La Palma Observatory
Princeton University
Inaki Abalos, Instructor. 2005
This 60,000 sf hotel, research center, museum, and observatory combines tourism and science to form a new (and energy self-sufficient) icon of the island of La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands. The site’s unique atmospheric conditions have made it the center of European astronomy, and it seems inevitable that the dramatic landscape will be increasingly flooded with scientists and visitors. Rather than attempt to submerge a new building in the landscape, the project begins to form a focal point for activities on the site, engaging with its beauty through a more visible intervention that serves to concentrate activity. Consolidating the building also achieves a scale that is capable of mediating between the individual and the almost incomprehensible vastness of the site. The building becomes, in other words, big enough to allow one to realize just how big the site really is by comparison.
The role of building as mediator between visitor and is extended in a series of galleries that spiral upwards between several “observatory” spaces that overlay exhibits with actual views of the site. The hotel for visiting scientists and tourists is oriented horizontally in a matte building that forms a new plaza shielded from the elements by the taller museum volume.
The rooms of the hotel are organized around courtyards, giving visitors a view of the night sky and limiting the amount of light that can escape their windows at night. The nature of the site as a place for astronomical observation is emphasized by the “windows” of the rooms facing up instead of out.
An pneumatically-operated ETFE “coat” surrounds the building to mediate the elements and control light. The layers of the ETFE skin are printed with a white graphic pattern – by alternating the space between the layers, these patterns can align (allowing the maximum visibility) or mis-align (creating maximum opacity). This creates an open, extroverted building during the day, and an opaque, introverted building at night, allowing the scientists to proceed with their work undisturbed.
