GALLERY AND DESIGN STORE
The building designed for Over is part of the series of structures that constitute the Metropolitan Design Institute, located in the traditional La Vicentina neighborhood. Due to its location, the building aims to become a focal point of cultural activity around the iconic Navarro Park, which receives significant vehicular traffic but, more importantly, generates a powerful social dynamic through educational, commercial, and gastronomic activities. The proximity to this public space and the need to build a dialectical relationship with it are the starting points that have guided the project's design decisions.
CONCEPTUAL PROPOSAL
RELATIONAL AXES: THE INDEFINITION OF BOUNDARIES AND THE DEPLOYMENT OF A SIMPLE YET INTENTIONALLY COMPLEX OBJECT
Although the building is relatively small, it plays a key role in shaping the urban facade and connecting with the public space of the institution to which it belongs. In fact, it completes the eastern frontage and integrates the access pavilion with a pre-existing building at a higher level than the street entrance, whose design resolution was somewhat uninspired.
To establish connections with the city and the institution itself, a series of relational axes are proposed, allowing the building to function as an independent entity while organically integrating with the surrounding urban fabric and the institution’s interior. Thus, Iberia Street and the existing constructions of the institute become defining axes that determine the volumetric arrangement on the site. Inside the building, a transverse axis to the previous ones organizes and configures the spatial distribution, manifesting in a triple-height space that houses vertical circulation. Additionally, this axis constructs a visual connection with Navarro Park and extends inward through a bridge that connects with an existing staircase, incorporating the building into the institution’s circulation scheme.
Regarding the building's boundaries, an ambiguous proposal was adopted. While a closed facade separates the building from the interior parking lot, two contrasting surfaces are used on the exterior. On one side, a curved glass surface blurs the building's corner at ground level, aiming to dissolve the boundaries between public and private spaces through visual and material permeability, a gesture further emphasized by the main entrance. On the other side, a powerful reinforced concrete plane defines the urban line, perforated where the relational axes intersect.
The slope between the sidewalk and the ground floor disappears, resolved by using the curve as a resource that emphasizes the fluidity and continuity of the ground, eliminating physical barriers and facilitating uninterrupted access from the exterior to the building's interior. Inside, the concept of a fluid yet clearly hierarchical space continues, which is why the decision was made to organize it through what Le Corbusier called an "architectural promenade," a spatial sequence that allows movement through the architecture, turning it into an aesthetic experience.
This experience is enhanced by a deliberately baroque strategy: the deliberate complexity of the space and its atmosphere through the presence of multiple elements juxtaposed within the interior, which otherwise, given the relatively small size of the building, would be quite simple. Thus, the aforementioned central circulation space operates as a connective fold loaded with information that stimulates sensations and experiences. It incorporates the play of light and shadow, panoramas, and visual axes, hanging vegetation, and a myrtle tree on the second floor whose branches invade the void. The textures of concrete, steel, and glass, spatial relationships, color, and, above all, the staircase's material and formal resolution allow not only the connection of levels but also the assimilation of the spatial and material deployment. Strategically placed windows and connections to open spaces allow users to experience the internal space, the institution's surroundings, and the urban context from multiple perspectives.
FUNCTIONAL PROPOSAL
The Over project is conceived as a flexible and adaptable space with areas designed as open plans that allow easy reconfiguration according to different uses and activities. This versatility is integrated as an essential part of the user experience, allowing the space to transform and be reinterpreted according to the client’s needs and desires. The building, with a total surface area of 175 m², is distributed over three floors. On the ground floor, there is a 55 m² exhibition hall, where the main entrance connects the project to Iberia Street, providing direct communication with the city. On the second floor, there is a 65 m² store for art and design items. This level also houses a second entrance to the interior of the institution, which extends via a bridge and connects to the landing of an existing staircase, allowing access to the adjacent building and the third floor.
One of the key challenges of the project was ensuring a functional and visual integration with the pre-existing building, whose reception area adjoins the proposal. To address this challenge, the project uses the previously mentioned central circulation core, where the walls and windows of the lateral facade of the existing building were removed, creating open spaces visible from the staircase and various levels of the new building. Finally, on the third floor, there is a 55 m² terrace café. The mostly open space is surrounded by vegetation and visually connected to the park, offering a privileged view of the institutional campus. To the rear facade, the café’s kitchen is located, covered by a slab that extends over part of the adjacent building, marking the entrance porch.
FORMAL PROPOSAL: A BAROQUE COMPOSITION AND MATERIAL AS AN EXPRESSIVE RESOURCE FOR IDEAS
The formal concept of the project is distinguished by the materialization of architectural elements that reflect the conceptual philosophy of the design. The trapezoidal geometry of the base plan for its volumetric configuration results from the interaction of the project's main axis, established by Iberia Street, whose direction differs from the internal site axis that aligns the existing buildings in a regular line within the property. This placement causes the building to act as a kind of hinge, absorbing geometric irregularities and differences that, thanks to the open plans, do not interfere with functionality but rather enhance it through their complexity.
The volumetry is resolved as a game of masses, folded planes, transparent surfaces, textures, and color, responding to the different situations the building faces in its relationship with the context, leading to a reading of the facades that is unpredictable but coherent, producing a dynamic sensation typical of baroque "objects." Regarding material resolution, exposed concrete predominates, forming a solid and resistant envelope. However, this is interrupted in certain places by the presence of glass, establishing relationships between the interior and the context or, in the case of the front corner, lightening the volumetric mass to create an illusion of contradictory lightness. A series of elements resolved in steel are incorporated, either in stainless steel, giving the building certain polished reflections, or in common steel, which stands out due to a bold use of color, a warm and bright yellow that will also serve as the foundation for the branding that will occupy the building.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
PROJECT NAME: OVER
STUDIO NAME:
The Space Machine (La Máquina Espacial) – Architecture Studio:
Arch. Mauricio González G. – Arch. Karla Maldonado Q.
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: Eng. Guillermo Gómez
LOCATION: Quito, Ecuador
DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION YEAR: 2023
COMPLETION YEAR: 2024
AREA: 175 m²
PHOTOGRAPHY: ETRA FOTO/ Gabriel González – Daniel Santiana
STUDIO LINK: https://www.instagram.com/lamaquinaespacial?igsh=MTJjbDRvOWN0eWU1bg==
CATEGORY: NEW ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN. INTERVENTION IN EXISTING BUILDINGS: REMODELING
