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Toconao Educational Center
Toconao Educational Center
Toconao, Chile
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Other Projects by Marsino Arquitectura
Toconao Educational Center
Toconao, Chile
Firm
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2024
SIZE
25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft
At 2,500 meters above sea level and on the north-eastern edge of the Atacama salt flat, is the town of Toconao (place of stone in the Kunza language), a small oasis at the mouth of the Jere ravine, whose waters fertilize the family vegetable gardens that historically provide work and food for just over 800 members of the ancestral Lickanantai community, before they disappear under the soil of the driest desert in the world.
Since the end of the last century, this community has taken refuge in Toconao to preserve and spread their ancestral culture, which they feel threatened by the transformations in the way of life that have produced the population boom due to the growing tourist activity in the area, which made the neighboring town of San Pedro de Atacama a world-class destination and the lithium mining exploitation.
Having achieved recognition as an Atacameño indigenous community in 2006, the Toconares obtained state resources to replace the old school No. 7 in 4800m2 of work to house 480 students with a focus on interculturalism and who come from other nearby villages scattered on the periphery of the Atacama Salt Flat.
Remembering Architect Glenda Kapstein, we ask ourselves, what are the elements that tie the architecture to the place, so that it becomes part of the landscape and in turn contributes to the memory and identity of its inhabitants, what is the character of the architecture of this place, with its extreme climate and desert conditions, what are the invariants that should become a vital fact for the architecture of the desert, called the driest desert in the world?
Through participatory design processes with the Lickanatai community and Kapstein's research, we reproduced in the project an Atacameño worldview adjusted to the scale of the village, a grid of non-Euclidean geometry houses a set of low volumes, offset to make room for the vegetable gardens that provide shade and humidity to the environment, covered with liparite stone (volcanic stone) to regulate thermal inertia and give continuity to the labor force that works this traditional and identity material.
The project is a building with a continuous façade, with minimal openings and hermetic towards the exterior like the high Andean houses that are grouped around a central courtyard from which the great hills, which are sacred and are considered living beings that provide protection and security, are always visible and are therefore the object of payments or offerings in sacred places. For the Lickanatai this is a sacred fact. Their worldview is centered on the earth, showing a profound relationship between man and his natural environment.
Since the end of the last century, this community has taken refuge in Toconao to preserve and spread their ancestral culture, which they feel threatened by the transformations in the way of life that have produced the population boom due to the growing tourist activity in the area, which made the neighboring town of San Pedro de Atacama a world-class destination and the lithium mining exploitation.
Having achieved recognition as an Atacameño indigenous community in 2006, the Toconares obtained state resources to replace the old school No. 7 in 4800m2 of work to house 480 students with a focus on interculturalism and who come from other nearby villages scattered on the periphery of the Atacama Salt Flat.
Remembering Architect Glenda Kapstein, we ask ourselves, what are the elements that tie the architecture to the place, so that it becomes part of the landscape and in turn contributes to the memory and identity of its inhabitants, what is the character of the architecture of this place, with its extreme climate and desert conditions, what are the invariants that should become a vital fact for the architecture of the desert, called the driest desert in the world?
Through participatory design processes with the Lickanatai community and Kapstein's research, we reproduced in the project an Atacameño worldview adjusted to the scale of the village, a grid of non-Euclidean geometry houses a set of low volumes, offset to make room for the vegetable gardens that provide shade and humidity to the environment, covered with liparite stone (volcanic stone) to regulate thermal inertia and give continuity to the labor force that works this traditional and identity material.
The project is a building with a continuous façade, with minimal openings and hermetic towards the exterior like the high Andean houses that are grouped around a central courtyard from which the great hills, which are sacred and are considered living beings that provide protection and security, are always visible and are therefore the object of payments or offerings in sacred places. For the Lickanatai this is a sacred fact. Their worldview is centered on the earth, showing a profound relationship between man and his natural environment.
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