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Architects: Lorena Troncoso Valencia
- Area: 350 m²
- Year: 2019
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Manufacturers: Adobe, Algifol, Archicad, Atika, Sipa, Volcan
Text description provided by the architects. The horizontal extension of the intermediate depression of the Chilean field, is usually interrupted by rows of trees that limit plots, between these polygons long uniform lines of crops are distinguished, occasionally changing direction. These concepts were the basis of inspiration for the project.
The work consists of an office and dining room volume for a fruit exporting plant. The work reaches a set of warehouses where fruit is processed and refrigerated, prior to export. In this production chain, most of the agricultural activity is carried out inside large refrigerated chambers, going outside in a few moments, for example, during the short lunch break or some administrative management.
For this reason, these offices and dining rooms for a refrigerator in the Longaví area, in southern Chile, are only trying to offer a brief comforting environment for these rural tasks, now technified and enclosed, but inheriting the passivity of the Chilean rural landscape. A series of windows, planks, joists, shades and textures, are balanced during the day on these elongated shapes, to show the slow passage of the sun on a large and immovable volume.
It is possible to move around its edges, the interior or briefly traverse it, quickly recognizing changes in perspectives that contrast with the permanent horizontal plane of the surrounding field. Fleetingly passing through the contour or central grid patterns, as a visual accelerator of the geographical experience.
With the same sobriety of the material and the color that it collects from the lateral volumes, it opens to the front courtyards, projecting the distances, and segmenting the permanence with the changing shadows it receives. This enigmatic horizontal tension on a smooth esplanade gives the building a concise monumentality that enhances the agricultural task; in a curiously alien setting, but closely linked to the soul of the place.
The offices are related through a central spatial line with openings that allow visual communication between the different units. This central wooden hallway contrasts horizontally with the white of the rest of the surfaces.
