Una sombra improbable

A temporary pavilion occupies a square in front of a cultural centre, in a city that has built much of its cultural identity through successive interventions, each using the resources and knowledge of its time to reshape the urban landscape. The project carries that idea of continuous change into the square through something as ordinary as shade. It was one of two winners of the fifth edition of an urban architecture festival devoted this year to energy and the city.

A timber lattice raised on steel frames filters the sun and casts a web of lines across the paving. Through the day the pattern shifts in shape and position, making the passing of time visible and offering different ways of perceiving the same place. The movement of light becomes a way of describing a city that keeps reinventing itself.

For the weeks it stands, the pavilion turns a square people usually cross on the way elsewhere into a place to meet, rest and gather. Its open structure supports different uses without imposing one. The concrete bases double as benches, and the lattice above gives shade to stop, play or join activities, like an open-air gallery or a small play landscape.

The construction is simple. Six independent structural modules carry a lattice of 59 glued-laminated timber beams, and the steel frames rest on precast concrete benches that act as plinths and keep the whole stable without anchoring into the ground or touching the existing paving. Standard commercial materials and joints that barely alter the pieces make it easy to take apart and reuse, and the structure can be put together again in other configurations, adapting its size and layout to new sites.