The VAUMM studio uses industrialized systems to insert the building into the urban landscape of this neighborhood. Dry construction is used using a standardized, bolted metal structure that can later be reused. The concrete slab floors are of standardized measurements that allow easy assembly and disassembly for future reuse.
The façade, made up of a ceramic membrane, is one of the most characteristic elements of the project. The ceramic envelope acts as a curtain allowing constant ventilation in the building, eliminating the need for mechanical ventilation. The façade follows the same concept of assembly and disassembly thanks to the easy handling of the ceramic pieces that make up a pixelated pattern.
Parking building in Errenteria by VAUMM. Photograph by Aitor Estévez.
Project description by VAUMM
The Beraun neighbourhood car park in Errenteria, Gipuzkoa, is presented as an urban infrastructure and a potential architecture that houses vehicles, which in the future could contain any other public use, considering the obsolescence of the motor vehicle.
The difficult topographical situation of the plot, a wooded hillside at the foot of the N-1 converted into a motorway, made the project rethink to minimise excavation by proposing a building above ground level. For this reason, the building is staggered to adapt to the slope of the street, thus facilitating the contact of the different floors with the existing road. The car park is organised in a descending manner, with the main access on the upper floor, so that vehicles travel through the floors and descend in level, until the exit on the ground floor.
Taming the impact of this public facility for 181 vehicles in this high-density neighbourhood has been the main objective of the project. On the one hand, a construction has been proposed that, except for the foundation, has been carried out dry. Using the Anro Tech system, the work has been carried out with a standardised, bolted metal structure designed for assembly, subsequent disassembly and reuse. The same occurs with the solution of the floors, made with prefabricated concrete slabs, of a constant size to facilitate assembly. In this sense, the construction becomes an assembly, thinking about the future reuse of all these elements.
On the other hand, the most characteristic element of the building is surely its perforated skin. A ceramic membrane made with the Flexbrick patent, which follows the same philosophy of assembly and mounting. This ceramic envelope is placed as a curtain or a screen, and given its permeable geometry it eliminates the need for mechanical installations for ventilation of the garage, allowing constant and cross ventilation of the building. In addition, its assembly using independent ceramic pieces generates a pixelated pattern on the entire façade that reaches 100 metres in length. By optimising the manufacturing means and the assembly system, four colours close to green and brown have been used, together with black, which creates the void, characteristic colours of the wooded hillside to which the building is attached.
This artificial graphic pattern domesticates the building, and to a certain extent eliminates the infrastructural crudeness of a car park built using industrialised systems, to insert it into the urban landscape of this working-class neighbourhood. At night, when the outside light disappears, the interior lighting appears through the gaps in this openwork surface, showing the activity of this public facility that is added to the daily life of the neighbourhood.
