GRAINS OF LIGHT

GRAINS OF LIGHT

Background Pedernales is a small town of 1500 inhabitants in the Partido de Veinticinco de Mayo, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since the 90s, because of Argentine government politics villages like Pedernales were affected, losing railway infrastructure, decreasing agricultural activity, and work offers. Despite many years have passed, there is still evidence of those days. Today, the silos remain in the middle of the town, and although they are abandoned and in very poor condition, they are still part of the history of the Pedernales, its heritage, and its identity.

Conceptual IdeaWhen we think about the “Light of Tomorrow” we are directly projecting to the future, what hasn’t already been done, something new. Yet I see in the silos of Pedernales an opportunity to re-think this term and connect it to the past, to its heritage, to what we got. Light in this way can be not only material but a connector that helps us experience present relations to the past as forming us, then, to the future. The silos would no longer have the same use, they will not store grains of wheat. Instead, they will store grains of light.

Intervention: The Project consists in interviewing the 5 silos to make a cultural center that reactivates a disused place to transform it into an active component in the village community. The intervention offers different points of contact with the silos and Pedernales, creating a space of communication, reflection, and contemplation. The main silo is rehabilitated as a multifunctional space for the community. Meanwhile, the other 4 are connected through a walkable sensory experience throughout the different spaces that reinforce the spacial quality of the silos and frame certain aspects and values of the site. Each part contemplates a particular concept that coexists in the narration of the story of Pedernales.