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Repensar • Zizur

Location Zizur Mayor (ES)
Date 2021
Status Project completed

Photo credits Gorka Beunza

Video credits Jorge Tellechea


Project team Ioar Cabodevilla Antoñana, Itxaso Iturrioz Zuluaga, Xabi Urroz Zabalza · Orekari Estudio, Salomé Wackernagel, Ximena Castro Mendivil, David Vallejo Bustillo, Diego Sintas + ProtoMakers Club Zizur, Colectivo Punto de Catástrofe, Pressplay & Loops, Inhabitants of Zizur Mayor

Support Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Huarte (CACH) • Innnova Cultural Navarra 2020

→ Part of the process: Repensar la Periferia

symmetric architecture of the Urbanización, the traditional and vernacular character of the pueblo, and the ultramodern and out of scale neighbourhood of Ardoi.

Through a web interface specially designed for the intervention by the graphic designer Diego Sintas, everyone could connect her/himself to the giant screens exhibited in the public space, and express thoughts, messages or drawings – taking the control for a short time of these collective and ephemeral creative boards, and virtually erasing the borders between the three peripheric, fragmented places.

 

The connecting trailer – the Carrito Conector – is a mobile bicycle carrier. The mobile item intends to serve as a support for the events and workshops carried out by the invited artists. Once on site, it opens up to form a table, revealing a music box which mixes samples using wooden discs that are moved on its surface - la Caja Musical, created by the collective Pressplay + Loops who also contributed to the process with two workshops. The vertical back part can also be removed and placed on the ground in order to form an exhibition panel on the one side, and a mirror on the other side. The metal structure on wheels supports the wooden elements realized in birch plywood. The front chimney serves as a storage for vertical elements used for the different workshops when mobile – a round pine stick holds a white sail that evokes a sand yacht (French char à voile) that serves as a summer shade when fixed.

After the intense self-construction phase, we proceeded to the cultural activation, following a proven methodology at the core of our Repensar la Periferia process. The inauguration of the three structures positioned in three different parts of the city took place in the form of a Bicimartxa – a collective bicycle ride lead by the local artists Elsa Kbless & El Txino.

From the very beginning of the process in Zizur Mayor, the photographers collective Punto de Catástrofe –  which already had a strong experience of the territory as some of its seven members live and work here – proposed to launch a participative photography call via the social networks, in order to collect as many different point of views of the peripheral landscape as possible. This initiative #postales31180 also took place physically on the Plaza de la Mujer in Ardoi, using the one Conectador this time as an exhibition item. During the event, more than hundred collected pictures sent by inhabitants to the collective were printed on postcards and sent to the Museo della Periferia in Rome.

We can say that we reached the main objectives of our peripheral activist process:

  • mediate the access to local culture, in a sustainable way, through the intervention on the public space and architecture as an open tool.

  • link architecture and art with the social and the urban, by taking art to the street space, by bringing it closer to all kinds of audiences and making it accessible to everyone (children, seniors, people without resources...) through ephemeral, mobile and interactive architectural elements.

The fourth place for our Repensar la Periferia (Rethinking the Periphery) project is Zizur Mayor, a place divided by the A2 highway in three very contrasted parts of peripherality: the old pueblo, the Urbanización from the 1960's-1980's, and the new neighbourhood of Ardoi which came out from the ground from 2013.

The most important objective of the process is the collaborative design and participative self-construction of the ephemeral architectures for the fragmented public space of Zizur Mayor. Regarding the urban problems that needed to be confronted, three giant connector screens have been designed during the collective design sessions with our pilot group (composed by the involved artists collectives, inhabitants and local actors), as well as a connecting trailer which intended to serve as a support for the events and workshops that were to be carried out by the invited artists.

The three giant connector screens – the Conectadores – are placed in three strategic points of the municipality. These displays have been conceived and realized collectively, in collaboration with the local ProtoMakers association - following the #diy philosophy, using ping pong balls to spread the LEDs illumination system. The screens are framed in a monumental, almost monolithic, self-built structure made of OSB wood that adds functionality to the display. The wooden elements are covered by a recycled mirror skin reflecting the urban, constrasted landscape into the ephemeral public architecture. Each of the three architectures expresses a special characteristic of the neighbourhood where it is to be found by the shape of its ‘roof’: the post-modernist, almost brutalist and very

Architectural designer & researcher

Master of Arts in Architecture

©2024 · Salomé Wackernagel · Architecture

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