LA USINA DE IDEAS

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

Project idea

The project is located in the city of Monteros, Tucuman province, Argentina. In the analysis we observe the potential of a place denied or underdeveloped by the city. Potential that runs through it and can be a trigger for the urban treatment of sustainable characteristics with a proposal for bike paths, eco buses, among others.

Choosing the "El Tejar" stream as the common thread to tell the history of our city in a linear park, complementing it with buildings for the development of innovation and technology centers, a potential environmental education center and park ranger school, enhancing the value of the sports club, all this in pursuit of sports, technological, cultural development and above all generation of job sources for our youth. As well as an urban treatment with equipment, vegetation, public bathrooms, lookout towers to watch the sunsets. Work on the creation of quality public spaces for the use of all monterizos and monterizas in inclusive spaces for recreation, entrepreneurship and development of activities typical of the environment, typical of our citizens. An open city, a city for everyone.

Formally, we let ourselves be carried away by elements that are present in the collective memory of a place and we use them as a reference when designing, in order to create something that is easy to recognize by people or users of a place. In our case, we took some elements present in the Ñuñorco sugar mill, such as the sugarcane crane, the sugar mill itself, or the road bridge accessing the Roman River. That we consider forms or elements with a lot of cultural and historical weight and that are easy to recognize by all the monterizos and monterizos.

Project description

The Plant is only one part of a macro-scale project, it contemplates 2 contiguous blocks that go from the municipal nursery to the next block to the north. We think of it as a walk with walkways over the treetops, passing through the greenhouses until we reach the towers that lead us to the complex. Play with the senses of the visitors, produce sensations.

"La Usina" is a Community Cultural Center that has Randa Workshops and local Handicrafts, painting and sculpture workshops, cooking workshops, multimedia room, nursery, "Pedemontano" museum, "la caldera" open-air amphitheater, "Victor Arnau" popular open-air cinema , "Tulio Ottonello" Library, "Rodo Bulacio" showroom, an auditorium baptized by us as "Los de Monteros" referring to the beloved folkloric group of our city. And other spaces that tell the story of our Monteros at every step.

Technical information

As for the materiality, it is resolved with a concrete base that gives it the sensation of progress on the stream. The tubes are resolved with cantilevered metal structures and glazed enclosures with perforated metal skin. A combination of dry and wet techniques that gave us the results we were looking for as the intention of the project, lightness, flight.

In the technical and structural part we find ourselves with the challenge of looking for that sensation of elements that fly over the stream and over the Nursery. The chosen material evokes something very important in our history, such as "Ñuñorco" Sugar Mill, the highway bridge giving it an imprint of progress and vanguard in the development of the project.