•ECCT Talca Competition•

International Architecture and Urban Planning Ideas Competition.

New civic and citizen space from the site of the Talca prison.

Talca, Chile, 2020.

VINCULA: Raise the walls

While the prison has no heritage architectural relevance, few buildings manage to play such an important historical role in the conception and identity of the city.

The project seeks to oppose this condition using the same concept for which it has fought for so many years: citizen transformation.

Living up to its name, VÍNCULA will be a space open to all and flexible in its forms of use and route, in order to integrate citizens into a historical place, without forgetting or denying its previous condition. His mark will continue to be present even in the name, which means “prison” in Latin.

This is why VÍNCULA recreates the current plan geometry of the prison, its perimeter wall, its full and empty spaces to elevate them, leaving the pedestrian space free. The barriers on the block will be left behind, instead, the public will find a new route between two important spaces in the city through a completely public square with several levels.

The metaphorical gesture is intentional by preserving the form and elevating the building, achieving a respectful and harmonious dialogue with the urban, social and historical context.

The symbolic character does not end there. The facade of this new elevated wall will be made up of metal baskets filled with the rubble of the prison itself, managing to rescue resources that would otherwise be highly polluting waste.

This elevated platform and its roof also function as a public space, open and accessible to all, generating two types of public spaces with different scales. The latter will allow the mixture of uses that give life, day and night, to a civic complex with a meaning of identity.

The tour of the public space is accompanied by a memorial full of symbolism that unites all its levels while materializing three intangible concepts: freedom, time and memory.

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