Bells | Sebastian Arquitectos | International Architecture Awards 2019

Bells of Sant Cugat´s Monastery will be at every place in the city, concentrating all the  Xmas richness as funny interventions made of shine, light, and sound

OBJETICVE:

Make visitor and citizen knows Sant Cugat´s Xmas as a small difuse museum, made of estructures that surprise walkers concentrating emotive and plastic intense interventions

STRATEGY:

All the micro-interventions are able to move and modify their contents each year, according to a management plan. So that Bells has a high value of citizen implication and urban connetcion

THE BELL:

Is based on a conic self-carrier bell, that does not need fachade subjections. This structure is identified with a color, and holds out a bell made of stainless polished steel.  As a mirror, the outside face of the bell reflects the sky and the environment, minimizing its presence. But when the visitor comes inside, the polished Steel amplifies every lighting effect surounding, multiplying and melting the reflects of the installation and the citizen

FUNCTIONALITY:

The bell produces different plastic effects, by day with sunlight, and whe night comes with the artifcial lights of each installation.  This way the intervention is visitable 24 hours a day. Some bells are able to introduce tolos to interactuate with citizen

MATERIALS:

Structure: Diagonal and vertical columns, compression and traction rings, are made of 3mm. painted steel tubes of 80mm diameter.

Subestructure: Rectangular 60.30.3 mm tubes of polished stainless steel.

Bell surface: 2mm polished stainless steel

Illumination: Led lamps

CONTENT:

Each bell has a different ephemeral installation, according different thematics, able to change each year. For 2018 Xmas we designed three main contents :

Bell #1. Rosette

White bell shows an installation as a tribute to Monastery´s romanic rosette. Its Stone structure, plumb subestructure, and colur pieces of glass, are reinterpretd in a overlapping layer system made of aluminium,

Bell #2. Kaleidoscope

Yellow bell gets thinner to show a marvelous kaleidoscope, that reflects sky, city lights and the cityzen. As a giant piece of ice glass, the movement experience of the visitor will act as to be inside a big kaleidoscope, that expands its reflects all around the ground below.

Bell #3. Xylophone

The blue bell acts as a giant interactive musical instrument, that captures the movements of the people, and transfoms them into light and sound impulses, both amplified by the envolving mirror Steel bell.

Architect: Sebastian Arquitectos
Winner – Category: Pop-Ups & Temporary
Project Location: Sant Cugat del Vallés
Project Team: Giorgio Bernardi, Pablo Sebastián, Alejandro Alda, Javier Caamaño
Country: Spain