Galería Santa Fé 2012 - Yemail Arquitectura

Project Details

Santa Fe Gallery 2012

DESCRIPTION

From the Secret Garden to the Unexpected Park

For the transformation of this space into the temporary home of a cultural program such as Galería Santa Fe, opening it up to the city became a priority, so that everything happening inside could retain the public character that defines the gallery.

We proposed turning the front garden of the house into a small park that could gradually invite neighbors and new audiences in. Regular gallery visitors would encounter it as a new component of the institution, receiving an invitation from the outset to spend more time there—not only visiting exhibitions, but also taking part in more inclusive programs that complement the samples.

The project includes the construction of a small park in the front garden with a ping-pong table on a raised platform beneath a canopy, benches, a mobile basketball backboard that lights up and also functions as an illuminated sign toward the street, and a bicycle rack that doubles as the base for a tower supporting the solar panel that powers the garden. The panel becomes a playful way of introducing alternative and ecological energy technologies into the project through a visible and participatory system.

By opening the garden of the house, we are also opening an unsolicited public space. The idea begins as a speculation and a question: what would happen if, along this street corridor, all the private front gardens of the houses were opened up to form a linear park connecting the neighborhood? Raising this kind of question through a publicly funded project located in a historic district seemed to us an opportunity to generate a different kind of dialogue with the users and neighbors of the space.

Look but Don’t Touch, or “Amplifying” Heritage

Given the restrictions involved in making a TEMPORARY intervention in a HERITAGE house, we proposed installing a floating metal mesh that runs through the interior spaces. We understand these metallic lines as a prosthesis that supports and resolves the functional requirements of a gallery program while weaving together and connecting each of its different uses. The structure supports three types of lighting—neon, LED, and halogen—allowing the atmosphere of each room to change as required. It unfolds to support furniture; extends to hold information panels, shelving for the documentation center, and suspended doors that separate the exhibition rooms from the shared spaces; and uses three colors to identify the gallery’s different programs, together with handcrafted LED screens developed with artist Hamilton Mestizo and his team.

Imperfect Templates

The project aims to decentralize art and open alternative public spaces for the promotion of creativity. It was developed with very precise and limited public resources. The intention of making the administration’s commitment visible throughout the entire house required resourceful construction strategies—in other words, building more with less. The first challenge was adapting a structure with large spans and torsions to more artisanal and basic construction methods. After analyzing the models and available equipment—manual welding tools that would not damage the heritage building and could operate with the existing electrical capacity—we chose to draw full-scale geometric templates directly within each space. This ensured greater precision in the cutting and joining of elements between rooms.

Low-Resolution Laminates

Because the park structures needed to be compact and transportable, they were prefabricated. The next challenge was finding a low-cost enclosure capable of providing shade and comfort beneath the canopy. The closest effect to what we were looking for was that of screen-printed or sandblasted glass. Together with our glass installer—trained in an old-school tradition of modifying, hybridizing, and improvising with materials—we produced our own manual laminate by joining two sheets of clear glass with a fine blue plastic mesh. The mesh bonds the sheets together while creating a distinctive filter for light.

DETAILS

Use

Cultural gallery

Area

600 m²

Location

Bogotá D. C. – Colombia

Meters above the sea level

2625

Average annual temperature

13.1 °C

Year

2012

Client

Secretariat of Culture, Recreation and Sport + District Institute of the Arts IDARTES

Design and construction

Yemail Arquitectura (Oficina Informal) + Laagencia

Project team

Antonio Yemail + Daniella Robledo + Jan Henao + Juan Pablo Gaitán
Mariana Murcia + Santiago Pinyol

Architectural Model

Daniella Robledo

Electronic design and solar

Hamilton Mestizo

Photo Credits

Mariana Murcia + Santiago Pinyol

Categories: 1.4 Galleries, Culture