Bachelor and Thesis Design Project 2014
Location: Machachi, Ecuador
The performing and visual arts center is located in Machachi, Ecuador. The concept of the project is based on the strengthening of the city´s identity and its population, but also the development and preservation of the cultural and natural heritage. The main conflict that the project analyses and pretend to solve is the progressive loss of the rich heritage of the city that is caused by the vulnerable identity of its habitants. Therefore, the architectonical object was designed based on the statement of “ the enhancement of the city´s cultural and natural heritage in order
to encourage the developement of the most vulnerable population which would improve their life´s quality.”
The main strategy used to design the urban plan was to develop a circuit that connects inherited stations represented by different projects. The leading purpose of the project is to provide and educative space for children and disable people in the specific subject of performative and visual arts.
The axis of the architectonical program is the arts school, but is complemented by the public spaces like the theater and the cinema. The program of the project is divided in four areas: educative, exhibition, meeting and health. These areas are connected by an empty space (courtyard) that crosses vertically the building, not only relating all the spaces visually, but also providing light and air to them, which are basic elements in architecture.
Security + Citizenship: National Workshop 2012 PUCE
Collaboration with:
MIshell Gavilanes, Santiago Granda and Belén Argudo
Location: Quito, Ecuador
The main urban and architectonic strategy used against insecurity during the design process of this academic project was the rehabilitation and improvement of the public space through the generation of of an artistic, permeable, welcoming place where the users would be able to enhance their skills through different kind of artistic and technical workshops, but also to invigorate a public environment where safety is created through a dynamic cohabitation of the space. The place found to develop this project is an abandoned house with a significant historic value. The proposal is to rehabilitate this space enhancing its spatial heritage, but also to connect it to the city through an open green space where the activities encouraged through the workshops will stimulate a cultural and artisitic exhange.
This design project was developed within the frame of an academic workshop focused on the relationship between architecture and place. The place, in this case, is a small town in the Ecuadorian highlands where the main activity is the agricultural production.The program includes educative spaces to encourage agricultural research, spaces for the production of local products and a place of commercialization. The main design strategy is based on maintaining continuous green fields while generating spaces for the research practice: both outdoors and indoors. Therefore, the diagram used to design the architecutre was the continuity of both empty spaces and built ones allowing a connection between the different activities and a feeling of openess around the building and the external spaces.
International Workshop 2013
Collaboration with: Alejandra Duque
Location: Vienna, Austria
This work explores the artistic possibilities of imperceptible elements in the city such as: limits. The physical elements found as ‘limits’ were: dividing walls, showcases and retaining walls, but also there were other and more important elements we took into account: people and their emotional and social barriers. Hence, the main purpose of this project is to show people as art and art as a reflection of themselves. The pieces proposed are several sculptures spread around the city limits that attempt to provoke the observer through three main acts.
Academic Project 2011
Location: Quito, Ecuador
San Juan House-Atelier explores the relationship between living and working spaces of a young architect. Located in a traditional historic neirborghood of Quito, the project has only one element which link the different spaces: the internal patio which goes across every level.
Academic Project 2012
Location: Bolívar-Carchi, Ecuador
The main purpose of this architectonical intervention is to reactivate the cultural and artistic life of the people at the town of Bolívar. The objective was to generate a space that could enable and encourage the users to take advantage of the public space as a place of artistic expression and cultural exchange. Therefore, the space proposed was an interactive gallery where also gastronomical and commercial activities could take place. The design concept was to create an ‘antagonistic’ space with the opposite characteristics of the traditional central square, which up to that moment was not working as the best cultural element. Hence, one of most relevant features of the new space was to have a free circuit where art could be generated and observed as a path.
