Canyon View Accommodation

The project goal is to issue a unitary architectural vision on the territory of the Grand Canyon of Colorado. This study aims to create an opportunity in the territory reinventing the instruments that allow their understanding and rediscovery. A network of shelters which provides visitors with a place to find an instant of introspection.
The intention is to propose an architecture, which allows visiting and soaking up the natural wonder of the environment. The challenge is to avoid a massive intervention of usual tourists bare of meaning, and not to be limited to the simple attractive points, but to be opened to other possibilities and the great potential that the Grand Canyon offers us along its entire route taking us to another universe.
Due to the complexity of the area and its extension, interventions -which hereinafter we will refer to as shelters-, extend along the composition of landscapes in a totally unique and special environment. These shelters will aim at a total immersion in the universe of the Grand Canyon.

All shelters are connected to each other by routes by boat and trekking, as an instrument of assimilation and rediscovery of the territory from different perspectives. Using the architecture as a tool of immersion in the territory, interconnecting the different locations along the journey, providing an experience unique and different from the possibilities that it offers us currently, giving uniqueness and identity to the territory.
We try to experiment with a mutable and adaptable module to any situation, which can solve any topographic obstacle. We look for not only the mutability of the modules with the area but also the habitability of these modules, from the more conventional tourism to the most extreme one, everything will depend on the location of the cells.

This module will be prefabricated, previously assembled and transported by helicopter to the area of intervention. To facilitate the setting up, it will consists mainly of four elements:

1º Main Structure: It is a self-supporting structure in truss, which will join all the elements of the module.

2º Secondary structure: This is the access core, and at the same time, the anchorage to the ground, enabling the vertical and horizontal joining depending on the topography and fixing the moorings by embedding.

3º Housing module: Module partially isolated that will work as a thermal mediator with the outside.

4º The chameleon skin: The building envelope that covers the structure, light and porous that lets enjoy the outdoor visibility and to live the experience of the territory. Its role will be to protect from the climate adversities at the same time that it blends with the ground, for a merger with the landscape.