Haiti
2010
Sector: Commercial
Client: Digicel
Project Status: Competition
Budget: £500,000

Our concept for the new Digicel showroom in Port au Prince revolves around creating a space that is an extension of the public space around it. This new space allows for many activities, and is digitally connected to audio, visual, and the internet. The sense of a new beginning is captured in the elevation mirroring a sunrise, the technological is mirrored in the domed interior reflecting a communications dish, and the dappled and protected internal environment reminds one of sitting under the shade of a tree.

Mobile phones and all the technologies connected to them, have changed the cultural face of many parts of the world, and Digicel’s integration into the Caribbean and Haiti is now extending this to this region. Our architecture aims to reflect both the culture, the climate, and these advanced technologies.

We have resolved these from first principles; in structural terms dealing with the seismic conditions in a straightforward but exciting way providing column free space, in environmental terms using centuries old technologies and integrating them with twenty-first century ideas to provide a passive low energy environment, and in cultural terms providing a new environment to become part of the connected world.