Lantern Park

Project idea

• Urban situation: The main problem in the sector is the lack of urban connectivity, generating the need to open streets for circulation.
"Order the Disorder": at an urban level, the project proposes a break in the middle of a high-density area; it seeks to create a set of ordered buildings within a chaotic urban context.

• Urban proposal: Noticing the lack of public spaces in the area of action, we propose that the project fulfil a dual role: apple's lung and embassy.
The public space is built through the building, qualifying the new circulation road, treating it as a green corridor, conserving the existing vegetation and granting urban life to a depressed area.

Project description

• Formal generation: Search for formal and spatial purity.
• Use of exact geometries: volumes and pure forms in "boxes" way.
• Movement in three axes: An unifying plane is proposed respect to the topography, and from there it is raised or lowered, solving like this the project with these three gestures.
• Proyectual genesis: the project is conceived as a set of volumes: low buildings linked by a single roof (green terrace), from which volumes emerge, that articulate and connect the public space with the closed areas placed underground.
• The building operates under a semi-public space: "The park" as a new green space extends over the building, giving the idea of continuity respect to the context.
• Landscape architecture: The project proposes to conserve and improve the landscape quality of the site, respecting the natural environment.
• Design of the urban landscape: the building is inserted into the environment through the scale, the use of landscape technologies and their design.
• Parque plaza: The building seeks to contain spaces and information, and to project itself abroad, transmitting the image and culture of one country in another. Sense of refuge and familiarity both in its interior and exterior spaces.
• Urban lanterns: at night, the set of buildings illuminates the public space, projecting with transparency and functioning as urban equipment.

Technical information

•Green roof: bioclimatic and sustainable criteria, reduction of thermal transmittance; continuity with the landscape.
Due to the concentration of buildings and vehicular traffic, life in cities has become insane. Cars and heating consume the scarce oxygen of today and produce harmful substances in abundance. Huge surfaces of concrete and asphalt lead to overheating of the atmosphere of urban areas and lead to the dirt and particles of harmful substances that are deposited on the floor, swirl up the heat generated and spread over the entire city.
Urban parks could decisively improve the polluted climate of the cities: the air would be purified, the swirls of dust would be considerably reduced and the temperature variations and the percentages of humidity would decrease.
The green roofs, besides influencing the improvement of the city's climate, also optimize the thermal insulation, the heat storage of the building, and its acoustic insulation. They are considered, in the long term, more economical than conventional covers.
This particularity of the project leads, in essence, to an ecological and economic construction:
• Decrease paved surfaces,
• produces oxygen and absorbs CO2,
• it filters dust and dirt particles from the air and absorbs harmful particles,
• it prevents overheating of the ceilings and with it the swirls of dust diminish,
• reduces the temperature variations of the day - night cycle and
decreases the variations of humidity in the air.
Also:
• it has a long useful life, (if it was executed correctly),
• it works as thermal insulation,
• it protects the rooms located under the roof from the intense solar rays of the summer,
• it reduces the sound passage from the outside,
• it absorbs rain, so it relieves the sewer system.
At last but not least:
• the wild herbs on the green roof generate pleasant aromas,
• It is aesthetic and positively influences the good mood and the distension of people.

Co-authors

Authors: Jorge Dumas & Daniela Orlando