Civic Center for Peace by Norte Sur Arquitectos

Description of project by Norte Sur Arquitectos

The Civic Center for Peace (CCP) is a physical and symbolic space of state presence and inclusive community meeting where counseling, training and support services will be provided to children and young people up to 18 years of age in a situation of social vulnerability, with infrastructural conditions and technology necessary for quality care.

Although the Cartago CCP is a work of an institutional nature, it became necessary that from its design, the image of the institutional building, commonly perceived by young people as a representation of the stereotype of "authority" associated with the idea of repression and repression, be reconsidered. control, unattractive and stimulating for young populations.

The wide and varied program of needs in which requirements and functions of the Ministry of Justice and Peace are mixed, by ICODER, of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, among others, as well as by the limited area of available land, made It is evident that the implementation of the project on the site had to be done with the intention of integrating and uniting all the functional variables, not only with the immediate landscape but especially with the end user.

It was as well as its design was developed from the concept of link, understood as an emotional experience that unites a person with an object or with other people and suggests the existence of a structure that surrounds them beyond themselves.

A design is proposed in which the spaces for recreational activities become very visible and whose accessibility is clearly readable for the users who approach it from the tangent pedestrian zones, as well as from those who cross and cross it. Its shape and internal distribution uses the movement to fulfill the objective of becoming an attractor, offering multiple options both for the route and for the appropriation of the space. In this way, the project is at the same time a facilitator, polyvalent and dynamic that collaborates with the inter-institutional co-management to create an experience of encounter with the community.

In search of the balance between the permanent and the temporary that occurs in urban spaces, it is proposed to extend the latter beyond the functional program of the project. For this reason it is integrated to the north of the existing plaza and to the southwest it is suggested the closure of the street that separates the school with the CCP, to generate a safe area for children on their way to the Civic Center where the community weekly activities such as the already existing Farmer's Fair on Saturdays and special outdoor events.

The CCP of Cartago wants to be, finally, a facilitator of social integration starting from the generation of inclusive urban space, which keeps inside praying to be rediscovered through the journey, a meeting with the opportunity offered to young people to grow through culture. A place to nourish the link between the individual and the community to which he belongs.