PHOTOGRAPHS Juan Solano Ojasi
We had to solve an atypical project, a design center, where creativity and art should be blended and be offered to the user. The shops should have the same condition, without creating differences between the front and back. After solving the first floor with two locals, we made in the second and third floor 8 offices or locals arranged beside a yard with domestic scale.
This courtyard is limited by a green wall of recycled wood and plants that spring from it. The artist Veronica Crousse was called to design this large wall sculpture made from recycled materials with living vegetation in the gaps left by the position and movement of the wood inserts. It generates a very special life to a dividing wall which coexists with the everyday creative work.
The courtyard stars the project and gives life to these locals. This resolves an equitable and warm condition that coexists with the creative environment of the center. Thus, between the 8 offices and the vertical garden is born the terrace, an open space that acts as entrance court for workers and visitors of Zentro.
The language of the project achieves harmony between contemporary materials that give strength to the construction. Details in exposed concrete, recycled wood and stainless steel define the small but important spaces in the project. One example is the staircase in the office atrium, by being open should play with this space and therefore it mixes the rustic of the wood planks with the subtlety of the steel to make an essential piece of the project.
The facade should reinforce the concept of balance and equitable and as a result was born the ribbon of concrete that connects all floors of the design center and mixed with large panes of glass let us to integrate the locals and office with the exterior. Thus, the facade is kept alive not only by day with the exhibition of pieces but also at night with a subtle set of lights.
In short, Zentro represents not only a project well-studied that inserted into an urban environment, but is itself a set of spaces and sensations that arise as one delves deeper into the proposed architecture.
For that reason with clean lines and austere materials was proposed a contemporary architecture that works as a container box of creativity and added value.
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