Matilde Cassani & Franceso Librizzi delivered Mineralwasser°,  awarded Second Place in Archivo Pavilion Competition.

From the 400 entries, the Jury found four basic tendencies in the solutions delivered by contestants:

1- Barragan Hommage

2- Sculptural / Esthetic statement

3- Modernist reference

4- Illusion as mechanism for transformation

From the 4 categories, the Jury disregarded most of the first two approaches as Luis Barragán was never intended to be a protagonist as he already is as our neighbor. Secondly, all the esthetic solutions did not fulfill the essence of the competition, as we believe in this case that architecture needed to transcend the architectural object per se, to be able trigger an impact in our public nourishing a new community sense.

As Paola Antonelli revised, Mineralwasser° was clearly the ¨boldest¨ approach towards the modernist referential. An obvious solution for the context, Cassani & Librizzi achieved in an elegant and subtle way to frame the garden instead of interfering with it. The frame, gestural but solemn at the same time, helped to focus the attention in one of the most important assets of the 1952 construction that houses Archivo. The garden is all around (another name for the proposal), did achieved to create a new private space that allowed interaction through different setup solutions. The most perfect of the entries, Mineralwasser° clearly embeds a sense of tradition that failed versus the experimental design challenge imposed by the winning entry.

Congratulations to the contestants on behalf of Archivo!

Project statement

A long frame lies in the middle of the garden. It separates the green in two parts. One closer to the exhisting building brings on the contact with
previous activities. The second area is a new private place surronded by leaves. A pavilion in the garden wich plays the role of a scenic background
and a stage. Something between a ninpheum and a ballroom. Beyound the treshold a paved area defines the borders of a new surface and brings
artificial colour over the green. An architectonical field traces the limits between artificial and natural and allow outdoor technical activities.
Overhead a soft roof fixes the vertical limit and adds new borders in defining the space. As a curtain it filters natural light over the new surfaces
and protects from the rain.
Furniture is spread all over natural and artificial fields, disposable for multiple layouts. Armchairs both serve for private seats on the green, for
public talks under a common roof, or together with small tables create coffee layouts.
A monochromatic volume stands in the backround, hosting space for storage, a bar and a white screen for projections.