Architecture Office: ESCULPIR EL AIRE
Lead Architect: JOSÉ ÁNGEL RUIZ-CÁCERES
A NEW DESIGN RESPONSE TO COVID
The project for 'The Light Pavilion' is born of offering new answers –transforming primitive architectural concepts– on the basis of the new questions raised by the new life situation experienced in relation to Covid: what is it that we are and what will allow us to continue to be so through our experiences?
AN EXPERIENCE OF NEW SENSATIONS
‘The Light Pavilion' is a conceptual construction that mainly works with white, offering a pure piece that transforms the Light as it passes through and allows the air to move freely. It is a small building that is offered as a Pavilion-Restaurant Terrace to enable new space experiences in an environment of culinary encounters, where Light is perceived differently during the day than at night when the artificial lighting thrills us –through the skin of the architecture– as if it were a magic trick.
ENHANCING THE VISUAL, BUT PRIMARILY THE TACTILE
The confinement helped us to remember that both open spaces and ventilation, as well as the importance of the sense of Touch, are essential to our life experiences. By means of this project, the visual aspects of architecture (open diagonals, interdependence of open-closed / indoor-outdoor spaces) and also its tactile aspects are re-emphasised, providing 'geometries of interiority perception' where the skin textures of the architecture dialogue with the skin of the users along the formal manipulation of matter.
THE FLUIDITY OF SPACE
The Light Pavilion operates with the joint fluidity of exterior and interior space, proposing a new experiential space that is structured by means of a sequence of interrelated spatial episodes that link the human scale with the scale of the surroundings and also with the climatic and environmental aspects of the place –angle of the sun (solar incidence), natural ventilation, perspiration through the skin, temperature and humidity, etc.
A GEOMETRY OF FLOWS
The final geometry of the Pavilion is obtained by materialising the minimum essential construction elements that make possible the double flow of movement that takes place in this specific open landscape: the first, using the layout of a main pedestrian route for the entry and exit of users arriving from the adjacent car park; the second, throughout the layout of the routes established by the waiters from the kitchen of the annexed restaurant to the work spaces of the Pavilion.
A LIGHT SKIN
The solid and heavy walls of the usual constructions have been transformed into light skins that transpire light and air in a filtered and subtle way –as if they were textile elements– through the relationship of superposition proposed between two parallel white metallic sheets that have been manipulated by folding and perforating –separated by means of an interior metallic structure lacquered in black–, in the same way that our skin does with the light and air that envelop us.
