sabana grande PUERTO RICO

ROBOT WORKSHOP COMPETITION
Third Place — $300

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project

angel l. VIDRO & michael j. QUIÑONES: As a linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other, the ‘Divergent Building’ breaks, separate and transforms its spaces. As a proposal for the Robot Workshop and inspired by robotic movements, the building applies mechanical systems to achieve its main feature: maximizing the space as is required by the users. The building opens in order to separate the program in two modules, creating a central atrium, which allows ventilation and lighting. Interior spaces can expand growing to the site limits, creating a dynamic façade that is in continuous change.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
aV & mQ: Mechanical Systems, Robot Designs, Gundam [Anime], Tron, El Segundo.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
aV & mQ: Listening: Callejón Comuitario, Robi Draco Rosa.

Whose work is currently on your radar?:
aV & mQ: BIG Architects, JDS Architects, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid Architects, Jones Partners Architecture, NMDA, Asymptote.

Additional credits and links:
Special thanks to Elio S. Martinez Joffre, Abel Misla Villalba, and Francisco Javier Rodríguez Suárez.

Jury Comments:

skylark TIBBITS — This project presented the strongest mix of provocative and visionary robotic/kinetic solutions with a touch of reality programmatically and architecturally. Formally the project is strong and links well with the expansion/contraction or fault-lines of the circulation/program rift. This project is not simply inheriting existing robotic or electronic strategies/metaphors, rather rethinking them both on the programmatic level as well as the technological and formal level. Strong project on a number of levels — could be plausible based on modular mechanisms and some simple interactions to produce a variety of propagating patterns.