Ephemeral Installation "Threshold Ocho Quebradas"
The project of the “Ocho Quebradas” Pavilion in Los Vilos (Chile) was born after its assignment by the University of Finis Terrae and located within the housing development project 8³, where 8 construction phases, consisting of 8 houses each, will be developed in succession. The assignment consists concretely in generating an entrance, a threshold for the complex of houses that will occupy the second and third phase, planned respectively by eight Japanese and Chilean architecture offices: O + H , Junya Ishigami, Atelier Bow Wow – Momoyo Kajima & Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Akihisa Hirata, Kazuyo Sejima, Kengo Kuma, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, HLPS arquitectos, Alejandro Aravena, Cristian Undurraga, Felipe Assadi, Max Nuñes, WMR arquitectos, Izquierdo Lehmann – Luis Izquierdo & Antonia Lehmann and Guillermo Acuña.
The project had to then be constructed by a group of professors and students of the UFT in four days.
The territory is limited by the coast facing the Pacific Ocean, a desert of rocks and sand and an ancient railway blurred by time and abandonment, the only trace of human intervention in the landscape. The pavilion is implanted in this context taking as a reference the two fixed horizons in the landscape: the thin line generated by the ocean, still and invariable, and the blurred and artificial topography of the ancient railway.
When inserting the project into this area, we seek a direct relation with the first human construction: the railway. In this way, the two objects reinforce each other. The ancient track prepares a base to support the pavilion and provides a connection to the ground.
The ocean draws an infinite horizontal line which marks a visual reference. This horizontal perception together with the suggestive image of the railway, draw towards a lineal and infinite movement.
The third element of the landscape which the pavilion takes advantage of is the wind: essential condition to define the construction of the mechanism of this machine.
Graham Bell, at the end of the XIX century, studied the movement generated by the wind through the observation of kites, which flew over 40m high. He obtained, through geometry, a unity formed by the ensemble of individual modules. If we punch holes in a kite formed by one unique piece, the kite loses its qualities, on the other hand if the same object is made by a combination of pieces generating a unity, the kite may be damaged but will not lose its function.
Exploring this concept of Material Unity (singular and plural at the same time) , the pavilion is developed through a geometry that works with the wind and, like a fractal, constructs a wheel like shape. A total of 760 equal pieces intertwine between the radius and the tangent with 7 different angles.
Leonardo da Vinci, as early as XV century, during the Italian Renaissance, studied the possibility of perpetual movement through the observation of pendulums. The project takes this reflection into consideration and generates a perpetual movement of finite distance through a mechanism of gearwheels using the force of the wind. The motor wheel, the supporting wheel and the crazy wheel, each one inside the other, allow this displacement, finite in space, infinite in time.
Through this principle the pavilion draws its space in a finite itinerary delimited by the territory. The object defines a threshold between two points on the railway, an entrance for the new residential complex. Two points, 25 meters apart, result from the mechanisms and measures of its construction, of the unity and the aggregation.
In the context the pavilion converts itself in a kaleidoscope, a moving wheel with a diameter of 6 meters perceived through the shadows forming the material unity, the movement and the sun.
A pavilion made of wood, a material resistant to the climatic changes and the passing of time; a necessary material considering the construction process as a design factor. A professional-academic project where construction comes close to the university environment, generating a way of learning through experience.
