The project site is located to the East of Santiago, in an area strategically devised as a garden city. The urban conditions prevalent in the area inspired a landscape design that connects the building to the street and the neighboring properties. Inside the building, the horizontal simplicity of the open plan offices articulates smoothly with a central staircase and three-dimensional hall that invite circulation and social interaction.
The main feature of the building is the enclosure panel, designed in response to the conventional technology of traditional curtain walls. The suggested design aims at creating tension between tradition and avant-garde. On the one hand, the proposed translucent glass panel captures the first light of the morning and gives it out in the course of the day. On the other hand, the quartz filling the space in between sheets of glass provides warmth to the interior, while framing the landscape in a transparent module randomly placed within the pattern of the facade. The translucence of the panels allows for an even, warm, timeless light to flow through.
The north facade, the one who receives the sun, is the most public facade of the building. In it, there was located the biggest panel density, in order to protect the interior. To the south, we proposed to invert this scheme leaving a deeper transparency using quartz panels just a as a small reference to the facade that characterizes the building.
