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Lata de aceitunas (edición limitada) / Olive can (limited edition) |
kauh wishes you a happy 2011!
It must have been 1990 or 1991 when one fine day a bunch of furniture appeared in the patio of my family house in Utrera. Apparently, my mother had gone to buy olive oil directly from the processing factory and had returned not only with the oil, but with this pile of stuff she’d noticed haphazardly strewn about the factory premises. Among it all there were three long wood benches, their length fitting perfectly with that of our long Edwardian dinning table (the table is a whole other story). To this day, two of those benches are still in use at that table. At the factory, the benches had been used by “fabricantas”—the name given in the town to the women who worked for the local olive industry—during their rest stops or even while actually selecting, rinsing, pitting or dressing table olives.
Kauh’s “Los Olivareros” project sits on the site where that factory used to stand, and it was just a matter of time before we ended up designing some benches for the building. And those benches names just had to be “Olivia G”, “Olivia M” and “Fabricanta”. “Fabricanta” is a take on my parents’ benches. It’s just about as long, but its seat is wider and made up of multiple boards instead of just one long plank; given its hidden steel structure, it doesn’t need the wood bracings the original benches had. “Olivia G” is even longer than “Fabricanta” and it curls up to embrace space and its users. “Olivia M” would fit into the space that “Olivia G” seems to want to hold tight, while “Olivia M” imagines its users sprawling all over the place. In a couple of month’s time we shall see how this new family of benches fares.
Este Centro de Día para enfermos de Alzheimer, con capacidad para 60 usuarios, surge de la colaboración de la Asociación AFA-Conil y la Diputación de Cádiz. Los condicionantes de partida son un programa dependiente de la normativa tipológica y de la experiencia de la asociación, un presupuesto muy ajustado y la previsión de su construcción por fases a través de programas de empleo que condiciona las soluciones constructivas. Como reto creativo colaboramos muy cercanos a todas las partes para encontrar colectivamente las soluciones óptimas. La propuesta es una "casa" en torno a los espacios de convivencia: las salas de estar, los patios y el comedor; que se expande a zonas exteriores de esparcimiento y actividad. / This Day Care Center for people with Alzheimer's disease, for 60 patients, is a collaboration between the Asociación AFA-Conil and the Diputación de Cádiz. The starting points for this proposal are a project brief that depends on the strict outlines of the building's technical requirements as well as the association's own experience, a tight budget and the phasing of its construction, managed through public employment programs, all of which infuences the construction methods used. The creative challenge is to work closely along with all those involved in search of the optimum solutions. The proposal is a "house" built around its communal spaces: living rooms, patios and dinning room all of which expand outdoors towards the active recreational grounds.