Nordes Observation Post - Wood design and construction workshop
The rocky coastline on the surroundings of Barrañan beach at the Arteixo Municipality area was chosen as an area that could support possible lightweight infrastructures which would mark and connect existing paths along the Atlantic coast. The workshop aimed to develop participants’ sensitivities to working with wood, by manually constructing a small inhabitable structure.
Local
Spain
Arteixo, Galicia
Mainly rural
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2021-06-14
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Sebastian Last name: Erazo Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Educational institution: Faculty of architecture, CESUGA Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Galicia, La Coruna, Galicia, Spain Nationality: Germany If relevant, please select your other nationality: Chile Function: Architect Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 8 rue Rottembourg Town: Paris Postal code: 75012 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 7 82 52 27 91 E-mail:info@sebastianerazo.com Website:http://www.sebastianerazo.com
First name: Javier Last name: Caride Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Educational institution: Faculty of architecture, CESUGA Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Galicia, La Coruna, Galicia, Spain Nationality: Spain Function: Architect and Teacher of Architecture Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Rua Obradoiro 47 Town: A Coruna Postal code: 15190 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 690 64 80 36 E-mail:jcaride@usj.es
First name: Tomas Last name: Valente Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Educational institution: Faculty of architecture, CESUGA Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Galicia, La Coruna, Galicia, Spain Nationality: Spain Function: Architect and Teacher of Architecture Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Rua Obradoiro 47 Town: A Coruna Postal code: 15190 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 600 55 12 08 E-mail:tvalente@usj.es
First name: Stefano Last name: Pugliese Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Educational institution: Faculty of architecture, CESUGA Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Galicia, La Coruna, Galicia, Spain Nationality: Italy Function: Architect Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via Archimede No 40 Town: Roma Postal code: 00186 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 331 774 6737 E-mail:sp@stefanopugliese.com Website:http://www.stefanopugliese.com
The Faculty of Architecture of CESUGA completed an intensive wood design and build workshop, lead by architects Sebastian Erazo and Stefano Pugliese and coordinated by professor architects Javier Caride and Tomas Valente.
It’s main goals were to promote the use of wood as a building material in the forestry region of Galicia, Spain, through educating in the fields of design and construction techniques. The sea border on the surroundings of Barrañan beach at the Arteixo Municipality area, was chosen as an area that could support possible lightweight infrastructures which would mark and connect existing paths along the northern atlantic coast.
The workshop aimed to sensibilize participants to working with wood, through building with their own hands, a small habitable structure.
transmission
contemplation
handcraft
sensorial
workshop
The workshop had two main objectives. First, to promote the use of local timber from the region of Galicia in Spain as a construction material and second, to enhance the walking paths along the coast with infrastructures (resting areas and observation points) that could be used by hikers and the local community without affecting the natural ecosystem and the panorama.
As sustainable approaches the following were applied:
1) The structure (90%) was realized using local Galician Pine wood (Pinus Pinaster Ait, ssp atlántica).
2) The structure was designed as an ephemeral / temporary structure that could be dismounted after the workshop so that all the material stored could be used for future pedagogical activities.
3) The Use of foundations or anchoring on the site was discarded in order not to affect the natural condition of the site.
4) 50% of the structure was prefabricated in the workshop, the other 50% consisted of assembly and fabrication, mostly by hand, on site, reducing the use of electrical tools to the very minimum.
5) The location of the chosen site was within a short distance (20km) from the workshop, which allowed for reduced transport.
The installation is an example of how the costal network of paths and outlook points could be provided with minimal infrastructures that would serve as support for locals to make a pause, to meet with others and recognize and contemplate the surrounding natural context they are in.
Aesthetically, the focus was put on a very honest and bare wood structure, with the minimum components to respond these simple but essential actions: to rest, observe around you, contemplate, be protected from the wind, detach from the soil. The structure ended acting like a wooden deck with a view to the vastness of the ocean, it became a beautiful presence in itself, just by the bare fact of exposing its structural details and becoming self-explanatory on the possible uses that visitors could make out of it.
It invited to contemplate, it also had a part of poetry in the very fact of projecting to the infinite and putting visitors in a posture of contemplation. It also had play, some danced on it, experimented the sloped planes with their bodies, tried unexpected body postures.
It was a bench, a table, a platform, a scene and a deck. All in one but not each isolated. A mixed use structure that goes away from the ordinary stand-alone bench, and invites visitors to play, experiment, explore, meditate, or put in simple words, just being with the elements.
the main objective of the project was to become a learning tool. The project does not merely consist of the built installation, but is thought as a holistic approach to building with wood: from concept, to development and construction in the form of an intense workshop that lasted 6 days.
Transmission is the keyword here, to give access to as many persons as possible to the possibility of learning on:
- how to use tools, to set-up a workshop from scratch (there was no tools and no workshop at the school before our project took place),
- to analize a site's constraints,
- develop and discuss several conceptual design alternatives,
- organize a schedule for production,
- prefabrication,
- logistics of transportation,
- site build-up and on-site finishing
All these by learning-through-making
The participation to the workshop was open to the local communities, and counted as well with the participation of exchange students from the Marywood University (USA).
Bringing to the natural landscape and therefore to the public space, the outcomes of a pedagogical activity such as this workshop brings to the citizens awareness and involvement in the learning/building processes carried out in a Design school.
As the construction was mainly realized on site, several citizens stopped by out of curiosity and shared their ideas, engaging in conversations with the students and generating in this way a fruitful dialogue on the subject of interventions on natural wild landscapes.
Through a collaborative design process, this workshop served as a bridge/platform to show possible ways on how Authorities and future professionals (students) can collaborate and shape a vision for their local territory.
Local
CESUGA, School of Architecture - establishing a link between the actors that transmit (tutors / practicing professionals), those who promote and finance (Municipalities / Forestry Agency), and those who learn or receive knowledge (students).
Javier Caride and Tomas Valente - host teachers at CESUGA and architects. They took the lead in research, organizing the project’s development, raising funding from XERA and the school, establishing links with the Municipality, identifying possible sites of intervention along the coastline with the advice of the city. They became an essential link between all the project's stakeholders.
ARTEIXO council - support in territorial research, proposal of several possible sites for the intervention to take place. Proposal of new sites within the region, for future projects (possible workshop for the spring of 2023).
Regional / National
XERA Galician Agency of Forestry Industry - funding and promotion of the workshop, communication of the outcomes, open discussions for future projects.
European
Stefano Pugliese (ita) - Architect and teacher in Izmir Turkey - Teaching since many years in several courses such as furniture design and build, participation and organization of several workshops, touching others fields such as art, textiles, building with earth etc. Stefano’s experience in design and build methodologies was very important to help structure and guide the developments proposed by the team.
Sebastian Erazo (de / cl) - architect in Paris, France - experience on design and build from building wood furniture, strong attention to detail in all phases of a project, an essential element at the architecture studio ciguë, in Paris, and in his personal practice. Sebastian’s experience helped the team to move swiftly from conceptual phases to materializing the intervention, through a guided resolution of constructive details and construction step by step sequencing.
The workshop involved 3 actors at different levels and with different aims: the Council of Arteixo (Institutional / Municipal), the Faculty of Architecture of CESUGA (Education), and XERA (Galician Agency of Forestry Industry).
During the process of organizing the workshop and during the realization of it all actors contributed in the decision making from the choice of the site to the design strategy.
On the institutional side, the aim was to implement and equip existing pathways proposing ‘landscape’ infrastructures that respond to the needs of the citizens (to rest, to observe, to contemplate nature, etc.), and to be integrated in respect with the landscape. All this, also involving the region of Arteixo in a wider than local architectonical debate/dialogue.
The Educational Actor aimed to implement in their curriculum a ‘Design By Making’ methodology setting up a basic first-time workshop at the faculty on the one hand and on the other, making their students engaged and aware actors in the future development of their region, Galicia.
The industrial sector aimed to promote through an experimental structure the use of local timber, dedicated nowadays mainly to export and with an objective of developing local projects at all possible scales, this exercise representing and intermediate one, between design and architecture.
results
an ephemeral installation that activated not only the site physically, but also the discussion itself on the potentialities of developing experimental infrastructures, that are a positive way of developing urban and rural developments in balance with and not against nature.
outcomes
there was positive feedback from the local community, recognizing the opportunities inherent in this type of exercise. A lot was spoken about “not much happening in this area”, and about the fact that interventions of this type could not only permit what’s exposed above, but also set an example for others to contribute in a similar way. This could serve as support for temporary cultural activities that would add value to the region, improve the quality of daily experiences, nourish artistic networks, set a support for seasonal festivals (with similar installations simultaneously built at different points), contribute to tourism, all this through influencing awareness on the surrounding nature and it’s elements, not only by observing it from afar, but mostly by being in it and with it, exposed and co-living with the elements.
students had a hands-on approach to materiality that will hopefully inform their way of thinking architecture and design with respect to the natural surroundings, with a rational and sustainable approach to designing with wood, as well with a sensorial perception of materiality, of it’s dimensions, weight, surface, smells, and the various subtleties in transforming matter, and the efforts and energy needed to achieve this. This sensibility may help them to acquire a stronger capacity to think of how other trades work, and hence to work and discuss ideas in a better balance with others. This should just improve -from a wider perspective- professional and human activities. Ideally this search for balance will set a strong foundation for a higher level of approaches to and between the living environment and it’s communities.
The case of this workshop represented an episode in which a municipality (Arteixo) and an Industrial agency (XERA) asked a University to give architectonical solutions to the equipment of naturalistic paths.
The university instead of replying to this call through mainstream research decided to structure a workshop that would involve the participants (students) into a more dynamic action that led the students not only to Design and Learn through making but also to be able to show, as citizens, their vision for the territory and showcase it with a tangible onsite 1:1 prototype structure that could be debated and evaluated by the inhabitants of the area and opened to discussion.
In that sense the output of the workshop, as a pilot project, allowed both the actors involved and the citizenship to be able to have an objective discussion on human interventions on natural landscapes.
The workshop was planned in several phases which consisted in:
1. A close collaboration and dialogue within the university, the students, the institutional and industry actors in the discussions about where, how and which type of equipment should be built within the natural paths within the region of Arteixo, through open online meetings that preceded the actual workshop activities.
2. Once on site, during the first day of the workshop, hikes were organized on the preselected areas in order to have a sensorial and ‘material’ approach to the landscape. Perceptions were discussed openly while on site, and conceptual analysis followed at the school's studio space.
3. Introducing the constructive system (Timber construction) to the students on two levels: on one side, a theoretical background was given to the students by discussing previous experiences and ex tempora, quick installations on campus where made, this way introducing an intuitive ans sensorial approach to the material and it's properties.
4. Hand techniques, safety measures and power tools where introduced to the students at the same time as the school's first wood workshop was being set-up and organized, by the participants themselves.
5. Construction took place through a trial and error process. First, base modules where built and tested as prototypes at the school. Second, these modules where assembled on site, and the rest of the structures build up was completed on the terrain, using mainly hand tools and constant discussion and analysis, using the prefabricated first part of the structures as a big on-site working bench.
Three elements are considered crucial for future activities of this kind, on different levels.
First, to transmit to new generations (ancestral) knowledge and craftsmanship as a continuity of local know/how. In this specific case, timber construction.
Second, the action of making students (future architects) responsible of their actions on the territory by assuming the mission of having to intervene and design for sensitive landscapes.
Third, institutional and industrial actors should promote, coordinate and support participatory activities on the territory that might not only involve established professionals but participants from different backgrounds and expertise.
The workshop aimed to raise awareness on the role of the architect and builders on operating on natural landscapes considering the local identities and their coexistence within their ecosystem.
It is of outmost importance for human communities inhabiting a territory to be involved in sharing their knowledge and transmitting it to the ones that are responsible for designing and building on their natural environment. Hands-on experimentation not only does raises awareness of the accessibility to physical capacities that may seem lost or difficult to achieve, but also opens up sensibilities that are inherent to human beings, through the use of all our senses in direct contact with materials, living or transformed.
Discussion based on physical experimental installations, is a strategy that may be applied to any global context, that -when placed at the right open shared space- allows for rich and unexpected exchanges on where we are, what do we want, and / or how would we like to live on together and in the natural realities we are in.
