The third edition of Hello Wood Argentina is approaching—the renowned timber architecture and design festival that aims to teach thinking with your hands and learning through experience.
From March 2 to 10, 2019, 10 selected projects will be built around this edition's theme: a space of containment, a space of CON-TENSION.
Discover the projects selected for Hello Wood Argentina 2019, described in the words of their creators, below.
PROJECT _ TOLVA / BAAG
HOPPER [TOLVA]
feminine noun
1. A container in the shape of an inverted pyramid or cone, with an opening at its lower part, used to gradually pass its contents to another place or a container with a narrower opening.
The project is a prismatic structure operating with two elements: a hopper and a tensioned wooden platform.
At first glance, the tensioned platform appears static, but this stillness is an invitation to step on.
The platform moves and deforms according to the forces applied to it, generating slight surface movements. One or several people can step onto the platform, moving quickly or slowly. The group experiences a sensation of oscillation and sway, where the movements of others affect the overall movement of the piece.
The inverted hopper acts as protection, shelter, and containment. It directs the views of those on the platform, framing the sky.
We imagine this piece as an element of transportation. Just as a hopper transports matter from one place to another, we propose a group transportation device, an experience of movement and transfer.
PROJECT _ INHABITING THE MANIFESTO / CARRANZA VAZQUEZ ARQUITECTOS
A SPACE BETWEEN THE THEORETICAL AND THE EVERYDAY
We configured a space tensioned between strict discipline and the demands of the human condition—universes usually posited as antipodes operating in the same territory of action. Our project explores and tests the boundaries of these universes, proposing a resolution that recenters the gaze on the human being, and establishes the theoretical corpus as a support for producing inhabitable spaces. Within the discipline, temporary exhibition pavilions at international fairs have historically been used by avant-gardes as theoretical vehicles that condensed the reflections and spirit of an era, becoming authentic built manifestos. Appealing to the same resource and recognizing the relevance of Modernity as a process, we take the German Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich (Barcelona, 1929)—the ultimate exponent of the built manifesto—as our project matrix.
By disrupting the material and spatial logic of the pavilion, we deactivate its unprogrammed area and activate the walls as an inhabitable thickness that supports the programs of containment and relaxation, through which the impulses of contemporary living are resolved.
A regular grid is proposed that reproduces, organizes, and modulates the covered cubic meters of the German Pavilion according to the technical possibilities of the material used (3.05 m wooden slats). Freed from its traditional condition, the wall becomes an inhabited void where mass turns into program. Each of these "new walls" contains elements that foster various activities according to the potential meanings of the concepts of containment and con-tension posed by the Festival.
On one hand, containment modules are arranged as spaces of reflection and intimacy; on the other hand, the con-tension modules are conceived as devices that foster interaction, exchange, and collaboration through play; and finally, relaxation modules provide support for pause and rest. We are interested in creating a system of tensioned sections in a free space. Although these modules are circumscribed in a regular grid, they can be extracted and transported as independent sections. This would deepen and give continuity to the process of disrupting the pavilion, simply by varying the scale of the space that tensions them, thus allowing us to inhabit the manifesto from different geographies.
PROJECT _ HOJARASCA / BURO
What is that force that drives children to climb trees? Perhaps it is the adventure of seeing the world from an unfamiliar perspective—a view that allows them to discover things invisible from the ground. Or it could be the satisfaction of the physical effort made to reach the canopy, feeling sheltered by the branches and foliage, knowing they can see everything, yet remain unseen.
What we do know is that we still carry in our DNA that primitive remnant of our primate ancestors. No matter how much we look in the mirror and see humans, at our core, we are still animals.
The pavilion invites us to release our inner child—unprejudiced, guided solely by instinct, and ready to take on the world. For a moment, we can be like the character in Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees, who, after a family dispute, climbed a tree and never came down...
The pavilion's structure is elevated from the ground on stilts to create a gathering space filtered by a skin of vertical wooden slats. These slats sway, swing, and strike one another with the wind, reinterpreting the foliage. Access is provided through a network of staves arranged to enrich the promenade, culminating at the top with a viewpoint that offers a panoramic view over the "canopy."
Taking advantage of the slender dimensions of the slats, the pavilion incorporates a new property into the material. Similar to wind chimes, the perimeter curtains of hanging slats produce percussive sounds as the wind transfers its kinetic energy to them. In this way, the skin offers not only a play of light and a sense of life and movement in the space, but also an immersive and therapeutic sound.
PROJECT _ LEISURE LINE / BRUNO SIRABO
Leisure Line
(...) it is difficult to make a straight line (...)
The project is a segment of a larger project that could operate on a territorial scale; thus, it does not present a finished final shape, but rather establishes an intimate relationship with the idea of module and system characteristic of the oldest architectures, and with the limits of material availability.
Natural boundaries organize territories, political, and cultural borders. Ridge lines and shore or valley lines have historically been places where different activities and gathering spaces unfold between diverse cultures.
Political borders have developed as an architecture of straight lines—cuts in the territory acting as boundaries since antiquity. Through military architecture, defense systems, settlements, walls, citadels, military plans, and structures of colonization, they have clashed with natural boundaries throughout history.
Vernacular architecture has also developed from the values of systems and modules, as seen in the architecture of plantations, greenhouses, sheds, galleries, or loggias.
Various artistic practices, from 1960s Land Art to the present day, have highlighted this friction, questioning the dichotomy.
The project functions as an ars memoriae or a mnemonic device that artificially evokes other architectures.
PROJECT _ RANCHO ZEN / ATE ESTUDIO
We propose an architectural device that provides a space for rest, gathering, and contemplating the surroundings—one where nature is the protagonist and this space merely contributes to the setting as a shelter from the sun, a place for interaction and introspection. We allow the breeze to pass through, light to penetrate, and even the rain-soaked earth floor to enrich the space with the scent of damp soil.
We conceived an object that is visually permeable, posing no obstacle to the context while allowing it to be contemplated. We imagine it covered in vegetation over time, fully merging with its environment. Content and container thus become amalgamated into a single artifact. Nature contains the object, and the object contains nature, capturing and incorporating it.
We aim to design an abstract space that materializes two clearly distinct areas within itself, one contained inside the other, generating a Zen courtyard from the tension between them. We aim to build meaningful places.
PROJECT _ CONTENSOR / PPP PASCUALE ARQUITECTOS
CONTENSOR seeks to reflect and highlight design exploration from morphological, structural, and constructive perspectives. It is a portmanteau of the concepts of containment (contención) and tensioner (tensor) that shape and support the project.
Through containment, the project seeks to generate an inhabitable space of permanence by applying opposing or tensioned forces to counteract the weight exerted by the bridge's considerable span between the structural supports.
The proposal rises above ground level, allowing it to become an inhabitable space that users can appropriate, turning it into a place for gathering and staying. Thanks to its configuration, it can be installed in different locations and contexts, for various situations and moments. Its meaning is directly related to its context.
It combines features that enable the empirical study of timber subjected to different stresses and bending moments, making the construction process highly enriching and challenging.
Contensor is the culmination of restless searches between thinking and doing.
PROJECT _ EGG-O / ESTUDIO MONTEVIDEO
The objective of our proposal is to generate a space that combines and experiences the feeling and sensation of containment and tension. We seek an object that is not merely a sum of parts, but has its own nature, synthesized into a unique and essential form. The result is an object with a timeless, transcendental, natural, and synthetic character.
Through a process of exploration and experimentation, we understood that the circle, when projected into its spatial dimension (the sphere), faithfully reflects the duality between CONTAINMENT and CON-TENSION.
We reinforce this dichotomy between CONTAINMENT and CON-TENSION through form, materiality, and light.
From the outside, the spherical shape produces a sense of containment, purity, and shelter. It is conceived entirely of slatted wood, achieving permeability through the arrangement of its elements and lending a certain lightness to the whole. Inside, the circular/spherical shape of the space disturbs, tensions, alters, and destabilizes you, as there is no option to find a point or boundary where you can take refuge.
This is reinforced by the layout of the wooden slats and their varying lengths towards the center, along with the play of light and shadow that creates a shifting, dynamic, moving sensation.
To achieve the circular/spherical shape, we decided to use OSB rings joined by wooden slats and screws. The overlapping of these two elements, combined with the variation in diameter, forms the sphere. Each ring is made of trapezoidal OSB board modules, which together form a ring, thus reducing material waste.
PROJECT _ BRIDGE 1:0.89 / LEANDRO PIAZZI _ JUAN PAULO ALARCON
From a pedagogical standpoint, we seek to bring together formal and informal knowledge within the project: a paradigm of architecture like "The House on the Brook" (la casa sobre el arroyo) with the wisdom of the auxiliary structures builders erect to materialize a work. In this case, we use the formwork of half of that house’s arch as a container for an absent architecture. The project emerges from this tension, achieving autonomy. Within this design approach, there is an attitude of restraint against over-design or the pursuit of autonomous, signature architecture. The OSB sheet is tensioned until it reaches a curve where concave and convex, above and below, ground and roof, light and shadow interact. An accessible roof serves as a grandstand, acting as a continuation of the existing ground, supported by a vast number of wooden shores that generate a dense hypostyle hall in semi-darkness.
Approach to the Formal and Informal: The project proposes to unite formal—or canonical, if you will—knowledge with informal knowledge. It does this by incorporating from memory Amancio Williams' iconic "House on the Brook" and materializing a portion of its formwork (container) through the informal details of those other designers we generally overlook, the other "masters." We aim to learn from a paradigm of architecture as well as from anonymous expertise.
Spatial Con-tension: The project is the con-tension of an absent architecture—a fragment of a building we want to make present within the formwork of a "rough construction." It is a sheet that tensions itself to reach a curve where concave and convex, above and below, ground and roof, light and shadow converge. An accessible roof acts as a grandstand continuing from the existing ground, supported by a vast number of shores that create a dense hypostyle hall in semi-darkness. Straight elements support the curve: a structure of the structure of the final absent structure. On-site details carrying long lineages of wisdom transform the result into a living entity; the project acquires autonomy.
Restraint in Design: The project is already out there, governed by its own logic. In an attitude of design restraint, we must know how to guide it—tying our own hands—observing what is around us and highlighting its value. We must look to the past to construct a present that addresses future uncertainty, restraining and suspending hubris, vanity, and egocentrism. A work never belongs solely to the architect; many more actors participate in it, and above all, it exists in and belongs to the world.
Material Restraint: The tension between the world of ideas and reality must manifest in this approach. Using resources that are becoming scarce requires an austere and pragmatic attitude. Working with what is at hand means scaling our model down to 1:0.89 to adapt to material reality and availability.
PROJECT _ DIS-POSITIVO / PARVAS
Like seeds, protected by a hard, aggressive shell that contains them within a soft and warm interior, our lives are not only shaped by subjects who contain and protect us. There are also spaces and personalities that constitute real, distinct devices conditioning our views on reality and our ways of interacting, forming personal spaces of refuge and CONTAINMENT in constant (de)CONSTRUCTION. The proposed space constitutes a DEVICE [DISPOSITIVO] that seeks to highlight the existing and necessary TENSION between the kindness, naturalness, continuity, and warmth of these spaces of refuge, and the secure, determined, and often aggressive appearance of an exterior that seeks to challenge and intimidate to secure the life it contains.
The proposal consists of a rectangular-based prism formed by consecutively stacked perpendicular wooden slats. This structure appears partly built and partly in the process of (de)construction, presenting a spherical chamber with a circular access opening in the most saturated area. This configuration generates a strong CONTRAST between the sensations and perceptions evoked by an organic, continuous, concentric, and finished INTERIOR space—associated with containment, relaxation, and harmony—and an orthogonal, highly discontinuous, and unfinished EXTERIOR that feels partly resistant, rigid, structured, and partly dematerialized, chaotic, and even violent. These latter impressions enhance the sensations of security and protection felt by the occupants of the interior space.
Accessing the interior space from the zone under (de)construction makes the entry feel difficult, obstacle-filled, and hard to recognize, even associating it with danger due to the red coloring of the material in this area, which fades to natural wood as it approaches the containment zone. Both the interior and exterior spaces invite and allow for different opportunities of GATHERING and INTERACTION through a free APPROPRIATION of SPACE. This is more constrained in the interior zone, which is more impermeable and concentric, offering varying degrees of "transparency" to the outside due to the envelope's different densities, while offering greater freedom and opportunities for appropriation in the approach area.
This materiality, acting as a DEVICE, invites reflection on the contrast—or TENSION—visible in the personality or appearance of many subjects, spaces, or material environments. These are the results of various processes of development, appropriation, and/or (de)construction aimed at containing and protecting the LIFE they harbor, as shelters that recall the first caves used by humans in an unpredictable and hostile ancestral context.
We invite everyone to (de)construct a DIS-POSITIVE [DIS-POSITIVO], a shelter, a space of protection, a space of one's own, a space to share, a space to reflect, a space of CONTAINMENT, a space of CON-TENSION.
PROJECT _ INSIDE-OUTSIDE / SILVESTRE CASTELLANI
A structure of containment—a structure that fosters a moment of restraint, only to then gaze at the horizon or slide down a chute. It is a structure that allows for diverse spaces of appropriation, featuring inclined or horizontal planes for resting beneath an elevated frame. A staircase of sensations that leads to the surrounding landscape while fostering a unique interior experience.
Moving from outside to inside, from a moment of rest to an exhilaration of movement, from a moment of reflection to a playful proposal—containment needs tension to be understood. This structure, which acts as a support for diverse interpretations, is an element meant to be explored and appropriated according to the mood of its users.
The proposed structure seeks to combine the material in its different formats to shape a piece that captures and reflects structural and spatial possibilities, as well as sensations, textures, and shadows in the arrangement of wood as a sum of parts. The studs shape the structure and permeable boundaries, the OSB boards generate the support and enclosure planes, and the combination of both allows for the stiffening of the most demanding parts (steps and horizontal lounging surfaces or vertical frames and enclosures).
The two-flight staircase forms the structural base of the piece. As it rises, it is braced with diagonal struts that create containment spaces at ground level, a horizontal plane under the first flight (acting as a bed), and inclined planes under the second flight (acting as lounge chairs). The staircase proposes two contrasting situations: an open first flight that seeks a relationship with the immediate surroundings, and a second flight that encourages introspection in the form of a narrow tunnel leading to the highest point. Here, users can reconnect with the site, enjoy a broader perspective, and are invited to descend via a slide designed to leave the experience behind... or repeat it all over again...
* The description of each project is courtesy of the project team.
This article was written by Fabian Dejtiar. The translation is powered by AI.
Hello Wood Argentina 2019: llega la tercera edición y anuncia su convocatoria abierta para líderes de proyecto
Llega la tercera edición de Hello Wood Argentina, el distintivo festival de arquitectura y diseño en madera. Un programa creativo, profesional y social, que busca enseñar a pensar con las manos y a aprender a través de la experiencia. Hello Wood integra diversos campos de la arquitectura, el diseño y la ciencia; construye comunidad y fomenta talento.
