Architecture as Landscape: Food Market in Maracay

2013

Project Lead:

Ignacio Cardona

Team:

Rodrigo Guerra, Oscar Rodríguez, Jesús Belmonte, Santiago Rizo

Consultants:

Guillermo Frontado, Claudia Chichirichi, Olga Jerak, Giovanni Tromba

Client:

Desarrollo Ciudad Jardín

Location:

Maracay, Aragua, Venezuela

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Located on a site occupied by 27 mature trees that create a distinctive microclimate within Maracay’s tropical heat, the project preserves the existing landscape as the organizing structure for a new food market. Rather than clearing the site, architecture is inserted within the existing tree canopy.

Programmatic volumes are conceived as stereotomic prisms separated by open terraces, while slender branching columns become artificial trees supporting a continuous roof. Patios, filtered light, vegetation, and structure blur the distinction between building and landscape, transforming the commercial program into an inhabited garden and extending the spatial experience of the existing forest.