Anna Dietzsch and Charlie Salinas Weber, CAN.architecture
with: Adam Groshans, Frank Gurdak, Casey P. Mahon, Robert Golda
Submission 0157
open plaza
“In the street people astound me more than any sculpture or painting…They
form and reform living compositions of unbelievable complexity…”
Alberto Giacometti.
The Plaza, an essential urban condition, is the common open place to all of
the city residents, the common place of public celebrations.
Our intention is to activate the latent porosity of the BCA city block, integrating
public and semipublic space, weaving outdoor and indoor into a system of linked
activities.
This system will be based on three main organizing elements:
1-The Cyclorama, or the “Indoor Plaza”
2-The Artists’ courtyard or the “Sculpture Plaza”
3-The BCA new Plaza or the “Open Plaza”
A comprehensible connection among the Plazas flexible components of the proposed
system in terms of use and the clear access to the more specific interior
programmed spaces, will turn the BCA into a unique cultural complex.
The design strategy utilizes the redefined existing void. The new Plaza is
carved out as a receiving and offering hand. This concave wood plane will
offer multiple opportunities for use, providing a subtle seclusion from the
busy avenue at its edge.
The longitudinal section responds to the urban scale, allowing the plaza to
be read as a unique gesture and used as a coherent gathering space.
The sequence of transversal sections presents the visitor with alternatives
for specific activities, defining smaller areas and constituting extensions
of indoor uses.
Along the sidewalk, the edge is activated with new program; a new Kiosk, the
Urban Pods gardens and fountain.
The Concave Plaza creates a new performance scenario, bringing to the outdoors
what is inside the bricks walls.
“The city… does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines
of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows,
the banisters of the steps…every segment marked in turns with scratches,
indentations, scrolls.”
Italo Calvino. Invisible cities.
