Project Entry 2017 for Latin America
-
2 / 11
Tidal energy landscape, Punta Loyola, Argentina
Aerial view of the tidal lagoon. The understanding of climate change as a global issue, in search of an infrastructural proposal that belongs and respects its context. Thinking the landscape as operative land. Isolated, almost encapsulated, to maintain the perfect ecological synchronization of nature, but meticulously thought out to show that human race is able to propose ideas that respect our home: planet Earth.
-
10 / 11
Tidal energy landscape, Punta Loyola, Argentina
Based on a local, regional and international study of Patagonia, we recognized ecological, topographic, migratory and natural orders. Hence, an isolated tidal lagoon is designed based on four categories: environment, water production, energy and tourism. From them, the user appropriates this water infrastructure, generating multiple tensions in permanent relationship with the landscape. The proposal responds to the need of a person, the development of a country and the health of the planet.
Last updated: March 21, 2017 Punta Loyola, Argentina
Planet – Climate change, we architects can (must) help
Today, about 97% of the energy generated is from nonrenewable sources, and although by the end of the century the population is expected to grow considerably, technological advances of recent times show a clear intention to harness world resources in a clean and efficient way. The sea represents 71% of the planet’s surface and one of the greatest potential of energy generation, despite being one of the less studied fields. This is why Global Energy Landscapes takes as a model the development of tidal energy, in one of the highest tidal range coasts in the world, Río Gallegos estuary, located in one of the greatest natural reserves, the Patagonia. The isolation of the lagoon allows eradicating any environmental impact on the coasts, marine migration and ecological system.
Place – Territory as a sustainable operative landscape
Our project proposes to understand the landscape as an operative platform of systems and networks that allow human existence, in the same way that happens with the infrastructures that give life to our cities. In the era of the megalopolis, of continuous consumption and the industrial state, infrastructures acquire a new degree of visibility and complexity; being responsible for connecting human and environmental spheres. It is through this understanding that we intend to transcend the appropriation of the current infrastructural typologies to develop a proposal that uses the LANDSCAPE AS OPERATIVE LAND. Consequently, the new water infrastructure is the result of multiple studies about natural logic of the estuary, including its natural reserves, ecology and vitality.
Progress – New research method of multiple scale projects
As architects, our strongest strategy was to introduce MINIMAL components in a TERRITORIAL scale project, forming networks in order to achieve the domestication of these new infrastructures. Based on our research, we defined a specific method to tackle projects that focuses on 21st Century issues:
1. Incorporating a multiplicity of scales.
2. Understanding natural biophysical processes.
3. Relegating the place of man in himself, and position it within the ecosystem.
4. Change the concept of occupation, by the one of symbiosis.
5. Find in nature and its components, the order of architecture.
6. Redefining standardization: the uniqueness of the infrastructure as a closed system, designed exclusively in efficiency and economy.