Architecture Final Project

|identities|

 

The project consist of a Recycling Center in a neighborhood of Vigo called Coia. It is an answer to a strategy which seeks to join the neighborhood, promote the cooperation, the dialogue, the creativity and the personal development, using as an excuse the creation and rehabilitation of objects.

The question that links both the project as the thesis is this one X “How to cultivate identity?”

Well, I understand that identity is the awareness that a person or a community have about itself and makes it different from others. I think that the current situation of “hiperconsumerism” has, not only, generated urban, social and environmental problems ... it has led to a global one: the loss of identity.

In my thesis I study how to cultivate the common and the individual identity, one way consist of trying to work in group because dialogue leads to creativity, creativity leads to differentiation and this to identity. I would like to try this kind of solution in my project, so the first I did was to find a place with all the said problems.

I decided to work on the working-class neighborhood named Coia. Coia, as many other social housing neighborhoods along Europe, was created to house all the workers from the rural areas of Vigo expected to work in companies like Citroen and the Shipyards. It is an industrial neighborhood, and like any neighborhood of these characteristics, the social problems and the loss of identity are emphasized. Firstly, in order to recognize more clearly this problems I made a enquire to the population; and I realized, first of all, how the neighborhood was damaged and secondly that this affected the feeling of Community of its residents.

They didn’t feel proud of living in Coia, they defined their streets based on the dangerous or on the drug level and they felt marginalized from the rest of the city (which they actually need because of their lack of endowments as it’s shown in this map) Moreover, as it is shown in this model that represents the neighborhood, the deeper the hole is, the more damaged in all senses the point was. On the other hand is a neighborhood with many potential, Coia was designed leaving many green and public areas, now privatized by the neighbors with fences or walls due to the danger of the area.

My strategy begins by defining the main road that cross the neighborhood, which, according to many people define it and, due to its gardens it’s an activated area, along with a new square, that now is a claim for the rest of the city. Then I defined the most critical points, the most degraded, and treated them as potentially because if they could be regenerated they could have some small area of influence, or could be combined together (sharing applications, sharing designs…) and this way it’s how I try to break with the longitudinal view of the neighborhood and try to open it horizontally to the road. This would be possible through some interventions, some of which could include buildings, sometimes with just a good design or integrating other existing public spaces by assigning a clear use. Here is the point where my strategy links with the building that has been developed. The building is one of these points, these one in particular.
 

Moreover, I want the building to be, not only part of one of these interventions; I want it also to be what organized the rest of them and the necessary future interventions.

Following this process, I concluded that my building should work as this graphic show. Should be a place where citizens could meet, first of all, to take decisions about what to do with these points in the neighborhood while they learn how to improve them thank to some teachers. On the other hand, the building will receive objects (from particulars, from shops and business, and materials from industries that don’t want them anymore because they are, for instance, about to expire) So, finally the citizens could do this improvements themselves. How this helps? Being part of a project, promoting dialogue and creativity, learning a job, interacting with each other, being part of the world…

 I focused the building in wooden objects, but the facilities are accessible to other kinds of objects, as metals, plastics…Summing up, the building is something like a community/working center that for the rest of the city works as a recycling center. I chose this particular plot (between residential buildings) for two reasons. Firstly because is one of the plots that the residents marked as the most deteriorated and secondly because it’s in the opposite side of the square that is activating the other part of the neighborhood.

The basic concept of the building is to promote citizen participation. That is the reason why the building should be seen as the climax of a project that could start from far below and develop in four phases.

 

 The first phase of the building should be to rebuild the square, which is now a parking lot. Making sure, at least, it stop being one dangerous point in the neighborhood and it could invite the town meeting.

 

Then, as a second phase, certain areas or enclosed spaces (like this) will be provided, so that they could start working there with the first ideas taken from the decision-making process.

The third phase starts, when the budget of the initiative is greater, it should incorporate more specialized and spacious work areas, but to avoid breaking the square transition and invite further cooperation between all, the building has been buried, leaving these volumes to keep the clear relationship between the work areas and the square, along with the ramp and the central area, which is an ambiguous space that strengthens the exterior-interior relationship, where people can express opinions, participate, work or simply pass through.

 For this phase of specialization a 5 meter pillars structure has been chosen in order to get as more flexibility as possible while it helps to compose the outside shape of the faÇade, that looks like 5metres wooden boxes of different heights and colors. In addition, the building would function as a chain around the meeting and taking decisions space so that what is being done is visible all the time. The working process starts here, where the material gets in an area mostly dedicated to the storage and the first touches, after the object gets in more specialized area, where the different parts of the rehabilitation process are divided in these zones, leaving here enough room to keep working and storing. This are the brushing zone, the cutting and trimming area, the  washing zone and application of anti moth products (that need to be open so it’s a patio), and this one is where the color or the tapestry are applied. So the finished object ends here, it can be carried to another point in the neighborhood, it can be part of the exhibition area (that is this one or the central area, or it can finish in the store)

The fourth stage corresponds to the construction of the cover, that is, firstly, the answer to the demand for covered public spaces. It is also understood as the latest phase, because this cover is actually a symbol, a structure that marks the space below it, a landmark of social union, an highly identificatory object, so that the neighbors could look out for the day to see what happens below and at night a red light is projected in the square and into the neighborhood.

So…How to cultivate identity?

With this work I attempt to give an answer to the loss of identity thought an environmental awareness and the social union. What this project proposes is just a push, just set a small foundation on which a suburb of Vigo can work. But it is a foundation that tries to invent a new model of education and work. It is a foundation that seeks to change the fictitious needs and satisfactions created by the hyperconsumerism. A foundation that makes people grown individually as they make their neighborhood grown as well.