F/SIESTA

In contemporary cities, the body is increasingly exposed to climatic stress, sensory overload and constant acceleration. Designing for rest becomes a way of acknowledging bodily limits and reintroducing care into the public realm.

The idea of the F/SIESTA informs the project as a cultural practice shaped by climate, light and bodily limits, rather than as a nostalgic or folkloric gesture. Historically, the siesta emerged as a way of living with heat rather than against it, reorganising daily rhythms around moments of withdrawal, shade and reduced exposure. It acknowledged that energy is finite, that the body has thresholds, and that endurance depends as much on slowing down as on moving forward. Reintroduced into the city today, the siesta becomes a framework for rethinking how public space can accommodate vulnerability, care and non-productive time.

Building on this logic, the project recognises that contemporary cities cannot fully neutralise the climatic conditions they have produced. Rather than proposing total control or technological compensation, it accepts heat, light and fatigue as part of the urban environment and asks how design can support more sustainable bodily rhythms. Each structure responds by offering a different metabolic relationship with space. Some invite movement through gentle oscillation, others provide stable and grounded surfaces for rest, while shaded hollows and planted centres combine bodily pause with cooler microclimates generated by vegetation and shadow.

Sitting, lying down, oscillating or seeking shade are not secondary behaviours here, but the actions the system is designed to support. Distributed across the city or gathered in a single location, the F/SIESTA installations operate as a network of small, repeatable shelters where moments of pause become part of everyday urban life. Individually, each structure works as a compact island of rest. When combined, they form archipelagos that adapt to different sites and conditions, linking thermal comfort with social interaction. In this way, the project proposes an urban ecology built from proximity, repetition and shared use, favouring continuity and care over singular or monumental gestures.