☉ Borde de equipamiento recreativo vecinal is a proposal by Sebastian Simonetti for Universidad de Chile in 2017. It is located in Santiago de Chile Chile in an urban setting. Its scale is large with a surface of 21.244 sqm. Key material is metal.
Amateur football, through its architectural typology of the «Cancha de barrio» (neighborhood football field) is a mean of organization and neighborhood identity. Its importance lies in the «Borde de la Cancha» (edge of the field), where the whole neighborhood that surrounds this public space expresses its identity. It differs from professional football where it matters only what goes on inside the field.
Part of the 207 football fields of Santiago (Chile) are in the process of abandonment, becoming neighborhood problems. They have closed to its edge with hermetic walls and wasting their programmatic potential. The idea «Todo es Cancha» puts in criticism this potential public space and postulates to combine the space of the football field with architectural interventions that convert these typologies into permanently active spaces.
A program is defined that responds to the lack of recreational spaces and equipment. This catalog of 21 platforms allows the implementation of the project in different case studies, where the combination of platforms allows various forms of materialization. More than a «Athens Charter», a «Lego» system is proposed. Elements that break the grid are integrated into the structure: Mobile stands that reconfigure the court; a projection curtain facing the interior public space and height toboggans for a new experience of the city.
The 8th Football Field of the Población José María Caro (Lo Espejo, Santiago de Chile), is transformed by a border of recreational and neighborhood equipment. A light structure consolidates the perimeter where the wall is reinterpreted, giving a thickness to the closing of the central vacuum. The project does not pretend to be a stadium or a square; this «chassis» of leisure and recreation exploits the edge in height to reach a programmatic density that reinterprets the constitution of contemporary public space.
This large-scale device manages temporality through its envelope, controlling the opening and closing of the public space, transforming its possibilities of use and delivering the possibility of seeing from and to the interior.
The 21 platforms are distributed in 4 programmatic areas: Flexible equipment, Permanent equipment, Gardens and Children’s games.
The project aims to reactivate the public space through various parallel activities around football and neighborhood life.
The structure consists of steel frames modulated according to the commercial length of the steel, which allows a system of prefabrication and easy installation / disassembly. The base frame varies according to the programmatic requirements.
Amateur football in Santiago represents an architectural opportunity to inquire about the activities that can take place around an «unoccupied» ground in a city that exploits each m2.