CEPARIO - An architectural hub for agricultural soil biorremediation

Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Tucumán

Project idea

The project is situated in the Quebrada de Lules, Tucumán, Argentina, within the Yungas protected area. Both the province and the country are characterized by vast expanses of cultivated land, upon which a large part of the local economy depends.
In the case of Tucumán, the presence of plains, valleys, and mountains as natural boundaries generates intense agricultural pressure on the foothills (pedemonte). This creates a forced synergy between two incompatible activities: intensive land exploitation and the conservation of the Yunga. The direct consequences of this issue are alarming: biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and the accumulation of toxins.
From this urgency, the project's core idea is born: to regenerate the damaged environment and propose a new bond between humans and their surroundings. The main objective is to restore degraded lands, recovering our ecosystem and promoting truly sustainable agricultural practices.

Project description

Functionally, the building promotes mycoremediation, a biological process that degrades and removes soil toxins using fungi. To this end, we designed a cepario: a facility dedicated to the collection, preservation, study, and reproduction of fungal strains. This space is dimensioned to house a scientific community with a common goal: to restore the soil's productive capacity without harming our Yungas.
The site selection responds to its proximity to numerous cultivated hectares, facilitating the collection of contaminated soil samples and the subsequent in-situ application of solutions. Also, the microclimate is ideal for the controlled collection and reproduction of these species.
The project develops a 1,276 m² program distributed over two levels, resolved within a 132-meter long by 28-meter wide megastructure. It features suspended walkways that link the different capsules together and connect both riverbanks. Activities are strategically organized into administration, meeting, research, residential, and service areas, ensuring the complex's optimal operation.

Technical information

The building is conceived entirely in steel. The choice of this material allows the implementation of a prefabricated system that is ideal for hard-to-reach terrain, achieving a lightweight and quick-to-assemble structure, while guaranteeing durability and resistance to the site's extreme temperature variations. Furthermore, this system ensures that 100% of the structure is recyclable.
The structural design is inspired by the principles of Japanese Metabolism: generating a selective system of combining parts that offers flexibility, adaptability, and ease of component substitution. This materializes into two distinct yet interdependent elements: the load-bearing megastructure and the habitable capsules.
Additionally, the project establishes a direct and symbiotic relationship with the river, utilizing it as an engine for renewable energy generation. Water and energy harvesting systems were adopted to ensure the complex's self-sufficiency, granting it the capacity to operate 100% autonomously (off-grid), without the need to connect to traditional infrastructure networks.

Documentation

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