URBAN SHADOW

Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Tucumán

Project idea

What is the intervention that would answer best to what the contest proposes: the value of a building with enough historical and sentimental richness for the inhabitants of Ouaga as for the inhabitants of Burkina Faso?
This contest searches to reflect upon the challenges of valuing a patrimony, keeping the architecture that recognizes and expresses its history safe, and at the same time, it gets sustainability.
The proposal takes this statement in its urbanistic levels and of architectonic designs of interiors. It proposes a treatment of the set to the scale of a city, through generating a linear park, different green spaces and a new order of circulation.It proposes a recovery of the amphitheater basing it on delivering its main function, preserving its structure with an intervention on its physical limits, its accessibility and treatment of its cover. Out of this decisions, the intention to give life to a building without use is born, from different perspectives that you get by running through its interiors, and also, through the spaces that take into consideration different functions subordinate to it.
Finally, achieving contemporary architecture con its local identity.

Project description

The "Urban Shadow", as the name indicates, arises in response to a problem that severely affects the place: extreme temperatures and excessive heat.
The idea of ​​this prototype is to provide a large urban scale shadow through a system capable of generating it and also allowing the development of outdoor activities, being able to protect them from the sun.

On the other hand, we have planned a way of intervention in the amphitheater, respecting its function, without modifying its essence.
We created an East-West access ramp, in response to its lack of universal accessibility (replacing the existing stairs that save large lights without stairway rest), thus achieving the possibility of moving more easily and allowing a greater flow of people.
We also have adjusted the physical limits that separate the amphitheater from the whole, in order to generate a more direct relationship with its context and to break with the "barriers" that surround it. This is achieved through the integration of the ramp with the environment, which is in permanent relationship through it’s visuals and vegetation, joining the plot of the urban shadow.

Technical information

We believe that the architecture is intrinsically linked to the local conditions of the place.

For this reason, we mainly encourage the use of local materials: implementation of adobe bricks, with interventions by local builders sharing their knowledge about the different techniques:
how to work bamboo, brick and thatched roof. Later, these traditional techniques can be combined with
innovations.

Vernacular constructions began to disappear with the advancement of contemporary techniques. So we would like to revalue them by combining contemporary and vernacular techniques, reinterpreting the history of Burkina Faso.