Los Silos Youth House architecture by Lavin architects

Youth houses are the result of the will of the Cabildo of Tenerife to promote and encourage cultural and creative activity in those municipalities of the island where each year the youth population is reduced.

The device architecture is proposed to impose its program from the contest, a plot at the outer edge of the village, raised from the outset as a park, extension of the surrounding nature, surrounded by educational institutions.

We begin our design with a study environment that is the building, extending a bond of communication and dialogue, reconstructing those surrounding elements and giving identity and rhythm. Instead of designing the building as an isolated object, it is conceived as the backbone of the surrounding spaces, ie, defining a new space in line and not simply by occupying it, the project not only responds to its own internal coherence and functional volume of the building but expands its influence to its location environment, establishing inclusive dialogue with pre-existing site.

The initial location in the contest raised substantially modified in order to create a mattress that cushions the presence of the retaining wall of the road, which is embodied in a ramp which, in turn, when folded forms the main entrance space interior, calibrating the relationship from one place to another.

When designing this building provided the opportunity to live long to cover, creating a fold topographic extent of the body as earthy, a new plate tectonic setting and link the building to the ground. The project includes a recreation abstract fragments of nature, soil and vegetation, which incorporates, by embracing gesture, a portion of gently sloping hill that curls in a centripetal movement, encompassing the views of the building itself and its environment , is formed and a circular scenic area, acquiring the quality of Belvedere to bring together visual and spatial flows in this environment.

The project design stresses combine versatility, the permeability ambivalence and hinted at a youth program calculatedly indefinitely, with the aim to generate spiral paths which enter and leave the building, filling the interior spaces with each other and projecting into the abroad. Sliding doors movable walls act by enhancing the ability of association of spaces and activities enabling the holding of higher volume to get a container unify multiple spaces.

The building is materialized in concrete, enhancing the simplicity of the prismatic and the ability to abstract architectural concept, their watertight volume opens more uninhibited in the front facade, becoming a showcase of indoor activities, to reveal its contents and invite to participate.

The dynamic strength is emphasized in streaks of concrete marked out in lines of the ramp escaped abroad or in the skylight, which diagonally crosses the main lobby as a bend light the interior space community with panoramic terrace, the materials , textures and colors, were conceived as elements that mimic the natural impressions of the place, synthesized in the concrete, wood and vegetation.

The internal program is divided into two separate paths through the lobby, separately, on the one hand, a first more closed to the outside, which houses the reception, office services and an auditorium, and other exposed, where houses the classrooms for studio, multipurpose room and media, this piece relates the space program containers susceptible of juxtaposition, such as these classrooms, divided amongst themselves and with the principal distributor, through large sliding doors, in turn, classrooms unified in its outdoor terrace, which serves as a node and contact the park in search of a clear ability to adapt to the needs of the moment and changes of use.

The main distribution area is seen as ambivalent, with capacity to be absorbed by the spaces and programs that surround it, its spatiality is characterized by the uniqueness of the skylight that runs through and visual transparency is accentuated by the glass walls of the main access and he who has faced him, opening it to the park.

In this architecture that exposes something narrative: the continent establishes a close partnership with its contents, we can identify the dynamic volume on the one hand, and the ability of indoor and outdoor spaces to be used in multiple ways, on the other, with the creative energy of youth surprisingly variable.

Location: Los Silos, Spain
Architects: Lavín Architects
Project: 2002
Completion: 2005
Type: Edificio Cultural / Cultural Building
Client: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife
Area: 310 m²
Cost: 382265 €
Images: Miguel de Guzmán