Offices + Equipment

Tap Tap Tower

Tap tap tower - Haiti, Miami, USA

Design works for the construction of a shopping and cultural centre "Tap Tap Tower" in MIAMI.

Area	10 000 m2
Project management	PAVIYON KREYOL USA, INC.

TapTap Flower
&
TapTapTower

To this day, it still seems incredible to me that all this can exist.
When you think about it, this disbelief is probably that of a Westerner who no longer knows how to see the necessity of things. He comes from a rich country and cannot put himself in the place of those who, without being miserable, are used to surviving.
Experience is acquired through the lived thing, the rest is just information.
I'm not Haitian, I'm not Creole, it's not my culture and that's why I feel I belong.
I'm only here to do a favour and I have nothing to claim, I'm at peace.

There is in these requests to build optimism in Miami and Haiti, an absolutely extraordinary positive attitude. It is improbable and unexpected, the energy thus developed is capable of transcending the few tiny fears we might have.
This project is a formidable thumbnail to all the dominant cynics. It is
the antithesis of renunciation and aquoibonism. People want to do, their ambition is legitimate and limitless, how could we act otherwise than by accompanying them? How could we offer them anything else? The projects will have to live up to this requirement and their audacity to transform these dreams into reality.

The success of both will lie in the simplicity of the proposed response. In both cases, the answers must be obvious and simple. It is a very difficult alchemy to achieve, based on attention, thought, imagination and patience.
Our work begins where there is a refusal, where silence cannot be mute. It is a question of knowing how to convert adversity into advantage: failure loses its negative value from the moment it becomes an activity, a motivation.

Eccentricity

Bidonchamps,

In Haiti, the risk of deciding on a city in front of a screen is far too great. One can only feel the seeds of it in the greatest humility.
We then inventoried each of the existing housing units. These
constructions came to settle in the most favourable places. We continue the story by trusting common sense.
Then we act eccentrically; starting from the smallest, the most necessary and then enlarging:
First, the base of life, the hard base, the one that must remain against all odds. In brick made on site. In the centre, the kitchen and bathroom in masonry and the tray distributing the different rooms whose assignments are those foreseen.
Then the terraces.
Then each of these constructions will be placed one in relation to the other to adapt to the climate. For example, there will be no large, long holes to protect the houses from strong winds or heavy rains. They are always staggered to create shadows on terraces or in scattered squares.
That's what vernacular construction is all about, building in the right direction.
Our wish in imagining this variety of places is that they are always real, that they become an answer to a need, no artifice! There is no story without truth.

"Scarcity is the sea of social and technical innovation."

City
building The slum
In the words of Yona Friedman, it is a new agglomeration built as new arrivals arrive, except for those who come to the city in the hope of finding a means of survival. They build their homes with the means at their disposal, usually without know-how but according to their ingenuity and personal taste. Often these neighbourhoods show exceptional technical ingenuity.

Up side down
The fact remains that these neighbourhoods are the symbol of the misery that proliferates. Without falling into a form of idealization, we sought to translate the tremendous energy of these cities into a vector of modernity.

• The street is a powerful example of this. Life transpires with every metre of activity far more than we are able to think about and what it is capable of taking on.

It belongs to everyone and anything is possible! It abounds in secrets, shortcuts, side paths.

It is this horizontal anthill, this vernacular jumble that we wish to transpose into a vertical totem pole, the symbol of Haitian renewal and of an immense part of humanity.
To discover it, we have imagined several routes corresponding to the different rhythms of the visitors.
The tower floats above a tropical forest that will be reborn on the island. The first course is a walk in this forest. It will allow you to discover the plant species that make it up and will distribute the nine thematic enclosures reflecting Haitian history; Croix des Bossales, Tortugas pirates camp, Maroon camp, Sans Souci palace, Perattes camp, Santo Domingo cathedral, Ovando church, St Louis sud Vauban, the citadel. To reach the tower, you take a series of stairs, escalators, elevators in the open air. Sort of vertical streets. These circulations are animated by the random speeds of the flows of the people who make them up. Sometimes, some of them only connect a part of the program elements. They thus act as circuit breakers or shortcuts. As we survey this vertical landscape, we will have the environmental scopes that will become the most spectacular viewpoints for miles around. Then we will see the sea, why do we always want to see the sea?

It would be almost grotesque to have the vanity to put one's personal and unilateral stamp on such a project. We are then considering thinking with Haitian artists of course, but not only. If only because Haiti is multi-ethnic. We are going to wrap the object with them. We propose to adapt a recurring theme in many poor countries; the customization of public transport.
Pousse Pousse; ToukTouk and in Haiti, TapTap. Each of them is a unique marvel and an absolute pride for the one who drives it.
The tower will take up this dreamlike aesthetic and then it will become a monument, that is to say, an object serving as a landmark and rallying point.

The imagination introduces the strange into everyday life, the dream into reality, the unexpected into the obvious, into life.

Matthieu Poitevin