Mirrors Plaza — LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA

Plaza de los Espejos from above. Photo Credit: Gonzalo Zuñiga

Plaza de los Espejos is an urban infrastructure project resulting from a Public and Private articulation that includes 4 basic elements for its development: an existing square, a floor painting, new urban furniture, and a cover. All of this generates dynamism and unexpected uses in the residual space of the city.

The existing square corresponds to the Municipality of Las Condes in the city of Santiago and was chosen for this project due to its condition as a "residual space" resulting from the works of the underground section of Manquehue Avenue that passes below this square, which caused an "urban island", a triangle in the middle of three highly transited avenues with almost no pedestrian connection. In addition, this square presented a series of elements that had to be considered in the design: an empty space between eight concrete planters with a tree each and the pavement composed of tiles arranged geometrically in an orthogonal layout.

The floor painting is arranged within this pre-existing layout, generating a new triangular and trapezoidal geometry of multiple colors that takes as reference a series of Pantones provided by the automotive brand SEAT, which, as a form of advertising and brand positioning, represent the various colors of the Barcelona sky, the city of origin of this brand.

The new urban furniture, built with plywood panels, is understood as an extrusion of this new geometry caused by the floor painting, considering 3 levels of height that serve for multiple unplanned activities such as sitting, eating, conversing, gathering, dancing, jumping, playing, skating, singing, in short, a stage for various activities. This furniture occupies the axis or center of the space intervened by means of an intermittent line of various heights and three colors: red, orange, and yellow.

The steel cover is arranged according to the empty space and the planters with the trees, thus generating 6 support pillars located at the axis of 6 planters, in order to continue with the empty condition of the space, but this time contained and protected by a roof that provides shade, and an interaction and stimulation with people and the other elements of the square (floor mural and furniture), through the use of reflective stainless steel as a coating for the sky of the cover, thus generating a dynamic and abstract use between people and the elements of the square, which takes as reference the Vieux port de Marseille by architect Norman Foster and the Mercats del Encants de Barcelona by architects b720 and Fermín Vázquez.

The shape of the roof is also conditioned by the planters, as the water discharges for the rainy season fall directly onto the trees due to the direction of their inclination and a gutter that leads the water to the trees, thus generating the recirculation of rainwater that falls on the roof for the watering of the trees. The colors of the roof respond to the concept of the fifth facade due to the high-rise buildings surrounding this area.

This article and photographs are shared with permission from ArchDaily.