The winning projects of the 2020 Wood Week architecture competition

Read the original version in Spanish here.

Published on September 21, 2020

The winners of the 2020 Wood Week Competition have been announced. The multidisciplinary open call invited participants to submit wood-focused projects in seven categories: Architecture, Design, Engineering and Construction, Innovation, Wood Startup Challenge, Built Works, and P hotography. Wood Week (Semana de la Madera) is an annual event organized by Madera21, an association founded in 2001 by the Chilean Wood Corporation to promote and raise awareness about the use of this material in Chile.

These competitions offer a unique opportunity to highlight architectural, design, engineering, and innovation work using this noble material, while encouraging future project development and research by professionals and academics. In the 2020 edition, the Architecture competition challenged students to design a Technical Vocational High School, proposing new educational spaces adapted to the current context with a critical outlook and a clear forward-looking vision for technical and professional training.

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Discover the Winning Projects of the 2019 Wood Week Architecture Competition

Out of more than 100 submitted projects in the architecture category for this edition, a total of three prizes, one special mention, and four honorable mentions were awarded. Read on to discover the winning proposals in the words of their designers:

First Prize: Educational Unit for Agroforestry Innovation

Team: Hugo Valenzuela
Faculty Advisors: Alvaro Herrera Passi
University: Universidad Central
Campus: Santiago

Triangle with Biotechnological Potential in the Biobío-Ñuble Region

The opportunity to create a decentralized development hub: The Biobío-Ñuble region offers advantages such as developed infrastructure, several upcoming projects, three higher education hubs focused on innovation (Concepción, Los Ángeles, and Chillán), and an important network of competitive small and medium-sized producers that lack the resources to innovate.

The core of our project is to coordinate actions with these small-scale producers, fostering a synergy between education and business. The project becomes a key player by providing the physical space that the producer cannot afford, while the business offers students the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice.

Educational Unit for Agroforestry Innovation: The building aims to experiment with the region's current agroforestry diversity, study its adaptability to change and coexistence, and test the introduction of new species. Placed in the heart of an agroforestry zone, it forms a controlled perimeter for monitoring experimental biomes. The project is a highly replicable, prefabricated, and easily transportable platform where hypothetical crop scenarios are tested before being implemented in agricultural and forestry fields. From a distance, the building appears as a bar that references the horizontality of the scientific discipline.

Its perimeter gathers common uses—such as dining halls, exhibition centers, and the library—at the center of each bar, while classrooms are grouped around the corners. The crop plaza hosts experiments alongside a grid of ground-level monitors (measuring chemical composition, moisture, and salinity). A pathway crosses this plaza in two opposite directions, facilitating interaction with the crops. Additionally, the plaza includes spaces for drainage and water reuse. The structure is conceived as a generic frame composed of common, mass-produced, and easily transportable elements, reducing costs so they can be easily adopted by local stakeholders.

Second Prize: Half-Barn Agricultural and Forestry Technical High School

Team: Rocío Tapia Montero
Faculty Advisors: Miguel Nazar, Diego Martínez, Martín del Solar, and Francisca Yunis
University: Universidad del Desarrollo
Campus: Concepción

The Half-Barn Agricultural and Forestry Technical High School is located in the commune of Ninhue, in the Ñuble region. One of the area's prominent characteristics is its landscape surrounded by hills and trees, with its Mapudungun name—meaning "place protected from the winds"—underscoring the importance of this geographical feature.

As a result, the commune has experienced growing economic activity linked to forestry and agriculture. Consequently, the school's primary focus is on these disciplines, aiming to become the region's main Agricultural and Forestry High School, with a capacity for 400 students from the first to fourth year of high school. The project ventures into the forest of Cerro Guallipén, seeking constant contact and synchrony with the surrounding vegetation. Its "cut barn" shape allows it to rise through the treetops at its upper end while dipping at its lower end, maintaining continuous visual contact with the outdoors as one moves through the building.

Programmatically, it is divided into two large modules, each subdivided into two sections. The first module is academic: its first section houses a dining hall and kitchen, a library, restrooms, administrative areas, and classrooms on the second and third levels that overlook the common spaces, alongside a section dedicated to sports activities. The second module is trade-focused: it features a wood workshop section with furniture making, machinery, a sawmill, and storage, and an agricultural section with two large greenhouses, a botany workshop, and scientific and technological laboratories. Both sections include a second level dedicated to multipurpose workshops for students. Utilizing the slope and elevation change between the two modules, a central recreational courtyard is created, which also functions as an amphitheater for school events, bounded on its other two sides by connecting pedestrian bridges.

Structurally, the project is elevated by an exostructure that forms the exterior corridors, creating a framework of beams and columns that shape the facades of both modules. This structural system continues inside the building, where it remains exposed and integrates into the partitions defining the interior spaces.

Third Prize: Technical High School for the Preservation of Salt-Harvesting Culture

Team: Valeria Baeza, Javiera Pérez, Pamela Reyes
Faculty Advisors: Osvaldo Bizama, Romina Araya
University: Universidad de Valparaíso
Campus: School of Architecture

The proposal is located in the Pichilemu commune, in the Cahuil sector, an area famous for salt harvesting. It is based on the deployment of two fog-collecting piers that enclose the educational facility at their intersection. The program spaces are nestled parallel to these piers, positioned along their sides. The first level is raised off the ground due to flood risks, housing the administrative program in the south wing and the sustainable production, research, and salt-harvesting workshops in the north wing.

Both volumes are linked by the main courtyard, which can be reached via two ramped access points. The second level houses the library, computer labs, art and music rooms, and the winter courtyard in the south wing, while the classrooms are located in the north wing. At their intersection, a void connects the first and second levels, offering a panoramic view of the entire project.

The second level is accessible from the first via a large ramp in the school's entrance hall, as well as through two staircases located on either side of the central void where the fog-collecting piers intersect. Overall, the project responds to the union of two fog-harvesting piers that shape the Technical High School for the Preservation of Salt-Harvesting Culture. This layout is framed by vast vegetation and a natural landscape sensitive to seasonal changes, which floods during the winter and allows salt-harvesting activities to thrive during the spring and summer.

Special Mention: Le Festin School Bulnes

Team: Aracelly Paredes, Andres Jara, Benjamín Laura, Nicolás Painevil
Faculty Advisors: José Becerra, Matías Cordova
University: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana
Campus: Santiago

Honorable Mention: Con-fluencia

Team: Victoria Arancibia, Maittaki Gómez, Serena Sandoval, Florencia Villalón
Faculty Advisors: Juan Baixas, Mario Carreño
University: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Campus: Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies

Honorable Mention: Educational Infrastructure for an Agroecological Rural Area

Team: Sebastian Hermosilla, Diego Lacazette, Irene San Roman, Jesus Chuquipoma
Faculty Advisors: Felipe Carrasco, Cristian Salinas
Project Collaborator: Sebastian Montero R.
University: Universidad Central de Chile
Campus: Santiago

Honorable Mention: Chiloé Carpentry Trades Center