On the other hand, the landscaping part. You know how difficult it is to landscape on a roof, the famous green roofs. Hence, the material we were able to extract from the ground was ground up, which included sand, and we used it as a substrate. Instead of organic matter, which is impossible to find there. We used this type of substrate and that is part of the concepts that are key today. This project already incorporated them. Alberto Texido R Were there any particularly difficult moments? Rodrigo Werner R A tremendous problem for the parks was the time when they were no longer maintained and had to fend for themselves. That was the best test to see if they worked or not, that they endured from the social outbreak to the pandemic: two very strong blows for public spaces. The cities ended up very deteriorated, and this park, even though the construction stage was concluding, resisted quite well. That speaks of resilience. With plants that consume little water, with a good substrate, and stone -the no-maintenance material- which did not age but, on the contrary, became more attractive. The plant material also resisted. Alberto Texido R Shade elements were created, right? I imagine they also have an entire challenge to the metal's resistance to sea air and soil salts. Are the slats/panels made of wood? Rodrigo Werner R In the north, there are two very different realities: the coastal plain, which has a constant humidity of over 70%, and the inland desert where the relative humidity of the air is 10%. No wood can withstand it, because it has a stability of 12%. Thus, we took advantage of the relative humidity and made pallet racking with laminated wood and galvanized steel. The most interesting thing is that we recovered the lattice system, which was used in the saltpeter era: they built a kind of superimposed rhombus. This same idea was worked on by superim- posing these shades, and the shades alternated with the rocky surface. The shades are related to the living areas and the paths are left more open to be able to have a relationship with the geography. The work includes several visual points, especially the lookouts that are above, on the top of the rocks. Sebastián Rozas R When you look at the aerial photo, the park is cam- ouflaged, you can hardly see it, but it has a lot of architecture. There is a terrace and planter box development. Rodrigo Werner R There is something very important. From Copiapó to the north we have detected that, with time, everything has the same tone; we call this the desert patina, rust-colored and oily. A relevant spatial aspect, with a few months of use, corresponds to the fact that we take advantage of those small plains that we detect in the terrain and there we create shades and rest areas. The school takes its class photo here in the park and that is incredible. Imagine these people's pride, who did not have any public space to relax, and now they are using it intensively. Sebastián Rozas R Along the same lines, when you see the park's iso- lated photos, you get the impression that it is in a natural environment, but it is in an urban and super-built environment. It would be interesting to know how the mediation between this park and the focus on nature was thought out. Rodrigo Werner R We conceived the park as nature would have done it in a place like this. Here, suddenly there is a point in the desert where water emerges from the ground, the so-called aguadas, and the park is also created from this idea of upwelling, from this greenery in an arid context. This was not part of the commission, but we presented a master plan that recognizes sectors of rocky outcrops within this dense network of houses that can be used as a system of orchards - public spaces. Alberto Texido R In that system, apart from the physical connection that was proposed, is there any innovation in terms of water recycling? Also, I would like to ask about the trees. In the sections, you see trees,
few kilometers away, is Mejillones. The pollution and contamination of the air, soil, and sea are there, they can be seen. Thus, to carry out an intermediate-scale urban project with freedom of design and excellent execution is a tremendous responsibility and challenge, especially con- sidering that most large-scale projects do not prosper”. “Geopark is precisely the opposite. In a very complex living condition, this project is installed with a high level in both design and construction, and that is what led to the PAU award. With a good team, an excellent technical counterpart from MINVU – SERVIU, the municipality, and good development deadlines, we were able to reach a successful outcome. We also managed to get them to finance the site visits: I was traveling once a month and, in addition, with a high degree of online presence. Therefore, I think it is very important that these issues are also highlighted. Today, public space in Chile suffers from a lot of precariousness in the design, and the project phases are very disconnected, especially between the design and construction processes”. ENHANCING THE VALUE OF GEOGRAPHY Sebastián Rozas R In the Geopark project, given the water scarcity and climate change environment, what are the technical variables that support resilience and adaptation, as part of the design? Rodrigo Werner R One of the most significant vectors of this project is that there is zero maintenance. Tocopilla is one of the most isolated places in Chile; everything there is expensive, everything is far away, there is not much supply of materials, and everything is at a distance. We made a general analysis from a geographical, environmental, and ecological point of view. One of the most important variables was that all of Tocopilla is constituted on a continuous and impermeable rocky mantle, a very consolidated soil of rocks whose shapes are due to the erosion of millions of years when the seabed was formed. When one makes a subdivision one has to leave, a proportional amount of square meters destined for green areas, as a rule. There, the concept of green areas is not very appropriate, because they are ocher areas, desert areas. But what happened? The construction companies deliberately left the “green areas” for the areas where they found the largest outcrops of the rocky mantle because it is very expensive to dynamite it. In addition, with the geotechnical study we detected up to two and three meters of garbage and debris on top of the rock: from construction waste and household waste up to refrigerators. The idea for the green areas was to create flat spaces since usually, the goal is to create fields where there is equipment and other facilities. Therefore, the first task was to talk with the neighbors and the municipality about the fact that the rock is a value and not a problem. That is why we named it Geopark, to give value to this heritage. We saw it as an opportunity. We even realized that the symbol of Tocopilla is a rock called the Camel Rock because it has a foreshortened shape that resembles a dromedary. Sebastián Rozas R Could you detail the steps to detect the terrain´s capabilities? Rodrigo Werner R We also managed to convince them that it was not necessary to destroy this geographical feature but, on the contrary, to enhance it and make a design from that element. Then, we made a complete laser survey, with a point cloud, of everything that existed and, in a way, the terrain began to speak to us. More than inducing a design, what we did was to detect the different spatial features available: places with slopes, small basins, places that had cavities, all this rock that had millions of years of seabed; these holes, this concave/convex terrain. We recorded it and put together a project based on what the terrain dictated to us and we translated it into certain design patterns. The exercise was interesting because rather than adding, we were taking elements out. It was a public space in subtraction, so to speak. Then, as we were cleaning, we were prospecting and detecting surfaces and we gave them a name or a place and a category.
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