International Competition

Shortlisted

In the beginning there was thunder. A quiescence that crams in the heart of space, setting time and form for an ancient birth; the signal of a previous advent that forces its appearance in the middle of a darkened world. Fulminant, the horizontality of phenomenon takes place, violently falling on earth’s surface. In the origin of nights, from the cave, a loud clatter is perceived. The ones who hear it, cover themselves in the shelter of the cave. Drops of water fall rapidly from the stalagmite’s body into the saltpeter of the sand. In the community of fear, in the undetermined, fire is born, and new tremors rise in the shaking bodies, humid and cold.

One of them, takes in the posture of speech: to say is a tool of order and interpretation, a dispositive for appeasement. They speak around fire a series of fractures syllables, they take pigment and turn it over to the cave’s walls, drawing the shape of lightning. In doing so, the capacity to own is founded. The means to create what’s outside, within. The possibility to inhabit space, to make it sound. Abysses of time later, here we are. Gray scales of land cover once green-filled territories. Nature withers between miasma and dirt. Living in fixed spaces, we choke inside the walls that were supposed to let us be. But even so, in the middle of sound and fury, there’s a longing for outwardness. There is a rooted desire for finding spaces where bodies can vindicate ownership and agency. Free spaces that produce freer individuals.

What if, in the middle of Vale de Moses, we could construct such space? A space resembling that original pulse for creation and freedom that comes from a deeper dialogue between body and nature. A holistic space where individuals could create, and recreate, at the expense of their necessity and humor.

Our proposal was conceived as a big cover on the natural terrain, trying to invade the landscape in the least possible form. Instead of proposing 4 different cabins, our idea is to create a big flexible free space with the capacity to become itself what’s needed, when needed, without it being a fixed space. A kind of architecture that can grow, shrink, and mold itself at the user’s will. A floating cover that hovers on the raw terrain, much like a refuge. When inside, the mediation space will be a shelter from the weather, converting the structure into an extension of the outside. Our project integrates the local landscape creating a holistic proposal that responds to environment, to climate and to the user’s immediate context.

After studying context and existing structures in Vale de Moses, Portuguese architecture, traditions and History, we decided to reinterpret this pitched roof into a cover that was shaped with help of a bioclimatic study. Using different kinds of auxiliary software, we shaped this floating carcass into the most efficient angles that answer to precise coordinates and climate conditions of the site gathering the most solar energy as possible and creating different methods of thermal efficiency such as the chimney that works solar-powered in summer and as a regular firepit in the winter, this way eliminating artificial climate regulators.

The overhang of the mirror-glass inside volume was carefully studied based on the solar angle that radiates in the site and that will affect the structure throughout the year, giving shade in the working hours of the summer and letting in sunlight in the cold days of winter. The project proposes a sustainable water system based on rain recollection pools, gravity, and the reuse of grey waters into a self-sustaining pond that will make them reusable.

We believe that in the midst of animosity and turmoil, free spaces such as this should begin making an entrance in the everyday relation between bodies and spaces. This way, when thunder appears, shelter will be available, and community will thrive again.

Text by: Emilio Valencia