We are interested in investigating the conformation of a physical space which, devoted to virtual connexions and information, becomes a real ‘meeting point’. We want to propose through architecture the confluence of ‘sites’ for both virtual and material social networks.
Information Technology has re-configured the human being and its social relationship. Information has unfurled communication spaces and has given depth and thickness to the frugal 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 our present that we usually enjoy and share in our homes and workplaces, where we spend our leisure and free times. These are spaces where re-invent the relationship between collective and private spaces, formation and information, communication and dialogue.
Only in counted occasions has architecture proposed a setting in which information and space 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 the building that sclerosises it. That generates an unavoidable obsolescence that underlines it contemporariness 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 study how to propose a pluripotential container where all flows of users and visitors may enter, where citizens may interact among others. That is, architecture that holds active social ‘software’.
We propose to do less architecture to make more ‘gathering events’ 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 place, 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 space will be re-proposed. 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. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... NAME OF THE PROJECT SOCIALCYBERCENTRE MACARENA TRES HUERTAS ARCHITECTS/AUTHORS MEDIOMUNDO arquitectos MARTA PELEGRÍN+FERNANDO PÉREZ PROGRAMME SOCIALCYBERCENTRE SITE José Díaz Street. Sevilla COMPETITION DATE 2009 RECOGNIZIONS 1º PRICE PHASES 2009 COMPETITION, 2009 EXECUTING PROJECTS, 2010 CONSTRUCTION contractor EUROCON S. L. construcciones CATHEGORY SOCIAL FACILITY SUPERFICIE 410 m2 PROMOTOR Sevilla City Government Co-Designer Architect Mario Ortega Gómez (MOG-Arquitectos ) Other contributions José Antonio Lubiano (cost control) Tedeco Ingenieros (Structure Calculation), Elías Pérez Lema (Installations) Fabio Orizia Pérez, Raúl Elías Bramón, Silvia Casitas Consultants Fabio Orizia Pérez, Raúl Elías Bramón, Silvia Casitas Montero, Ana López Ortego, Harold Guyaux (office team) Translation: Vincent Morales.
