Moytirra

Azorres Summer School
Sketch Design for Deep-Sea Mining Labour's Housing Workshop

This Summer School will take place in the recently completed Arquipélago – Contemporary Arts Centre in Ribeira Grande, S.Miguel island. The project site is in Ponta das Praias, 370m (1,200 ft) away from the Arquipélago in the sea front.

Arquipélago - Contemporary Arts Centre / João Mendes Ribeiro + Menos é Mais Arquitectos (photo via Archdaily)

A deep-sea mining company wishes to house its labour, having struck minerals in the underwater reserves of Moytirra (1000miles offshore north), the first known deep-sea vents in the Azores sea. These people are fisherman from Rabo de Peixe and Ribeira Grande and the mining company will draw its labor from them. There are no restrictions as to site. A large area of practically flat plateau is available. Even facing the sea towards north, all the area is somehow protected from the north string winds.

The project provides three alternatives for design development:

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I

To design a strategy for mass housing between Rabo de Peixe and Ribeira Grande

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II

To design low income, multifamily housing prototypes suitable for insertion into the existing suburban residential area of Ponta das Praias

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III

To design new roles for architecture in the north coast of the island between the architectural and material specificity of the project and the program indeterminacy of its use, time and location

The Summer School pursues real architecture, understating the discourse trained builders and their relations with materials, acknowledging their solutions to archetypal problems in architecture such as the handling of building volume, perimeter, corners, the marking of front doors, etc… In another dimension the subject matter introduces students to pessimism, skepticism, pragmatism, and conservatism as modes of though suitable for non academically architecture.

To learn more, visit Moytirra workshop [link]