A matter of light.

Torres Ciudad Satélite is a project that is designed to be a visual display of the city since its beginning, being this the main reason for which no  program is included inside. In this case the principal concept of the proposal appealed to be sculptural rather than properly architectonical. The projection of the sunlight into the facades is used to signalize a monument within the city, a mark for the urban landscape. 

 

The concept of threshold understood as a limit is associated with the idea of mobility. It is not a stable space, but rather a living, shifting skin, breaking the continuity of a certain field. The are two fundamental elements, an enclosure and a boundary that link and divide the continuity being at once a frontier understood as a place of exclusion and opening. 

 

The idea of threshold can be described as what Cruz Lopez Viso defines in her book with the terminology of phenomenological limit: “it is formed by fluctuating natural phenomena. It is not an actual line, but rather an oscillating sphere, an area that is sensitive to light, sound and temperature…a place in which experience changes”. 

 

Knowing this, it turns out to be astonishing the intensity and brightness with which sun rays penetrate into the interior from both of the only openings (entrance and top) that act as transition between the inner and the outer space. The heights of the architectural elements compared to the dimension of their bases permit that these last ones begin to absorb the natural light coming form the top, creating thus a gradient of luminosity from the clearer to the darker. Nevertheless, a strong line of shadow is perceived where sun stops projecting its rays. 

 

Torres Ciudad Satélite is designed to be a sculptural city landmark, being inspired from the minimal art of the epoch. Although its external chromatic aspect has been alternated through the years, the final tones, together with the  use of concrete, refer and resemble the primary colors that were chosen previously as the base for the Bauhaus school. Barragán in this case was inspired by several renowned architects such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe or Philip Johnson, noted designers who settled the essence of the international style.