conditions can prove to be very alienating.

That’s how we realized our intervention should be something that could expand and spread into the city, connecting every bit turning it all into a multifunctional area, and enhancing the main quality of public space: everything can happen, everyone is invited (as an opposition to private space and its restictions).

Back to the starting point, what we propose is to use and subvert the existing element in the playground: the piramyds.

Prolonging the ropes outside the delimited area, the other spaces would be trans-

formed into a playground and its festive ideals would conquer everything.

For the real intevention we invested into the cheapest materials available yet of similar aspect to the ropes used in the piramyds: thin red rope, the resistant element, and larger paper red ribbons, not resistant but cheaper and much more visible. It seemed important to us that our intervention merge with the existing structure in order to make our statement easier to understand by people.

On the first takes we connected the piramyds to the Calatrava’s bridge and to the outer part of the river (the Alameda), sadly the amount of tape available didn’t allowed the structure to be dense enough to be understood (or visible).

We soon realized (albeit, not soon enough probably, as by then we had already tried a couple of times) that a bigger intervention like the one we planned at the beginning would require thousands of meters of rope.

We focused then on the areas closer to the playground.

And repeated the installation several times in order to improve it, which also allowed us to observe different kinds of interaction. The one we mostly expected was the kids playing with our installation and inventing new games out of it. Some teenagers then asked us to let them use the ropes as elements for their parkour* practice. We expected having negative feedback from the children care takers, as nets of ropes can prove to be slightly dangerous, but they were rather happy as they think the existing games available for the kids (the piramyds) are very limited, dangerous for the younger and in the end, a little boring, giving children very narrow

options and few space for imagination.

* Parkour or l’art du déplacement. Is where participants jump, vault, and climb over obstacles in a fluid manner. It is a non-competitive way to move fluidly despite ones environment. The object of parkour is to get from one place to another using only the human body and the objects in the environment. The obstacles can be anything in one’s environment, but parkour is often seen practiced in urban areas. A recent convention of parkour philosophy has been the idea of “human reclamation”.

The founder of parkou movement, David Belle said : “the whole town was there for us; there for parkour. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children.”

city limits : this is where the city ends valencia urban wandering

The idea of the project comes from a urban accident. I noticed one of the streets in my neighbourhood had no end, it ended where the city did, the perspective was clean and no building interfered.

This means I could actually see a blank space at the end of the street and watching carefully (or maybe imagining) the horizon line.

In most cities that wouldn’t have been impressive at all, but Valencia´s urban fabric is complex, it’s not the result of a single plan but rather a mix of contradictory plans, informal growth and former independent villages. In that area (which includes historic neighborhoods) this is the only street that goes straight from the center to the outskirts.Another particularity of the city: its flatness makes disorientation very easy, it’s hard to comprehend its size, you’d need to get to the top of a tower to be able to look at its limits. From inside, Valencia could be unlimited and eternal, giving an opressive feeling, like if there were no way out, no evidence of the external.

On another plan, there’s something particular in straight ahead walks, like standing on a moving walkway, the surroundings just scroll and keep on changing while the direction remains the same.

The walker is tracing a section through the city and is able to perceive the urban layers in their whole complexity.

The size of the buildings varies, its style, the street section changes abruptly, the pedestrians flux is different from the commercial and business center to the residential areas and the yet to be build outskirts, from the early century bourgeois appartment buildings to the social housing, and the hotels and motorway

wastelands kitchen

helsinki workshop tutoring http://easakitchen012.tumblr.com/

disechos12’

valencia workshop

stools built out of discarded materials.

buck is back urban installation unrealized workshop proposal helsinki urban furniture

Cosmic nature The geometry in nature is the end result of invisible forces influencing matter.

Nowhere is this reality more obvious than in the geometry of a snowflake. The geometry of snowflakes reflects the invisible energy grid of our planet.

The Ancients, (builders of Pyramids) had a knowledge of Quantum Physics that far exceeds our present day, pyramids are designed to this geometry.

An introduction to Fuller’s theories Synergetics can be defined as the exploratory strategy of starting with the whole.

It was in the 1940s that Buckminster Fuller developed a series of spherical models which embodied the synergetic theory within geometry.

In its broadest sense synergetics is Fuller's hypothesized coordinate system of Universe . Fuller's system of epistemography and mathematical-physics attempts to disclose how Nature actually operates --her ``operational mathematics.'' Fuller claimed that synergetics could be understood by children.

Buck’s interpretation Similar geodesic structures may be based upon the pattern of edges and vertices of certain platonic solids.

Such structures may be composed of struts of uniform length while having faces other than triangles such as pentagons or squares, or these faces may be subdivided by struts of other than the basic length. Both geodesic and non-geodesic structures can be derived similarly from the archimedean solids and catalan solids.

Triangles The triangle is considered the most stable of forms.

The 3 dimensional version of the triangle is the tetrahedron, and also the minimal system with the fewest possible points -four points make a primitive volume with an inside and an outside. The canonical tetrahedron has a volume of one.

Don't fight forces, use them. Buckminster Fuller Aggregation grid Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences.

Topology is the science of fundamental pattern and structural relationships of event constellations.

A pattern has an integrity independent of the medium by virtue of which you have received the information that it exists.

Each of the chemical elements is a pattern integrity. Each individual is a pattern integrity. The pattern integrity of the human individual is evolutionary and not static.

The proposal Using a single shape, a triangle measuring 60x60x60cm, as a generator for multiple volumes, we managed to create a system, allowing growth at any point, while maintaining the required needs of stability.

Having a unique pattern is also a way to standardize the building procedure which is key to accomplish the construction deadline aim: less than two weeks.

We propose a few possible extensions of this particular project: all of the furniture pieces designed can be expanded and enlarged, they can also be combined.

It is possible as well to interact with other workshops, offering the chance to improve the finishings by, for instance, making a colour study and painting the surfaces. Another option would be to reuse salvaged wood pieces instead of new boards.

Every structure is designed to enable different uses, even though their forms suggest certain actions they are flexible enough to allow unexpected interactions.

Basically, some of them are meant as spaces to sit down and relax or play, while the info-point offers surfaces to check or glue posters, maps, and other information.

woodworms trondheim europan10

A Linking up to the city

Blurring the railway barrier by creating a series of pathways connecting Svartlamoen to the city

B Getting back the heritage

Developping the bunker in two directions: ·as a cultural container: Kultimathale ·as a heritage remembrance: recovering the Uboot bunker original aesthetics, re-introducing the water as an indoor element.

C From terrain vague to surprise garden

The in between area used to be a no-man’s land, it will become a gigantic playground in neverending movement, constantly changing and expanding, bringing together generations.

The built architecture will remain subtle, nature and human activity will prevail.

D Tracks and trucks: a peaceful cohabitation

Heavy traffic will be redirected at the roundabout, the new transportation hub, outside the study area.

Strandveien roadwill be transformed into a small section street.

The harbour railway will be reduced to a single dead end track, ensuring the possibility for temporary storage of freight wagons.

Special paths will be created for pedestrians and bike users, even if the whole area will be devoted to them.

E Seapower to the people

Walkways will lead the citizens to the sea shore through a relaxing promenade. The harbour, while preserving its industrial activity could be integrated into urban life dynamics, offering new exploration paths.

F Urban façade H Urban-grid

The whole intervention is generated from a basic gridded pattern, following three main directions according to three urban referents: 1. Bunker DORA 2. strandveien 3. southern railway tracks

G Eco-city, Domesti-city

kitchens

different cities in europe http://smellingthekitchens. tumblr.com/ sel-iniciated photo research