Punta Arenas

Located in the cape of Araya, Sucre State, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Punta Arenas Service Station is an experiment – developed in a lapse of eight weeks – in the use of architecture as a mean to achieve community empowerment, through high impact social interventions, low cost construction and local responsiveness.

Pico Estudio, Colectivo Independientes and Colectivo Ruta 4 conceived the tourist service station as a project to allow the development of economic, social and cultural production of this area.

The physical result of Punta Arenas service station is a radial edification that expands upon its context through the public space. The building is composed by two wings; on the first one the tourist service area is located, while the second wing hosts the community centre, formed by the information point, a library and reading spaces. The different spaces are connected through an internal corridor that encompasses a sand plaza.

Done with the intention of accentuating the local identity, and also questioning its reinvention, Punta Areans Service Station is built with fast and low complexity methods, trying to promote the reproducibility of the architectural solutions. The building is cemented upon a basement made of local-stone walls, that serve to modulate and articulate the space, and uses metallic nodes to connect the bearing structure, solved by triangulation of wood and steel rods. Wood and plastic enclosures are added to the structure to allow the weather control while propitiating open and continuous spaces.

Seen as a urban element the station serves the function of great gazebo, that contains a series of additional programs like camping zones, ludic spaces for kids, sport field and amphitheater with sea sight. This areas integrate the building with its context and the external spaces empower the internal activities. Punta Arenas service station is an intervention of permeable limits, that acknowledges and dynamize its context, through processes of social empowerment and collective construction.

Punta Arenas Service Station, Sucre, Venezuela
Program: tourist service station
Architects: Pico Estudio, Colectivo Independientes and Colectivo Ruta 4
General producers: Consejo Federal de Gobierno, Gran Misión Fundación Saber y Trabajo, Comisión Presidencial. Movimiento Por la Paz y por la Vida
Social Activation: Priscilla Yepez Ardila
Completion: March 2015