The Sona drawings, plural of Lusona, were part of the tradition of the Tchokwe People. It is known in eastern Angola and close to the borders of Zambia and Congo. The drawings were made in the sand only by men, as a way to tell a story or show the reality of them (with representations of daily, nature, animals and people). It was part of the boys' rite of passage to adulthood to learn to draw Sona and tell stories.
Mathematical concepts such as Combinatorial Analysis, Minimum Common Multiple and Maximum Common Divisor were used instinctively, since the Tchokwe people had no knowledge of the formulas and math of the graphs. First, the soil was cleaned and flattened with the hand, and with the fingertips it was drawn an grid of points with carefully proportional spaces. Subsequently, the narrator traced lines - straight and curves with a 45 degree inclination - around the points without taking his fingers from the sand until finishing the drawing.
The Sona drawings, plural of Lusona, were part of the tradition of the Tchokwe People. It is known in eastern Angola and close to the borders of Zambia and Congo. The drawings were made in the sand only by men, as a way to tell a story or show the reality of them (with representations of daily, nature, animals and people). It was part of the boys' rite of passage to adulthood to learn to draw Sona and tell stories.
Mathematical concepts such as Combinatorial Analysis, Minimum Common Multiple and Maximum Common Divisor were used instinctively, since the Tchokwe people had no knowledge of the formulas and math of the graphs. First, the soil was cleaned and flattened with the hand, and with the fingertips it was drawn an grid of points with carefully proportional spaces. Subsequently, the narrator traced lines - straight and curves with a 45 degree inclination - around the points without taking his fingers from the sand until finishing the drawing.
The Sona drawings, plural of Lusona, were part of the tradition of the Tchokwe People. It is known in eastern Angola and close to the borders of Zambia and Congo. The drawings were made in the sand only by men, as a way to tell a story or show the reality of them (with representations of daily, nature, animals and people). It was part of the boys' rite of passage to adulthood to learn to draw Sona and tell stories.
Mathematical concepts such as Combinatorial Analysis, Minimum Common Multiple and Maximum Common Divisor were used instinctively, since the Tchokwe people had no knowledge of the formulas and math of the graphs. First, the soil was cleaned and flattened with the hand, and with the fingertips it was drawn an grid of points with carefully proportional spaces. Subsequently, the narrator traced lines - straight and curves with a 45 degree inclination - around the points without taking his fingers from the sand until finishing the drawing.
Siccal Headquarters - Torre da Baixa Apartment House
Siccal Headquarters - Torre da Baixa Apartment House
Siccal Headquarters - Torre da Baixa Apartment House
Siccal Headquarters - Torre da Baixa Apartment House
SICCAL HEADQUAR-TERS / TORRE
DA BAIXA
APARTMENT
HOUSE
COLLECTIVE HOUSING / SERVICES / COMMERCE
The building was thought as two units of different but dialogic languages. This principle is related to the fact that it is very high and located in a single-lane artery in the city center, and therefore its reading is never total or unitary.
Thus, it was conceived by proposing two levels of reading and living:
A reading of human scale, which corresponds to the experience by the citizen at the street level, for those who could read the body, and the perception of the tower is very tangential.
An urban reading, which boils down to the tower, only handles a certain distance or high points of the city.
Conceptually, the two formal languages proposed, for the podium and for the tower, according to a city of culture and tropical climate, exploring two strands: a contemporary language on the podium and a language influenced by modernism in the tower. The program predicted a commercial area on the podium, offices and housing in the tower.
The formal proposal for the podium proposes a set of intertwining volumes, creating a dynamic image in a composition of colors and textures that accentuate the full and empty. The spaces are interconnected by air passages, transition zones of living and gardens, whose presence participates in a significant way in reading and living the proposed spaces. The tower is a compact body, thought as a box with variations of rhythm that give the facade a chromatic undulation.
LOCATION
Luanda, Angola
YEAR
2004
IMPLANTATION
AREA
2521 m²
SQUARE FOOTAGE OF THE LOT
2608 m²