Mango Vinyl Hub

The first place proposal for the Mango Vinyl Hub sets itself apart by developing a restoratively sensitive architectural critique of the industrial work culture, transforming the abandoned tin foil factory buildings of Cesis into a new co-working campus. The project deploys a system of colorful, almost cartoonish, transit tubes to facilitate visual and physical connection, as well as communication, amongst the disparate programmatic components of the site. The playfully inviting presence of the colorful tubes encourages an explorative cross pollination, enticing users to visit or at minimum, peek into the different functions both public and private across the campus and the city beyond. The vivacious character of the circulation and navigation, challenges common precepts of professionalism, making an argument for the inclusion of activities commonly perceived as leisure only, in work culture. The project proposes a new architectural prototype, taking both the logic and form commonly used to facilitate city and building infrastructural connectivity, including in plumbing, conduit, and subway tunneling, and applying it to the organization of people. Aptly concerned with the technological artifact, the project draws parallels to the high-tech movement, evidenced for instance in the circulation strategies by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers at the Centre Pompidou. The colorful tubes generate a boisterous addition to the site, paying respect and restoring the existing infrastructure of the former industrial factory.