GET.Galería-Espacio Temporal.

Revuelo. Winner. [Armada]Vladimir García + Doel Fresse.

Catenary Projections. Finalist. Carlos García + Carlos Pérez.

Analyzing the existing building, the repetition of arches creates a constant code characteristic of a historic colonial building. Using this pattern we created a new code, which exalts the old one. The system of ropes made, alters the interior courtyard space when projecting the arches and creating a focal point that provides an area of circulation inside. This new circulation allows the deployment elements that alter the topography where the levels function as children’s play area, seating and projection surface. The proposed materials are white rope, wood and recycled rubber material for the children’s play area. These are lightweight materials that will allow construction without affecting the original structure.     

PRUSA. Honorable Mention. Javier Roman.

Drive In Museum. Honorable Mention. Iván Pérez Roselló, César Bobonis, Manuel Colón, Sotirios Kotoulas.

Drive down the highway and turn right on Museum exit, drive straight into the museum courtyard, slow down, park, stop, watch movies. The courtyard has been transformed into a drive in cinema! Expired cars are gutted out, split, carved, and re-designed to accommodate the new program. Cars are selected from a salvage yard and reused as semi private vessels, gardens, sound systems, and viewing booths. Parties sporadically happen in this courtyard traffic jam, in Puerto Rico we spend a lot of time in cars. The new vehicular arteries flow through the museum piecing together new collections of discarded items, mounds of vegetative growth, and citizen clusters; a new topography is formed. These new arteries create a threshold that is particular to our mass urban mode of movement. The courtyard subverts this motion and brings everything to an intimate standstill, offering another dimension of motion, contemplative recreation, and erratic visual consumption.

Frozen Culture. Maria Gabriela Flores, Francisco Rodriguez, Edgardo Arroyo.

“One generation’s nightmare is the next generation’s popular culture” Stephen King

We strongly feel that both the definition and the parameters of accepted culture on the Island have been institutionalized and frozen since the creation of the Instituto de Cultura in the fifties.

The refrigerators are conveniently organized on a grid based on the arcade order of the National Gallery courtyard.

Of the 63 refrigerators (9x7 grid), there are 56 white refrigerators that symbolize the 56 years of the Instituto de Cultura, each one preserving, protecting and freezing an image or object from our popular imagination that the Instituto would seemingly rather not show in its galleries. They are meant to be progressively discovered by the spectator as he or she opens each refrigerator.

Alluding to the action of opening refrigerators in order to satisfy our nutritional necessities in a consumerist society, we provide the option to open them in order to digest a very different idea of culture from the one shown in museums.

The remaining seven refrigerators are painted bright red and are meant to represent the present as a moment of uncensored cultural creation.

Each one of them contains a mirror and a radio playing a different popular genre of local music.

We are confronted with our own reflection in the mirror after experiencing the hidden images framed by the white refrigerators.

The music playing from within each of the red refrigerators can only be heard when they are opened.  When more than one is opened at the same time, the sounds are superimposed into a cacophony reminiscent of our daily life and culture.

In addition, the interior patio is in dire need of vegetation and shade. Looking at the Patio de los Naranjos in Córdoba as a precedent, both in pattern and repetition, as well as a case study reminiscent of our colonial heritage, we have selected a plant species (plantain or banana) associated with a local anti-culture term “mancha de platano” or more universally applied to the banana republic as a tangential and colonized wannabe to the cultural or political metropolis.

ARRA-Sando. A.E.I.O.U.-Victor Nieto, Pedro Santa. Hector Tarrido-Picart.

In 2009 the College of Architects and Landscape Architects of Puerto Rico organized an event to introduce its members to the new ARRA funds (American Recovery and Reconstruction Act) and how they could benefit from them. By the end of the presentation the director of the Infrastructure Financing Authority (AFI: an entity that administers these federal funds), opened the panel for questions from the audience. The first question was straightforward: “So there is no money for design?”. His answer was even more so: “No.”

                  After the event, it was clear to architects that the reason that there were no funds for design was because the ARRA looked to invest in construction projects that could stimulate the economy immediately. By not having to take on the processes involved in design phases, the government would be able to save both money and time. One of the fastest ways to achieve this goal was to invest in the repair and repaving of roads. The result was inevitable: there would be no work for architects, but there were going to be many, many traffic cones.

                  This decision at the federal level reflects the economic development model and the vision of progress that the government of Puerto Rico has had during the last six decades. During this time, million of dollars have been invested in an inefficient infrastructure and consequently the automobile has become an indispensable instrument of the Urban Experience in Puerto Rico. It is through power windows, wind shields and rear view mirrors that that many Puerto Ricans observe the city. In this context, traffic cones exist as the bastard child of the contradiction between the human and the automotive scale. For this reason we decided to use them as the primary material to intervene in the oldest urban fabric in Puerto Rico:  Old San Juan.

                  The traffic cone is a temporary element, usually related to roadside work that delimits and warns. With repetition they mark a perimeter that should not be crossed and their bright orange color announces that a process is taking place. Because of its temporality, familiarity, and capacity to direct our behavior, the traffic cone is one of the most common elements of the flâneur’s experience in the Puerto Rican city.

                   “ARRA-Sando” is a proposal that explores the use of the traffic cone as a building block that bridges art and architecture. We focused on studying their capacity to form new systems — like topographies, surfaces and spaces — through appropriation, manipulation and choreography. 36 inch tall bright orange traffic cones were ideal because their shape & formal characteristics allowed many opportunities for reinterpretation and reinvention. When cut at different heights many new readings and re-use applications emerge, from pots for plants, to sculptural elements, to a diversity of architectonic components like brise-soleils, permeable surfaces, and furniture.

                  The proposal begins in the immediacy of the National Gallery building were we transformed the cones into a series of fields and topographies that invite pedestrians to investigate and interact with the building. These groupings direct the visitor towards the entrance of the building where remnant pieces of cut traffic cones are reused as planters to create a new tropical garden in front of the National Gallery. As you enter the building other fields and topographies direct you towards the pavilion, our main intervention. The pavilion is composed of a structural grid that acts as a datum, from which the cones move up or down, to provide the volumetric articulation of its exterior and special articulation of its interior. Inside the pavilion, the cones act like stalactite and stalagmites that direct circulation and views to create a dynamic multiuse space. At the same time, the manipulation of the cones graduates the entry of light and air, reinforcing the relationship between interior and exterior.

                  The pavilion is designed to house different activities, such as theater production, dance workshops and short film screenings. In addition to the pavilion, left over pieces of the cut traffic cones are strategically placed in the interior courtyard to demarcate play areas for children.

                  The construction of our proposal is achievable within the project’s budget. A key aspect of the intervention is the reuse of traffic cones, as long as they meet with the design specifications. The result is a significant reduction in the cost of the project, which lets us include more areas of play and gardens in the project. Another key aspect of the project is that once it is dismantled, many of these cones can be reinstalled in other public spaces with the purpose of activating them.

Red Carpet. Juan Ricardo Cabezudo + Cynthia M. Burgos

The Galería Espacio Temporal project is about the idea of staging the Galería Nacional, a pale space that historically was used as the Dominican Convent in Old San Juan. Taking as a starting point, we seek to create with “GET Red Carpet” a dialogue with its context through a formal and chromatic proposition, a non-existent characteristic in the area. With this as intended purpose we seek to understand this space as outgoing and able to generate a more effectively complexity and multi-spatiality. This will activate new relationships between flows, uses, scales (user) and scenarios to be developed as needs and activities arise. As a result of an architecture of experience (extroverted) favors resonances, transfers, interactions and connections with the environment in which it enrolls.

Based on the theory of opposition, between allegories and symbols, first described by Craig Owens, we begin to understand our purpose with this installation. This theory states that post-modern art reenacts the allegory, exposing the most interesting thing about it, its divisive characteristic, while the symbol is in one way or another a totalizer on its relationship with meaning. In its basic analysis, this suggests that the symbol produces a lack of connection between the symbolized unit and its context. Final and binding, the symbol pretends to reunite, while the allegory, insufficient in itself, must necessarily talk to an exterior. According to Owen, contemporary art is more allegorical than symbolic, because it is a “site specific” art, and is always thought next to something, yet is an art that does not want to go unnoticed. Unlike painting and sculpture, modern contemporary art takes the context where it occurs, making it unique and particular, and without that context the piece of art cannot be understood.

We propose to use as a metaphor the red carpet, (an icon that for years has been used in ceremonies and formal occasions to mark a route to be taken by VIP) to develop an upper surface made of “parachute nylon ̈. The first part of this installation marks the view of Atlantic Ocean and serves as a reference for identifying the entrance to the building of the gallery. Once past the threshold of entry, the upper surface becomes hanging cloths, made out of the textile mentioned before, which generates different types of enclosure to identify areas. The complete piece is made out of ramps and platforms that can be used as an outdoor stage for performances, sitting areas and game areas for kids. To end the piece of the installation is the audio visual area, which has a seating capacity for 25 people. All this takes place through a matrix, which arises from the base lines of the Galería Nacional and allows us to place in an organized manner the components that serve as structural elements for the textile which is the main material of the entire system.

Nurb 01. L.A.B./María Carrión, Javier Olmeda, Oscar Ramos.

Gurges. Eddie S. Rivera, Luis Maldonado

Through. Alberto Dueño + Jose Dueño

Shelter. Ivonne Prats, Nora Quintero, Antonio Beale, Marialuisa Borras, Elsie Parra, Aileen Castañeda.

The intervened space for this project, the Convent of the Dominicos,  is a historic building (1523) that lodged members of religious orders, educators and militia, and is currently home to the National Gallery, the cultural heritage art collection of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. This building, with its works of art, gathers varied moments from our past, the foundation of our contemporary art.

In keeping with the historic function of the building, a temporary recyclable space has been designed that will occupy the center of the patio. It will consist of a central platform and two smaller ones that will serve as “shelters” to visiting adults and children.   The space reflects the concept of a resting area conducive to meditation and contemplation as well as a shelter from sun and rain and a recreational area for children.  Elements will be incorporated into the design of the structure alluding to its historical function while encouraging the enjoyment and use of the space.

Principal Platform

The external structure of the principal platform of the “Shelter” consists of a series of aluminum beams placed at different angles that touch, intersect and are bound together at various points forming a space frame.  The structure will be portable with several points of entry of varying dimensions.   The Shelter will convey the sensation that beams of various dimensions were individually flung from the sky and thrust into the earth in an arbitrary manner, thus creating movement within the space.  These beams point toward the sky recalling the religious roots of the Convent and, because of their spear shape, recalling a military past.  There is a beam that is apparently suspended in the air, frozen in time and trajectory.   The space will be sheltered by a waterproof material attached to three points of the structure.  The natural tones of the waterproof material will evoke sand which was part of the coastal zone at the time of the construction of this building.  One of these points will serve as an audiovisual area that will include a screen to accommodate approximately twenty five persons.

The internal space of this structure will consist of a platform that will incorporate contemporary cots, echo of those that rested in this space throughout its history.  The materials of the cots will be recycled wood and cloth and will be waterproof.  The aluminum of the beams, after being used for this project, will be recycled by a local company dedicated to the manufacture of aluminum structures.

Lateral Platforms

Two platforms parallel to the main platform will serve as a recreational space for children. Structurally they will repeat the elements of the main platform.  One of the platforms will have a large scale table game adapted and integrated into the floor.  The other will include a version of the hopscotch game.  The spaces will be safe for children of all ages.

Entrance Norzagaray Street

As an inducement to enter and providing a visual connection to the temporary structure situated in the interior patio, some of the aluminum beams will be repeated at the main entrance in front of Norzagaray Street.

It is our intent that the new space within this historic building reflect important elements of the same, thus of our history.  Based on the varied functions of this historic building, a contemporary space has been designed that speaks to the past, the present and the future.

Patio Multicolor. Merce Martínez, José R Pagan, Omar Torres, David Gonzales, Ana M. Nater.

General Concept

The Chain Link Fence has become an important element of the Puerto Rican urban fabric. The result of the continuous lotification, privatization and individualism, has conduce to the extensive use of this type of enclosure. As a result, this enclosure system has contributed to the segregation of the urban environments and its inhabitants.

People no longer encounter themselves on the street because over the years, there has been a tendency to enclose the public space with this same type of enclosure. In other words, the public space and the private space limits are treated the same way. For example, you can encounter chain link fence on a public park and on a private residence. This contradiction has encountered some reaction from the inhabitants. People have reacted over the years to the coldness and power of chain link fence by humanizing it. Especially on Christmas, people write messages by inserting plastic cups on the chain link fences, draw figures, install lights etc. This new spontaneous treatment of the surface intends to break the scale, seriousness, and image of the chain link fence in order to become an active element of the urban fabric that promotes interaction rather than subdivision.

Is this collective imagery we are interested in the project. Rather than imposing a new system, we pretend to use and reinvent this type of treatment of the surface of the chain link fence so the project will be understandable and comprehensible for the users of the space. We intend to use the cyclone fence as a connector rather than as a separator.

Project Materialization

Our first approach towards the Project and after visiting the site on multiple occasions was to make a dramatic change on the formalization of the space of the interior patio. We decided to cover the patio with chain link fence. The strategies to cover the interior patio were as follows:

1-          We decided to use two modules of 5 foot width cyclone fence per each arch. The idea was to connect the arches from the north side of the patio with the arches of the south side of the patio.

2-          The form used to cover the patio from side to side will be catenary arches as opposed to the semicircular arches of the gallery. The catenary will be modulated by the midpoint of each one of the arches that covers the east and west side of the gallery. The catenary will hang from the level of the cornice to the arch key and to the midpoint between the arch key and spring.

3-          As part of our proposal we want to create some shadow on the interior patio. We use for this purpose 7Oz. plastic cups as part of the collective imagery we want to pursue. The pattern in which the cups are placed on the chain link fence, responds to the continuation of the floor pattern on the interior of the arcade. This is important because in order to keep the geometry of the catenary, the load must be uniform. This can be achieved by reproducing the uniform pattern of the floor on the catenary. The plastic cup colors correspond to the available market colors, which correspond to the primary and secondary colors. We also pursued the shadow intention, by placing photos plants on some of the plastic cups. Our second approach was to redistribute the program along the patio in order to determine the supports of the catenary and the extension of them. The strategies to accomplish were as follows:

1-          We selected the pallet of 40”x48” as the element to conform the support of the catenary, as we cannot touch the existing building structure for support.

2-          We modulated the floor plan using the pallet size in order to determine the location of the axis for support.

3-          We determined the space needs for each part of the program requirements established by the competition. The location of the children play area will be near the main entrance of the Gallery. On the opposite side, so they won’t interfere between each other, we located the space for the cinema.

4- In order to accomplish the support of the catenaries, we needed sufficient counterweight to keep the structure in equilibrium. This gave us the opportunity to use the pallet as an element that conforms diverse furniture throughout the project that complements the activities of the program. Among them we can mention: benches, cinema stands, stage, planters, lounge seating.

Our third and final approach was to use the plastic cups to represent some of the paintings of the museum as well as some advertisement of the gallery itself. The strategies to accomplish were as follows:

1-          We created a series of pixelated images, reproducing the some of the most important paintings of the museum. These images will be located at the top of the children play area expression board, so the children can copy the image below. This intends to create a more direct interactive relation between the painting collection of the museum and the visitors. In any case, this expression board is intended also so the children can express freely his imagination.

2-          As part of the project, there should be an intervention on the exterior entrance of the gallery. After continuous visits to the site, we were concerned about the security and integrity of any installation located on the outside of the gallery. That’s the reason why we decided to provide a billboard created with chain link fence and plastic cups, to advertise the competition and other events of the gallery. We used the existing anchorage on the north façade to support our billboard in order to keep the integrity of the building exterior. The billboard is a very minimal intervention on the exterior, but a very powerful strategy to attract the attention of pedestrians and vehicles. The possibilities of the billboard are infinite, not only using images but also letters and messages. Our intention is for the billboard to be changed during the 6 months that the installation will be exposed.

With our installation we use the collective imagery as a strategy to make Architecture more accessible to its user. We cover the patio in pursue of lights and shadows. Light will pass through the color plastic cups and flood the interior patio with color. We use materials easy to obtain and simple to erect. Our intention was to attract people into visiting the museum, using the chain link fence as a space generator rather than a space divider.

Eddie Figueroa.

Pin Art. TASK-Bryan Torres Arana + Francisco Casablanca.

PIN ART

is an interactive installation made for the inner courtyard of “La Galeria Nacional” located in the historic building of the “Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña” former “Convento de los  Dominicos”.

The installation consists of manipulating the scale of this object in different ways to make components that transform the spatial perception of the inner court of “ La Galeria Nacional”. Exploiting the scale of this object and placing it in the courtyard allows us to develop an interactive installation for people of all ages. Thus, not only awakening the imagination with architecture, but also providing an opportunity for visitors, for a moment, to make art.
The system consists of the following:
• Wall interactive at entrance - an interactive wall is located at the main entrance of the ”Galeria Nacional”. This space has the logo “GET” inscribed on the tubes that makes the piece. Thus, no matter how the interaction of people affects the shape of the piece people will be able to read the logo of the project.
• Wood Floor - The concrete patio floor promotes heat absorption, therefore, does not invite living space. With a simple wooden structure type “deck”  we propose to alter the feel of the floor in the courtyard. Currently there is a step of 6 inches between the interior corridors and courtyard level, we propose to soften this level with a ramp. This way we create access to all types of audience. 

• Wall “Pin Art” - interactive wall where people have the opportunity to create their own art. It is also the space where you can mount exhibitions with games between solids and voids.

On one side of the wall, visitors interact with the piece while on the other, ushers, as notified, will return the wall to its original state there by creating an event.

• Pavilion “The Hand” - The space for audiovisual equipment located inside the pavilion. The purpose of the Pin Art in this case is enlarged to a spatial scale where people can feel the experience of Pin Art from within.
The concept of Pin Art brings infinite spatial possibilities, so that different experiences can be built. A hand was chosen as a typical exercise that identifies the object universally.
Pin Art  is an inherent experience to the touch, understood in this case the hand - the environment. As an artist uses a brush to paint.