Scientific innovation centre

In the Chilean capital, a monolithic volume erected on a clear geometry stands out against the urban skyline. Its precise choices of composition make it home to a fruitful exchange of research, corporate resources and business.

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This article was originally published in Domus 984 / October 2014

In 2011, the Angelini Group decided to donate the funds required to establish a centre where companies, businesses and, more in general, demand could converge with researchers and state-of-the-art university knowledge creation. The aim was to contribute to the process of transferring know-how, identifying business opportunities, adding value to existing resources, or registering patents in order to improve the country’s competitiveness and consequently its development. The Universidad Católica de Chile would host the centre at a site on its San Joaquín Campus.

Alejandro Aravena|Elemental, Centro de Innovación UC Anacleto Angelini Santiago, Cile

To accommodate such goals, we proposed a building in which at least four kinds of work could take place: a matrix of formal and informal work coupled with individual and collective ways of encountering people. Ultimately, face-to-face contact is invaluable when one wants to create knowledge, so we multiplied meeting places all around the building: from the elevator lobby with its bench for people who happen to run into each other and wish to sit and exchange information, to a transparent core that allows glimpses of what others are doing while circulating vertically, and elevated squares throughout the entire height of the building.

In a reversal of the typical office-space floor plan, we did away with opaque circulation and a service core wrapped in a transparent glazed curtain wall, and opted instead for an open core with strategic openings around the perimeter. This solution not only offered functional benefits, but also responded to the building’s environmental performance and character.

In Santiago, buildings that want to look “contemporary” generally have glass facades. However, this uncritical search for contemporariness has populated Santiago with glass towers that, due to the local arid climate, generate serious greenhouse effects in the interiors. Hence the pay-off with such towers is the consumption of huge amounts of energy for air conditioning. The Innovation Centre similarly had to respond to the client’s desire for a building with a contemporary appearance, yet we were determined to avoid undesired heat gains. Our solution was hardly rocket science; it was sufficient to place the building’s mass on the perimeter, introduce recessed windows to prevent direct insolation, and allow for cross-ventilation. Such an opaque facade was not only energetically efficient, but also helped to dim the extremely strong light that typically requires interior working spaces to be protected with curtains and blinds, fatally undermining the initial notion of transparency. In this sense our response to the context was nothing other than a rigorous use of common sense.

On the other hand, we considered functional and stylistic obsolescence as the greatest threat to an innovation centre. Accordingly, besides the professional responsibility of avoiding poor environmental performance, the rejection of a glass facade also stemmed from the search for a design that could stand the test of time. We decided that the best way to fight obsolescence was to design the building as if it were an infrastructure rather than architecture. By adopting a rather strict geometry and a strong monolithic materiality, we thus proposed to replace trendiness with timelessness.

Project: Alejandro Aravena | ELEMENTAL
Project team: Alejandro Aravena, Juan Ignacio Cerda; Samuel Gonçalves, Cristián Irarrázaval, Álvaro Ascoz, Natalie Ramirez, Christian Lavista, Suyin Chia, Pedro Hoffmann
Structural and mechanical engineering: Sirve S.A.
Site supervision: Juan Ignacio Cerda
Client Grupo Angelini, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Sire area (Campus San Joaquín): 455,351 smq
Total floor area: 9,000 smq
Design phase: 2011–2012
Construction phase: 2012–2014
Cost: $ 18 million