PALACE OF MUSIC, VIÑA DEL MAR, CHILE.
MEMORY:
The design of the hall is influenced by the scale of the city of Viña and it recalls the geography of the surrounding hills.
The public space, as a study of a square was an urban need.
The place connects the city centre with outlying areas, lending to the music hall the significance of being a gateway to the city.
The building is a geographic accident, it belongs to the landscape.
I try to explore simultaneously the ambiguity, density and translucence of material, to create the place as much as it responds to it.
Its eruptive "volumen" standing between the landscape, the river and the surrounding hills. Take the forces in the context.
More than a preoccupation for a "finished work" one of the main concerns in the architectural workshop has been the holistic character of the proposal and the acknowledgement of the complex diversity of its work.
The holistic approach that we try to instil in our students has to make itself evident at any stage of the designing process.
At the beginning of this stage, two short exercises were developed. These exercises had to propose opposing but complementary architectural items, the virtual and the concrete. The ethereal on the surface and the excavated solid.
In the first exercise, after choosing the site and density of the project, the student had to propose an "excavated" architectural space.
This presupposes working with "pure" space devoid of architectural elements and with the roll of natural light.
The second one has to define, in a given square, and with an economy of means, its spatial nature, emphasising in this manner, the virtual definition of the space.
I think that the projects selected on this occasion were positively influenced, from beginning to end by this experience, moving away from stereotypes and expending the range of resources.