III INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ARCHITECTURE, LANZAROTE (CANARY ISLANDS, SPAIN)
TOPIC WORKSHOP: “EL VIENTO- WIND”
left: final presentation, IAAC Group: Jürgen Weiß, Verena Vogler, Luis Odiaga
right: United: Jürgen Weiß and Verena Vogler (IAAC), Oliver Tessmann (Staedelschule), Ignacio Lopéz Busón (ETSA)
THE congress and the workshop has been organised by the Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo del Cabildo de Lanzarote together with the Museum of International Contemporary Art (MIAC) in Arrecife, Lanzarote.
Three Architectural Schools have been invited by the Organisation: Staedelschule Frankfurt represented by Oliver Tessmann and Anton Savov, ETSA of Las Palmes by Juan Palop and the IAAC Barcelona, where I was a part of. All together, 35 students came to the island in order to work eight days on different architectural approaches that concern the maintopic: El Viento- The Wind, which is a very basic and specific issue at Lanzarote island.
The workshop was based on direct environmental research and self- exploration around the island, which we enjoyed with the same intensity as the group discussions in between us. The organisation planned trips to the fantastic National Park “Timanfaya” full of Lava and to very special places that show a great impact by the wind as Famara Beach in the northern part of the island.
Projects and proposals have been developed by each School internally. In my opinion this was a pitty, because we lost the entire workexperience and the interchange of conceptual ideas in between the schools.
Anyways, some architecture students that grew up on the island like Patricia Acosta and Monika Vina did an amazing job in helping us and gave us the possibility to get a very special impression of their island.
In the end we ended up with three large proposals developed by each school, which was very interesting to see.
During our stay in Lanzarote we took a look at architecture on the site. A very special and unique type of architecture built on the “LAVA Island” has been done by the local architect César Manrique.
“HUECOS”
Three main subtopics which were quite interesting were given to each school: CURVES, POROSITY and HOLES. The IAAC group decided to deal with the HOLES, in Spanish HUECOS. We started to devide the group again in subgroups and to start with observations in different sites.
LAS SALINAS
project by: Patricia Acosta, Maria Eftychi, Luis Fraguada, Verena Vogler
The group where I was lucky to be a part of observed natural and artificial pools along the island which produce salt through the impacts of the wind, waves, the location and topography of the site.
Natural pools are holes washed out by the water and the wind along the cliffy coast composed of lava. Throughout the wind and the waves they capture salt water inside. The heat of the sun plus the water- destribution of the wind allow the appearence of salt at the bottom of the hole.
The artificial pendant to the natural pools we found in Las Salinas. The Salinas are acricultural territories for salt production with an economical and traditional importance for Lanzarote. One amazing fact was that the salt farms worked in ancient times in a completly sustainable way. Windpower was used to generate windmills that pumped the water into the basins. Once again, through wind and sun the basins dried out and salt remained at the bottom. Today engines are used to pump the water into the Salinas, which today have a greater importance for tourism than production.
I IDEA
The principal thought was to combine the idea of a pool for leisure activities with the salinas based on production to create hybrid-system empowered by the wind.
II DESIGN TOOL- The Gradient
We decided to design a system that adapts itsself to any site given over the whole island of Lanzarote. Mainly the hybrid depends on three main parameters:
1. the distance from the coast, because the salt water needs to be transported into the system
2. the direction and power of the trade winds that come from the northeast, their impact in the north of the island stronger than in the south
3. the distribution and the impact of the man- made infrastructure (cities, villages, acriculture areas)
We set up one extrem condition for a system based on these parameters that produces 100 % salt. Leisure activities would not exist: For an optimized salt production, the system should be placed with the smallest distance to the coast, the wind needs to be strong, beyond any infrastructure. We concluded that the size of the basins should be smaller and more regular to optimize the production.
If Leisure activity pools come into play, which are not based on 100 % of salt production, the condition can vary. For example, the wind can be lighter, the distance to the sea could increase and the pools could be closer to the infrastructure centers. The pools itselves need to be larger and deeper in order to use them.
These relations we used to develop a grid for each parameter that includes a gradient information:
Fig A shows a grid which is an offset of lines according to the coastline. The distance between the lines is smaller near the coast -> smaller basins for saltproduction.
Fig B shows the infrastructural centers of Lanzarote
Fig C these are some intersectionpoints that were extracted from the three layers of grids on top of each other
Fig D shows a ZOOM. the site was picked randomly and is used as example
A script using RhinoMonkey was developed which connects the 4 closest points and converts them into a surface. Depending on the size of the surface area the surfaces get a different colorcode. The colorcode encodes the depth of the area.
The relation in this case is very simple: the bigger the area, the darker the colour, the deeper the HOLE! -> pool for leisure activities, the smaller the area, the lighter the colour, the flatter the HOLE -> for salt production
III PROPOSAL FOR THE LANZAROTE ISLAND
In order to download the presentation “Ecolandscapes” of the entire IAAC Group click here -> iaac_presentation_lanzarote_workshop
Verena Vogler
