The Academic Exercise

A research on glass technologies for architectural purposes, was the first aim of my degree
project. This was the first step to understand the contemporary state of the art regarding
technical solutions and from this point explore a new way of working with glass.
This implied thinking a project inversely, taking materiality as a starting point then developing
a detail, after this choosing a suitable programme to test the detail and finally picking the
place. (glass skin - library mediatheque - a public park hill in the middle of the city).
I developed a glazing solution consisting of a double glazing unit filled with crushed toughened
glass, an air chamber and another simple glass. The air chamber performs as a thermal buffer,
in winter it is kept closed, the air gets warm with sunlight radiation. In summer the air
chamber’s lids may be opened, below and above, and the air ventilates. The crushed glass
filling filters radiation, a bit of light, and improves privacy.

The Site

A north facing slope in the biggest and most centrally located metropolitan park (San Cristobal
Hill) was the spot chosen to develop a mediateque. I picked this terrain because it has
a very good exposure to sunlight, and it is the place within the park with the best accesibility
- the shortest distances to bus lines and subway stations and also connected by interior
streets to the rest of the park. Additionally it would offer a previously unavailable programme,
and become an attractor and a new gate in one of the least developed zones of the park.
The building takes advantage of the only horizontal place, a road, it stands on columns intermingling
with it and the slope. Under the building the road becomes a semi interior space, a
shaded balcony to the city.

Form & Structure

The structure of the building consists of a single standard rectangular steel frame repeated
at regular intervals only varying slightly in position upward, downward, foward or backward
thus reacting and adapting to the existing topographical conditions. A serial exercise similar
to muybridge’s photographs. The sum of frames conform an inhabitable truss clad with the
glass prototype. Several projects were studied to develop the structural scheme: Lissitzky’s
horizontal skyscrapers, Craig Elwood’s Art Center College, the O Museum by SANAA, Koolhaas’s
Inhabited Truss projects and the Pompidou Center by R. Piano and R. Rogers.