The architecure has traditionally insured the task of organising the space of “man” and its culture. It has always considered that its main goal was to protect the human being form its environment through the construction of a shelter that would ensure protection against multiple circumstances, either bad weather, savage creatures, or even possible invasions of unknown civilisations. This has been always like that or at least this is what we’ve been told from the beginning of modernity. Architecture would turn more and more sofisticated and refined the more it moved away from its environment and turned into a more isolated and autonomous element.
But it is not difficult to guess how this feeling that possitions in self-contained areas nature and culture, originated in the modes of scientific knowledge and in relationships based on domination and competence, seems not to work anynmore nowadays. The proliferation of concepts such as Antropocene, Capitalocene or Chthulucene, depending on the precision on which we would like to refer to the present moment, are a clear example of that. The Global Warming, the disminution of biodiversity, the loss of forest mass, or the resource depletion makes us responsible of a natural scenario that is inseparable from the human. The planet is nowadays a material production that is a result of the human actions.
Solstice is the launch of a post-natural architecture through the design of a multitude of material systems, that turns the project into an open laboratory of exploration of new narratives, both technical and aesthetical. The goal of the proposal is to give a space of shadow and rest to an isolated countryhouse in Riudellots de la Selva, Girona. This space, despite being used basically in the summer period, when the house is being occupied by its inhabitants that use it as a second residence, is conceived as an element that will cohabitate in the garden and the landscape of Riudellots during the whole year making this circumstance the engine of the project.
In this way, the pavilion is an opportunity to work with shapes and materials that are not usually from common usage in architecture, but, that in this case help to build a mediation between owners and garden, and at the same time it invites the users to a corporal and sensitive experience. Flowers, branches or stones collected onsite share importance with other materials “tipically architectural” as the wood, the strings, the plastic elements or the foam to configurate the space.
A structure of wood, assembled by 16 vertical sections and 4 horizontal sections, milled with a CNC machine, supports a 6cm porexpan golden roof, and an interior ceiling made of white foam. As transition elements between interior and exterior there are 16 capitals made out of plakene worked on the origami techinique, and in order to protect the interior from the prevailing wind there is an exterior curtain made by woven nylon threads. Finally, on top of the roof, there are a series of holes that filter the light through the interior.
