It was one of the winning projects in the last call for participatory budgets of the Santa Cruz City Council. The idea, to place shade on Castillo Street, was commissioned by the Department of Public Services, directed by Guillermo Díaz Guerra, to the architect Alejando Beautell, who has already delivered the project to the department.
As Beautell explains, he has baptized it as Donkey’s Belly. “We have called this project Panza de burro, a funny name that has to do with our popular culture and with the freshness that we wanted to give to the proposal. The designed covering, like the donkey’s belly, will protect us from the sun in the hottest months and, like the meteorological phenomenon, will disappear later, since it will be a reversible installation and temporarily limited to the summer period ”, he said.
For the development of this project, its author has made a meticulous study of Castillo Street and its surroundings, making an elevation on plan of the road to be able to develop in the best possible way a proposal that, now, should assess the island area of Historical Heritage, as this commercial hub is within the Historic Complex of Old Santa Cruz.
The intervention will enable shaded spaces by covering certain areas of Calle del Castillo. The triangular canvases that will cover the different spaces will form a tensioned mesh structure. The material chosen for its conformation will be micro-perforated and fire-retardant PVC that will allow proper ventilation and lighting of the shadow areas. The height and design of the awnings have been defined taking into account the existence of vegetation, listed buildings, and under criteria of commercial interest.
The implementation of this initiative has an initial cost of 80,000 euros and aims to make purchases, at least in the hottest periods, are more comfortable. According to the proponent of this idea, “apart from benefiting businesses, with this system the temperature is lowered by up to four degrees, by creating shade, and would end the annoying glare of summer in the afternoon, which is when more people go out to buy ”, he explained in the participatory budgets.
