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Architects: Alvaro Siza, BAAQ'
- Area: 140 m²
- Year: 2017
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Photographs:João Morgado
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Lead Architect: Alvaro Siza Viera
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Text description provided by the architects. Part of Casa Wabi's foundation mission is to encourage, and generate knowledge and new skills in the children in the region.
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Casa Wabi's staff identified that teaching the technique and the process for handling clay would be a very positive tool for the community since this is a technique that has been taught for generations. Thanks to this initiative, Casa Wabi invited Architect Alvaro Siza to design a pavilion for teaching the handling of this material.
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The project is centered on a main "Palapa" (a building with a palm roof), where the modeling of the material is taught, and the pieces resulting from the workshops are exhibited, it also has storage, a sanitary building, and an oven.
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The entire program is contained within a brick wall in a half-circle shape enclosing a patio for the clay oven.
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The main Palapa is 7m high, including a 6x2m apparent concrete table, ideal for manual work. The curved brick wall is eight meters in diameter, and jointly with another L-shaped wall, it creates two rooms to store ceramic and clay tools.
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The construction was made with annealed red bricks, these bricks have special measures, to be able to fulfill their structural work. A "palapa" covers the space and its shape resembles that of medieval structures made of wood in Europe.
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