Tapa Tapa

Tapa Tapa

External Reference as Architects

Within the project for the Tapa-Tapa establishment located inside the commercial area of the new T-1 Prat Airport in Barcelona, we have followed these three guiding principles:


01_ accumulation:


The projected environment should be viewed as a sort of enclosed space, lying within the outer space and visually connected to it. All efforts have been made to emphasise the ‘blurred’ boundaries of a morphologically open object which can also work as a hyper-permeable skin.


Accordingly, the ‘object’ consists of a thick porous skin, which results from the reiteration of a single natural wooden constituent. Thus, the lattice creates physical separation but no perceptual barrier. This fuzzy edge is inspired by the principle of ‘plain accumulation’, namely, the fact that no clearly identifiable building system has been used: we just pile stacks of ‘discrete’ amounts of material filling the space in clusters which remind of the internal structure of a storage system.


02_ ‘objectification’


Through the use of the building system described above, one can view this project as striving to describe a flexible, unstable and immaterial boundary (no less ‘material’ than a real physical boundary, though) within the space. Its unique character derives from acting as a container which, in turn, contains other containers, so that Tapa-Tapa is a portion of self-contained space within a wider containing space. This effect is achieved by emphasising the idea that the project should be viewed as a pure object, which aims to by-pass the rigid demands of the interior design and makes it resemble more the architecture of pavilions. Although prefabricated, the project aims to trascend the limits of prefabrication.


03_permeability


In accordance with 01 and 02, the project envisages the creation of an external envelope literally embracing the void. This empty space will be filled with the refurbished interiors, but it will still work as a ‘filter’.


In a word, it could be said that the project replicates, at a higher structural level, the logical system of gates, borders and transit areas which operates inside every airport.

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