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Botanic Lab
Botanic Lab
Project Featured on May 30, 2024
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Botanic Lab
Project Featured on May 30, 2024
Firm
STATUS
Concept
SIZE
25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft
BUDGET
Unknown
Photos
The Botanic LAB is a proposal for a new educational building on the outskirts of La Plata, 40 minutes from the capital of Argentina. This area plays a key role in producing and supplying vegetables for more than 3 million people.
Greenhouses for production are now part of this rural area's landscape. Therefore, by taking this typology as its template, the project aims to rethink the relationship between production and education. Some concepts were borrowed: Using meccano-like structural elements (lightweight parts connected using nuts and bolts) allows the three-dimensional grid to be assembled and disassembled. Its façade, composed of polycarbonate and aluminum sheets, shifts from being a mirror of the surrounding landscape to a transparent object depending on the sun.
The project, designed on a symmetrical plan under a rigorous 3x3 meters grid, is conceived as a simple rectangular prism emphasizing its landscape's horizontality.
The building aims to combine different programs that, at first, may seem uneven. The main goal was to combine cultural, scientific and educational activities into the same compact volume to create a sustainable and effective new infrastructure. An educational tool, as well as a source of biodiversity.
The program is divided up to create movement. The sequence starts with a triple-height public plaza, where a long platform links different activities, stretching through the entire length of a big internal void. This center space, which hosts the greenhouse itself, structures the rest of the lab's activities. Public ones, such as leisure and education, take place on the ground and first floor, while research and experimentation activities are on the second level. An interior spiral staircase controls different levels of privacy, while the exterior one invites people to enter the greenhouse. By connecting these two vertical circulation systems at the end of the building, the walkway enables researchers to observe from three different points of view the several layers of the vegetation while facilitating encounters between different users. This layout centers vegetation both physically and symbolically.
It appears to be an odd duality between the exterior layer's simple and plain condition and the world It protects. As a metaphor for the animal body, where the skin creates an ideal condition for the whole system inside.
Variables such as air humidity and temperature might be modified to achieve the desired environment for agricultural experimentation. A rather simple mechanical system makes possible to control its flow and characteristics. Automatic windows, located at the roof and at the ground level of the façade, generate crossed ventilation. Unlike most greenhouses, the v-shaped roof collects rainwater for the pressured irrigation system, composed of a big tank and 18 hoses with sprinklers to moisten the environment. The whole transparent façade is coupled with big shutters that can lower the temperature by reducing the amount of UV radiation. Each self-defined and distinctive element integrates into a unified system, unveiling the technical essence of the project.
This new building attempts to develop a different idea for contemporary education, aiming to reach the correct balance between society, nature, education and production.
LOCATION: La Plata, Argentina - -35.011102, -58.025064
YEAR: 2023
M2 : 4000m2
ARCHITECT: Máximo Bertoia
TYPE: Educational/Research
STATUS: Project
Drawings and renderings credits: Máximo Bertoia
Greenhouses for production are now part of this rural area's landscape. Therefore, by taking this typology as its template, the project aims to rethink the relationship between production and education. Some concepts were borrowed: Using meccano-like structural elements (lightweight parts connected using nuts and bolts) allows the three-dimensional grid to be assembled and disassembled. Its façade, composed of polycarbonate and aluminum sheets, shifts from being a mirror of the surrounding landscape to a transparent object depending on the sun.
The project, designed on a symmetrical plan under a rigorous 3x3 meters grid, is conceived as a simple rectangular prism emphasizing its landscape's horizontality.
The building aims to combine different programs that, at first, may seem uneven. The main goal was to combine cultural, scientific and educational activities into the same compact volume to create a sustainable and effective new infrastructure. An educational tool, as well as a source of biodiversity.
The program is divided up to create movement. The sequence starts with a triple-height public plaza, where a long platform links different activities, stretching through the entire length of a big internal void. This center space, which hosts the greenhouse itself, structures the rest of the lab's activities. Public ones, such as leisure and education, take place on the ground and first floor, while research and experimentation activities are on the second level. An interior spiral staircase controls different levels of privacy, while the exterior one invites people to enter the greenhouse. By connecting these two vertical circulation systems at the end of the building, the walkway enables researchers to observe from three different points of view the several layers of the vegetation while facilitating encounters between different users. This layout centers vegetation both physically and symbolically.
It appears to be an odd duality between the exterior layer's simple and plain condition and the world It protects. As a metaphor for the animal body, where the skin creates an ideal condition for the whole system inside.
Variables such as air humidity and temperature might be modified to achieve the desired environment for agricultural experimentation. A rather simple mechanical system makes possible to control its flow and characteristics. Automatic windows, located at the roof and at the ground level of the façade, generate crossed ventilation. Unlike most greenhouses, the v-shaped roof collects rainwater for the pressured irrigation system, composed of a big tank and 18 hoses with sprinklers to moisten the environment. The whole transparent façade is coupled with big shutters that can lower the temperature by reducing the amount of UV radiation. Each self-defined and distinctive element integrates into a unified system, unveiling the technical essence of the project.
This new building attempts to develop a different idea for contemporary education, aiming to reach the correct balance between society, nature, education and production.
LOCATION: La Plata, Argentina - -35.011102, -58.025064
YEAR: 2023
M2 : 4000m2
ARCHITECT: Máximo Bertoia
TYPE: Educational/Research
STATUS: Project
Drawings and renderings credits: Máximo Bertoia
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