The Resource Cube

Authors’ Comment

Context
Dance archives: open for (re)inventory(s)! is a project developed by the National Center of Dance through the CNDB Media Library & Archive #The Resource Cube. Republic of Architects was tasked with the design of the Cube for the archive storage itself.
The place
The exhibition and the Cube for storing the CNDB archive #The Resource Cube had to be arranged in the office area of the National Center of Dance, a space with direct access from the main courtyard or from the stage area. There we found the remarkable configuration of the central pillar and the reinforced concrete beams.
Layout
Given the central position of the pillar, impossible to be avoided, we decided to use it to link the idea of the archive, in theory detached from time and space, to that special place, a temporary, but welcoming home for CNDB. Taking parallelism as composition would have produced some residual spaces, hence the need to rotate the Cube. Given the symmetrical configuration of the new object, the optimal access was placed in the lateral sides, thus eliminating the hierarchical organization of front-back type.
Configuration
The idea of any archive is to recover previous experiences in order to open them to the present and, implicitly, to the future. Therefore, it cannot be imagined in full autonomy, but in close connection with its context, especially that this archive refers to dance, the art of movement impossible to be passive contained. This is why we made obvious the relationship between the archive and its space: a conceptual “zipper” connects the four sides of the Cube, in order to leave the eyesight the possibility of crossing through the triangles left free, in any direction.
Material
The Cube was designed with wood panels, easy to cut into the desired geometry, but durable over time. The exterior of the Cube was painted black to match the rest of the existing objects, screens or curtains.
Love
We hoped that all the imagined features for the Cube would make it a beloved object, which could resist in space after the events and exhibitions related to the launch of the Dance archives: open for (re)inventory(s)! Unfortunately, this was not the case.