Underground public space for people: dealing with light and space

Abstract

Qualificació obtinguda: 8 Màster universitari en Estudis Avançats en Arquitectura (BarcelonaArch) -- Contemporary Project

A filter of light and city, negative interventions, to let the above flood by light into the mass of the subsoil. “The light and the gravity are the only elements capable of piercing the thinking of the stone”. The light reaches the underground only as zenithal light. Classified in three forms: direct, redirected and filtered, permitting the underground to be perceived as an integrated space by converting the underground line division, as a filter of light. Today, the subsoil is a non-place, a space of transition and intermediation between two points of the above, and it contains buried pieces of forgotten history. It is almost never a destination, due to it’s main role of transporting elements, it is a non-place. Today in some cities it is still a serving space, destined only to support the above. Why is the subsoil still retaining the same characteristics now a day, if it could solve so many other problems not only of space but density and experimentation in the city? Integrating the subsoil into the city is a very efficient way to improve the growth and the revaluation of the built zones and a way to take advantage of neglected buried spaces. Adding to it new uses, besides transportation, such as activities that provoke permanence. And finally physically integrating underground spaces to the urban fabric and thus achieves being part of fundamental system of public space. The public space above is characterized by natural light, we receive sunlight in a plaza or a park and we have visibility to other elements: we are in an “exterior”. But In the underground today it’s a complete different story, therefore this lack of perception, of natural light and visibility make these spaces isolated. A space is observable only when there is light and then is when it is inhabitable.