Urban tesselation

Woranol Sattayavinij

The project is about the development of the polluted Riachuelo river and industrial/ low income residential area in the area of La Boca as one part of the efforts to promote Buenos Aires to be the Olympic games host. The critical issue which this project try to avoid is the olympic mega-structure which has no connection to the existing and finally makes the community suffer.

The abandoned waterfront pedestrian, this flooding-resistant infrastructure was built along Riachuelo river with the first aim to be used as a recreational pedestrian way. Right now, it lost a connection with urban fabric, it is huge waste space in Buenos Aires. In addition, large-scale industrial buildings also block the community to reach the waterfront. To reactivate this pedestrian way and make the area becomes more lively. this project should be a "corridor" which connect people and water, a corridor which expand the connection of sport facilities and lively area like Boca Jr. stadium and Camenito street together. Moreover, this project should be one of the gateways to the other side of the river in the future.

For the reason, this project, The La Boca Aquatic Center, focuses on the connection between urban fabric , new activities and Riachuelo waterfront. The study of urban grid is the starting point. What makes urban grid the key to achieve such connection is that urban grid indicates zoning, route and sometimes architectural form and space of one urban space. Then, sub-division of urban grid create different atmosphere and unity for each urban space. Street and transportation route are the first level of urban grid sub-division, then buildings are the next one and then something smaller such as pedestrian way, micro-landscape, etc. Therefore, sub-dividing geometry which derives from urban grid is used in design process in order to find architectural and landscape form that belong to the context.

From the trip to Buenos Aires, the idea about water containers is another interest. The city has a long history of dealing with water level and water treatment. People stock water in different sizes of containers, from the macro scale containers like river and water treatment facilities to the micro scale such as swimming pool, street waterscapes and etc.. Urban activities are related to different character of water containers. The lively interaction of people and water could be seen everywhere.

Through the sub-diving of urban grid, The built environment in this project provides the gradation of building scale from residential block to large-scale building blocks, the transferring of existing activities from the community to the project through the new market, the new gathering space. Waterscape consists of ponds with different size and depth will be used for a variety of purposes such as water plants, small water filtration, water features and competition pools.

In summary, The sub- dividing geometry derives from urban grid will merge urban activities, form, space, structural system, material module together as a homogeneous built environment. The identity of the project and the connection to the urban fabric are created by the process of "urban tesselation". The ultimate goal is to make people proud of the new iconic architecture of Buenos Aires, at the same time, happy to stay with.