two volumes
program: performance + water hall
location: barcelona, spain
instructor: merce berengue
design team: julia eve peña + luis fernando muñoz
barcelona architecture center, spring 2017
There are energies that are tangible and intangible that exist within a city. In Barcelona these energies are unavoidable and intrinsic to the city. Our intervention consists of two volumes placed on the beach, each with individual but congruent characteristics. The driver of our design was finding a way to connect the site, the people, the beach, art, and water in the context of Barcelona and these ever-present energies. One volume is related to water, the other is related to air, and both try to showcase the forces, both physical and invisible that exist on our site. Analyzing our site we found that there is a lack of a prominent art presence along the coast of Barcelona. So we conceived our proposal as a new way to experience swimming, and redefining what it means to merge art and leisure. Our proposal consists of five main components. A ground that connects the extents of our site, and blurs the lines of the plot, as well as activates the areas adjacent to the beach. The ground was abstracted from the Barcelona coastline and the movement of the waves. The second component is the heart of our buildings, housed within the hearts are the main vertical circulation and structural elements. These are driven by conceiving a new way to make circulation a discrete promenade through these volumes. Then we insert the objects that activate the interiors, one a large performance hall, and the other a pool for leisurely swimming. We then cover these with with a skeleton that gives our envelope its form that was derived from manipulations driven from the site conditions and programmatic functions. The skeleton is then enveloped with a skin made from the textile of sails. This deepens the connection to the beach and translucency allows to bring the interior affect to the beach and give whispers of the activities that occur within the volumes. The affective lights in our proposal directly correlate to a relationship with the sand, the water, the sky, and each other. They shift from yellows, to greens, to blues, depending on time of day and the season of the year. These volumes are integrated in the site with deep roots, both physical and energetic.