-
Architects: FG Arquitectos
- Area: 15562 m²
- Year: 2014
Text description provided by the architects. The project is an office building and comercial space located on 4040, Nueva Costanera Avenue, Vitacura, City of Santiago, Chile. The building consists of four underground storeys, the first one designed as office space with patios around that ensure natural lighting and ventilation, and the other three, for parking (276 in total), storage and technical rooms.
The ground floor consists of the building main entrance, 4 commercial premises, green áreas, pedestrian walkways and terraces. Storeys 2 through 5 are open plans detined for offices. Located on the roof are the climate and ventilation units and free space for possible future terrace.
About the Project
An irregular site with double orientation, with a narrow exposed facade to the street opposed to the open, wide facade facing better sunlight and public space.
This narrow condition of the site plus having the borders well defined and built, with uneven heights, motivated us to propose a sinuous irregular shape in order to let the building seek the best exposure of facade and avoid the geometric constrictions of the site.
The curved building, dressed with metal vertical elements is based on an excersice in which we took distance from the architectural object in order to achieve a pure shape where the body is understood as a whole and not as a repetition of equally shaped storeys. To reinforce this idea, the ground floor was thought of in absolute transperancy, which acts as an articulation between the building and its surroundings.
The treatment of the facades has a consequence within the plans The exposure of the first floor for comercial reasons, differs from the office space where the breakdown of the view, the possibility of subdivision and occupancy adaptation in general, find its solutions through the modulatoin of the facade.
The implementation of the building within the site, the possibility of having office space in an underground floor, the will to conect two streets, resulted in the strategy of not having parking on the ground floor, but instead, proposed a secuence of walkways, excavations, plantations and urban furnishings that reflect the different situations, their particular functions of entrance, access, pause and course.
Along with meeting the regulations and the comercial standards; the bulding focuses on optimizing its operation to meet efficiency in energy consumption and minimize emissions.
The curve solves the exposure of the building to sunlight, leaving less exposed facades. The vertical boards act as a louvers achieving very high thermal comfort where glass is 90% of the facade.
