205_Paulina Hurtado: Narrows Pavilion
Paulina Hurtado
Narrows Pavilion
free standing structure
multi-site location
spring 2016 . kinetics / PROFESSOR _ lee-su huang / university of florida / gainesville. Florida – USA
Design 8 studio is focused on the study of kinetic architecture allowing the project’s program to be open to the student. After visiting the Milano EXPO in 2015, I was very interested on exploring the potential of stand-alone structures and their ability to generate dynamic interactions with the public. This type of interventions provides the opportunity to create new ephemeral spaces with innovative and whimsical character. The pavilion’s geometry was derived in response to the analysis of the narrows. The intention was not to recreate the landscape, but rather to extract its rudimentary features. The trajectory of light and the contrast between vast and narrow played an essential role in the project’s development.
Narrows pavilion is a social platform that works as a living organism introducing the subject into a portal that addresses space as the expression of scenery. The pavilion explores the idea of implied functionality. Something that might happen but doesn’t have a fixed definition. For instance, it is a space for exhibitions, but it is not a museum; it is a space with scenographic features for performances, but it is not a theater; it is a space for dinning and social encounter, but it is not a cafe nor a restaurant...
Eventually, the structure will be defined by people into a new type of space where the intentions of the user would resonate in its arrangement and composition. It enables the act of choosing and defining its own space and behavior by commuting alternatives for new definitions of functional meaning.
Its openness does not imply homogeneity, but it rather exemplifies the concept of adaptability using the pavilion as symbiotic space coexisting with its surroundings. This adaptability permits a gradual transition between inside and outside. Likewise, the ability to manipulate the pavilion’s transparency of enclosure and aperture revitalizes the relation between site, program, and space. Therefore, by the presence or absence of translucent skin layering the structure holds a degree of flexibility to adapt and respond to its environment.
