ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

From the Hand of the Desert in Atacama, Chile to the Hands of Harmony in South Korea, or the hands of the Golden Bridge in Vietnam—all these sculptures feature the same body part, but each has its own story. Why have so many artists found inspiration in the human hand? We investigate the mysteries behind the largest hands on the planet.

A hand in the middle of the desert

In the heart of the Atacama Desert in Chile, a giant hand 11 metres high juts out of the arid sand, its fingers pointing skywards. The reinforced concrete sculpture was created in 1992 by the Chilean artist and sculptor Mario Irarrázabal. Located about 75 kilometres north-west of the city of Antofagasta, it has become one of the main tourist attractions in the area. But it is not the only hand that Irarrazábal has created. There are also other versions on the Playa Brava beach in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and in the Juan Carlos I Park in Madrid.

The sculptor was commissioned by the cement company Melón Hormigones to make Hand of the Desert for the entrance to their plant in Los Andes." Irarrazábal recounts: "It would have looked terrible. Luckily, Melón was going through a huge financial crisis at the time and they told me to forget about it." He showed the project to an engineer from Antofagasta, who asked him to let him talk to his friends, who were "mining engineers and very technical people." These people, above all, "loved the desert." "Let's do it," they replied.

Hand of the Desert is one of Chile's most iconic sculptures Credit: PxHere

The engineers didn't even ask about the meaning of the hand. Each visitor can give it their own interpretation, says its creator. While some believe it is the city saying farewell to the traveller, others claim it represents the victims of injustice and torture during Chile’s military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. Today, many people come here to observe the starry sky. "Here, you can see the plane of the Milky Way, the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds, as well as a large number of bright stars, such as Antares, Altair and Alpha Centauri, among many others," says astronomer Maximiliano Moyano D'Angelo.

Hands supporting bridges or emerging from water

In the hills of Vietnam, other giant concrete hands cradle a 152-metre-long pedestrian bridge suspended almost 1,400 metres above sea level. The bridge is known as Cau Vang (Golden Bridge) and was designed to make visitors feel like they are taking a stroll on a shimmering thread stretched across the hands of God.

This megastructure is part of a 1.7 billion euro project to attract tourism to the Thien Thai gardens at the Bà Nà Hills Resort. And it worked. Thousands of tourists have flocked to the area and pictures of it have gone viral on social media. "We’re proud that our product has been shared by people all over the world," TA Landscape Architecture's principal designer and founder Vu Viet Anh told AFP.

The Golden Bridge has gone viral on social media. Credit: Amazing Things in Vietnam

A pair of similar looking hands can be found in Homigot, South Korea. These imposing steel hands face each other (about 100 metres apart) and represent coexistence and harmony. They are known as the Hands of Harmony. One of them rises from the sea and offers a unique view at sunrise, while the other is on land at the Homigot Sunrise Plaza. Located at the easternmost tip of South Korea, Homigot is the first place in the country to see the rising sun. In fact, a sunrise festival is held here every New Year’s.

These are just some of the most striking giant hands on the planet, but there are many more. Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn designed six pairs of monumental stone hands for the 2019 Venice Art Biennale, which come together to symbolise "six of humanity’s universal values: friendship, faith, help, love, hope and wisdom." Other sculptures include the Praying Hands in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Florida; and the Caring Hand in Glarus, Switzerland. Their ability to convey universal meaning and their powerful visual impact have made these giant hands a magnet for millions of tourists around the world.

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ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

From a young age, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. Hoping to improve his drawing skills, he enrolled at the Royal School of Architecture in 1993.

“Drawing is my superpower. It was during my childhood: in kindergarten, in high school. I was always the best at drawing,” he said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País. At that time, he had no idea that he would become one of the most famous architects on the planet.

From aspiring cartoonist to influential figure

In 2016, when he was 42 years old, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. “I do not consider Bjarke Ingels the reincarnation of this or that architect from the past. On the contrary, he is the embodiment of a fully fledged new typology, which responds perfectly to the current zeitgeist," said renowned architect Rem Koolhaas, who worked with Ingels for a time. Koolhaas sees the Danish architect as “completely in tune with the thinkers of Silicon Valley, who want to make the world a better place without the existential hand-wringing that previous generations felt was crucial to earn utopianist credibility.”

Ingels, 49, founded the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, better known by its acronym BIG, in 2006. The firm is behind landmark projects such as the VIA 57 West skyscraper in Manhattan, Google's North Bayshore headquarters in California, and the 8 House housing complex, Superkilen Park and the Amager Resource Center waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen. BIG also designed LEGO House, a giant structure that appears to be built of LEGO bricks, which began construction in 2014. What all these structures have in common is innovative design.

Ingels is an architect recognised worldwide for his innovative and avant-garde approach. Credit: Architects not Architecture

A giant LEGO house

Ingels is a LEGO enthusiast. Before he and his team set to work on the project to build a giant LEGO house, they spent time playing and building with these iconic bricks. “They soon discovered that the systematic creativity of LEGO play often matched the way they approached an architectural task,” the LEGO Group explains.

The giant structure designed by Ingels, known as LEGO House, is an educational and activity centre in Billund, Denmark. The architect's idea was to create “a cloud of interlocking LEGO bricks… a literal manifestation of the infinite possibilities of the LEGO brick.” The aim was to stack 21 white bricks, one on top of the other, and crown them with a keystone inspired by the classic eight-knob LEGO brick. Underneath, there is a covered public square and interconnected terraces.

LEGO House has a total floor area of almost 12,000 square metres, of which 8,500 m² are above ground and 3,400 m² are below ground. The 23-metre-high building is clad in white bricks measuring 18 by 60 centimetres to give the impression that the structure is composed of LEGO bricks. The terraces are brightly coloured and their surfaces are made from materials left over from the production of trainers for several international sports brands, says the company.

LEGO House opened its doors for the first time in 2017. Credit: WIRED UK

Today, Ingels is considered a visionary and creative artist who has transformed the landscape of architecture. He describes himself as someone “capable of changing things.” He is convinced that “architecture can be an art, but actual art must be transformative.” “Steve Jobs said that for every 20 engineers, one is an artist and the rest are engineers. I think that can be applied to architecture, handball and teaching. A teacher who is an artist can change people,” he concludes.

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ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

The Silk Pavilion I is an architectural structure created with a base woven by a robotic arm and the help of thousands of live silkworms. "We ordered 6,500 silkworms from an online silk farm. After four weeks of feeding, they were ready to spin with us," says Neri Oxman, the leader of the initiative. We investigate the most innovative projects of this 48-year-old Israeli-American architect, known for fusing architecture, design, biology and materials engineering.

From Henry Ford to Charles Darwin

Assembly lines have dictated a world made of parts, "framing the imagination of designers and architects who have been trained to think about their objects as assemblies," says Oxman. In contrast, the architect argues that assemblages of homogeneous material are not found in nature. She cites human skin as an example. "Our facial skins are thin with large pores. Our back skins are thicker, with small pores. One acts mainly as a filter, the other mainly as a barrier, and yet it is the same skin: no parts, no assemblies," she said in a TED talk.

Architects and designers face a dichotomy: that of working between the machine and the organism. Or as Oxman puts it, "between the chisel and the gene, between machine and organism, between assembly and growth, between Henry Ford and Charles Darwin." "My work, at its simplest level, is about uniting these two worldviews, moving away from assembly and closer into growth," she explains.

Oxman explores how digital fabrication technologies can interact with the biological world. Credit: TED

More than 6,000 silkworms weave the architecture of the future

It is in this fusion that one can understand her Silk Pavilion I, in which biological silk and robotically spun silk intermingle. To construct it, she and her collaborators carefully placed 6,500 worms on the bottom edge of a silk frame spun by a robotic arm. The silkworms spun their silk, mated and laid eggs. In little more than two to three weeks, "6,500 silkworms weave 6,500 kilometres."

In this work, her two visions of the world are integrated: "One spins silk out of a robotic arm, the other fills in the gaps." "If the final frontier of design is to breathe life into the products and the buildings around us, to form a two-material ecology, then designers must unite these two worldviews," she says.

Later, the architect and her team developed the Silk Pavilion II. Commissioned for the Material Ecology exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the structure is six metres high and five metres wide. "Ten days of co-creation among silkworms, humans and a robotic loom-like jig resulted in a structure made of silk threads longer than the diameter of planet Earth," explain its creators.

More than 6,000 worms were involved in the construction of the Silk Pavilion. Credit: Oxman

Fallen leaves, apple skins and shrimp shells

Oxman has become a prominent figure in the field of material ecology. This discipline integrates technological advances in computational design, synthetic biology and digital fabrication to create revolutionary design solutions inspired by nature. Her team in the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab experiments with everything from moss to mushrooms to apples.

One of her most striking projects is Aguahoja I, which aimed to develop a robotic platform for 3D printing biomaterials. The result is a pavilion made of 5,740 fallen leaves, 6,500 apple skins and 3,135 shrimp shells. Also noteworthy is her synthetic apiary, which aims to combat the decline of bee populations. This initiative proposes the creation of controlled, indoor environments that simulate ideal conditions for bees to thrive throughout the year.

Oxman's work has been seen on fashion catwalks and at design fairs. They have also been exhibited in prestigious museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In addition to winning several awards (including the Cooper Hewitt Design Award and the Vilcek Prize in Design), her creations led Jenny Lam, a leading technology designer, to describe Oxman as a contemporary Leonardo da Vinci.

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ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

Did you know that the Casa Rosada is not symmetrical due to the demolition of one of its parts? Why does it have a room full of false doors? What is the reason for its pink colour? We investigate the secrets of Argentina's seat of government, which was almost fitted with a great dome and hides priceless archaeological remains inside.

An asymmetrical masterpiece

The Casa Rosada is located in the historic centre of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Its history begins in 1873, when the Palacio de Correos y Telégrafos (Palace of Posts and Telegraphs) was erected. A few years later, President Julio Argentino Roca dreamed of a definitive government palace. He designed it next to the Palacio de Correos. In 1886, the two buildings were joined by the majestic portico that now greets the Plaza de Mayo. Thus was born the Casa Rosada. More than half a century later, in 1938, the south wing was demolished, as a result of which the Casa Rosada is no longer symmetrical.

A hall full of false doors

The White Hall is where the most important acts of government take place. It is where official ceremonies are held, foreign dignitaries are received and important decisions for Argentina are made, such as the signing of international treaties. The balcony or high gallery that surrounds it hides a secret: it is adorned with false doors covered with mirrors. The aim is to create a sense of greater breadth and depth, enhancing the grandeur of the space. “Only one of the doors opens, the one located in the centre of the right-hand sector leading into the hall,” says the official website of the Casa Rosada.

The White Hall is the main hall of the Casa Rosada. Credit: Casa Rosada official website.

The mystery of its colour

The choice of pink for this emblematic building is often attributed to President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. It is said that Sarmiento, who assumed the presidency in 1868, used the mixture of white and red to symbolise the union of all the political sectors of the time. “According to some versions, the original method used to obtain the characteristic pink colour of the Casa de Gobierno was to mix lime with cow’s blood, a common technique at the time due to the water-repellent (to avoid moisture and filtrations) and fixing properties of the blood,” says the official website.

The dome that never was

The Casa Rosada was on the verge of having a majestic dome on its west façade. In 1907, the General Directorate of Architecture presented a project to transform the building's appearance. The idea was to construct a great dome that would symbolise grandeur and modernity. In the end, however, the project was never carried out. The reasons why it was left on the back burner of history are not documented.

The Casa Rosada was on the verge of having a majestic dome. Credit: Casa Rosada official website

The buried past of the Casa Rosada

At the beginning of the 20th century, excavations were carried out in the Patio de las Palmeras of the Casa Rosada and an unexpected discovery was made: rounded stones that, according to the renowned archaeologist Juan Bautista Ambrosetti, could be instruments used by the indigenous people of the area. Specifically, he suggested that they could be stones from boleadoras (a throwing weapon used mainly for hunting) or hatchets used by the Querandí people, indigenous South Americans who inhabited the Pampean region of present-day Argentina.

These are not the only mysteries hidden in the Casa Rosada. In fact, other surprising discoveries have been made under its floors. Most recently, in 2018, during the excavation of a pit for the installation of new lifts, ruins were found three metres underground. They belong to the Palace of the Viceroys of the Río de la Plata and date back to the 18th century. All these curiosities make the Casa Rosada more than just a government building. It is a unique place that attracts millions of tourists every year for its historical, cultural and architectural value.

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The new Sótero del Río Hospital (Santiago de Chile, Chile) is bound to be one of the largest healthcare facilities in Latin America, and also one of the most sustainable. This project, developed by Sacyr Engineering and Infrastructure, has obtained the Zero Waste certificate, and is now conducting a novel pilot to introduce a hybrid boom truck fueled by green hydrogen into its fleet. 

The aim is to improve the efficiency and reduce emissions produced by diesel trucks by implementing a hybrid green hydrogen injection system into the combustion chamber.

The new dual combustion system has been designed in Italy specifically for this vehicle model, as it is the first time it has been implemented in a boom truck. The installation of this kit was carried out by AndesH2, a company that has experience in Colombia and Chile. 

"This innovative project arose from the urgent need to reduce the emissions generated by the equipment used on site. Considering that, in the long term, we must focus on progressively forming and shifting a fleet of heavy equipment with zero emissions, including hopper trucks, backhoes, trucks with lifting equipment, among others," explains Rodrigo Fernández, Construction Manager at Sacyr's Metro L7 in Chile.

"Our main purpose is to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of the gradual conversion of Sacyr's current fleet to low-emission equipment, thus ensuring compliance with more rigorous environmental standards and actively contributing to the sustainability of the sector," Rodrigo says.
"Our goal is to evaluate the benefits of introducing synthetic fuels such as green hydrogen," explains Etienne Valdés, R+D with Sacyr Chile's Innovation Department.

The project consists of the implementation of a dual combustion system designed in Italy specifically for the truck model. The installation of this kit was carried out by AndesH2, a company that has experience in Colombia and Chile implementing these modifications and being the first time that it has been carried out on a boom truck.

This process is called dualization or blending of green hydrogen to improve fuel efficiency. The installed kit is connected to the hydrogen tanks and injects the appropriate hydrogen percentages into the engine.
 

Preliminary first tests have already been carried out using 4 kg of hydrogen for a week in a controlled setting closed to traffic.

"It takes less hydrogen than diesel to reach the same energy efficiency in the engine. The engine is modified to inject 15% hydrogen on average into the fuel. This improves efficiency and reduces the use of diesel, so the engine is more efficient, and produces fewer emissions," explains Etienne.

The use of this fuel poses further challenges. "We have to create a safety plan with this equipment, and, as a second step, homologate the truck for use on public roads. Currently, we are managing an experimental permit certificate through the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications, explains the expert.

Tenemos nuevo capítulo de Sacyr iPodcast en el que hablamos de innovación con expertos que nos inspiran y nos ayudan a ampliar nuestra visión.

En este nuevo episodio, Marta Gil continúa la conversación sobre industrialización en los procesos constructivos con Ramón Sanchez y Antonio Jiménez-Peña.

Si te perdiste el anterior, puedes verlo aquí

En el capítulo nuevo, analizamos las ventajas de esta técnica constructiva, a través de ejemplos concretos de proyectos industrializados de Sacyr.

Aquí puedes verlo completo: