Butanta Community Center

Project idea

Butanta Community is an undergoing proposal for a mixed-use permeable structure, composed by public library and residential program, in order to connect the existing city to a new park, never before open to public. This building is focused in material optimization processes and lightweight structures to generate the smallest footprint possible and the lightest visual impact to the city.

Project description

The idea of the project is to connect the built city and the native forest of Instituto Butantan through a light and permeable structure, physically and visually. The program consists of an urban park, a library and apartments for young and elderlies, in order to create a space in the avenue that is constantly occupied. Its geometry was organized in a way that it opens in front of the forest, creating aisles of views between the Corifeu avenue and the Butantan Institute, attracting pedestrians to its interior and providing a view that was lost before.

Technical information

A ETFE roofing that initiates as a vertical translucent wall between the avenue and the privad site little by little raises and twists becoming an access marquee for the complex was designed. By that it was possible to create an interior-exterior visual permeability, specially during the night, when the complex develops the job of illuminating and creating a always occupied space in a desert avenue. Under metallic “stilts” that raise it from the ground, spaces of social interaction are raised, opened to its own residents occupy, just for enjoying the shadows or the view.
About the materiality, pre fabricated concrete and steel was used in order to design a building that is less harmful to the environment and with a better cost benefit.