PABELLON LA FUENTE
Water fountains in a park are designed as formal and geometric landscaping elements. They capture certain natural scenarios found within the city, such as the stillness of water from a lake or lagoon. These fountains create a calming environment, allowing people to engage in a nearly hypnotic contemplation that provides a momentary escape from the city's hustle and bustle.
The "Pabellón La Fuente" is designed to create a space for permanence and perceptual contemplation, utilizing the existing water fountain as a physical focal point within Balmaceda Park. This park and its ornamental features were commissioned by the Santiago municipality to architects Oscar Prager, Sergio Larraín, and Jorge Arteaga in 1931.
This pavilion is an enclosed space located within the water fountain, surrounded by a perimeter that resembles a "work barrier," as if the fountain is under repair and awaiting reopening. This temporary closure fosters a new connection between people and the water fountain. It sparks curiosity, rekindling the image of the water fountain that is no longer visible in people's minds. As a result, it creates a unique interior space that transforms the act of contemplation into an entirely
new experience—an immersive environment within the water.
It is a temporary pavilion designed to create an experience, offering a moment of pause, contemplation, silence, immersion, and perception between people and water while enhancing its sound, movement, shape, and reflection.
To achieve this temporality goal, we worked with a serial and repeated module made from a film-faced plywood panel in standard dimensions of 1220 x 2440 mm and a skeleton or exo-structure of brushed Oregon pine in 2”x3”. These were prefabricated in the workshops of the UNAB Campus Creativo School of Architecture and could be installed around the perimeter without affecting any module's dimensions, except at the access door. Fifty prefabricated modules were created by the architecture team, along with the fabrication and assembly team, and we installed them in approximately eight hours. Additionally, each
prefabricated module included a 1mm thick mirrored acrylic sheet that serves a specific role in achieving the project's objectives. This design aims to create an abstract space centered around the shape of water and its reflection, generating a sense of continuity between the fountain's water and the pavilion's interior perimeter.
The ability for people to walk through the water, accompanied by the three jets from the fountain, creates a constant movement and undulation of the water. This interaction generates a dynamic texture and reflection that is always changing. The deformation and the material's oscillation is in response to various climatic conditions encountered during the pavilion's installation, including humidity, extremely low temperatures in the early morning, rain, and sunlight. As a result, the distorted reflection of the pavilion's interior perimeter was achieved through the interplay between the materials and the environment. This deformation also adds a playful quality, as it reflects abstract images of people's bodies along with the light from the sky, sun, and water.
In terms of heritage and historical recovery, we reinterpret the three original “alita de mosca” granite monoliths or pedestals that accompanied the three jets of water but were looted over time. To do this, we researched ornamental granite elements found throughout the park—such as pavements, steps, walls, retaining structures, benches, and the now-missing monoliths from the water fountains. The “alita de mosca” granite has an artisanal tradition from “the stone masons of
La Obra” in Cajón del Maipo. Currently, it is worked on by the last generation of masons who sculpted these three monoliths that we left installed in the fountain after dismantling the Pavilion.
This Pavilion can currently be viewed generically as an installation capable of provoking this same experience and posing similar questions about urban ornamental elements in various parks, squares, and cities worldwide.
CREDITS
Architects: Abarca Palma Arquitectos, Chile.
Responsible Architect: Camilo Palma
Architecture Team: Camilo Palma, Francisco Abarca, Sebastián Ochoa, Nicolás Acosta, Enrique Meñique, Miguel Uribe
Construction and Assembly Team (UNAB Architecture Students): Josefa Marambio, Leslie
Jiménez, María José Donoso, Tamara Quezada, Federico Hernández, Bastián Duran, Fernanda Ramírez.
Assembly Chief: Washington Pérez
Granite Monoliths: Antonio Segura and Daniel Segura
Photography and Shortfilm: Pablo Casals-Aguirre
Funding: FONDART 2019 (1st prize, Public funding competition, Ephemeral Architecture in public space category), Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile.
Sponsorship: Municipality of Providencia
Technical and Logistical Collaboration: School of Architecture, Creative Campus UNAB
