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Architects: AtelierB Arquitectos, Berdichevsky Cherny Arquitectos
Text description provided by the architects. The architecture of office buildings is what we call 'hard architecture ", due to the need to address fixed standards, maximum performance, efficiency, capacity for emblematising, institutional presence, constructive rationality, flexibility, identity. It usually happens that the strategic goal of recognition and differentiation from marketing and corporate image 'soften' the architectural discourse with decorative resources.
Contrary to this decorative design, the basic idea from the presentation of the competition for the TETRA PAK building, adjacent to the industrial facility, was to emphasize criteria for high efficiency and economy, in a manner opposite to the stereotypical corporate culture of plush offices. Indeed, the San Fernando project (Industrial Facility + Offices) must assume its condition of industrial image both in the institutional identity, as well as in its interior design and construction costs.
We sometimes lose sight that even in the 'hard' programs, what is truly essential is to create workspaces that can generate pleasure, with different degrees of activity, quietness, porosity. Today, the concept of office culture has changed. Life is in the office, but the office is not life. People spend half their conscious existence in administrative spaces with an environmental quality often lacking a minimum of pleasantness.
The working environment is a strategic resource that should be designed as encouraging the worker: not to support work, but to enjoy it. Consistent with these ideas, the building offers a pleasant landscape, with an industrial design based on transparency, legibility of parts and pedestrian condition, with a strong axis: a central triple height space, intentionally longitudinal and narrow.
Link and separation of areas, this circulatory-spatial axis creates points of transition and organizes the program, proposed as a piece that unifies the project in a legible whole, taking on the entire scale of the project to which all the parts are subordinated. A flexible and dynamic system that intends to integrate the working community of the company. The design, of an industrial nature, is recognizable by its synthetic criteria and natural, bare materials. It requires a development of detail that, contrary to hiding constructiveness, highlights it.
The building as a whole is conceived so as to be easily adaptable to different programs, adaptations and changes without losing its basic characteristics or weakening its circulatory and functional structure, or its operation and maintenance characteristics. The project is based on an industrial design proposal of facilities, integrating furniture facilities with fixed facilities and elements. An example is the integration of lighting fixtures for the workspaces with the general lighting, the possibility of individual control of the components, ventilation, mobility alternatives in the flexible plan, etc.
The building has an aspect of industrial architecture consistent with the adjacent facility. A sober, simple, and fresh image, away from any spectacularity or boasting. It searches to send a clear message of modernity and update. Simplicity, functionality, expressive minimalism are so prevalent in the interior as well as exterior image. Clean, functional, inexpensive materials: exposed concrete, anodized aluminum, galvanized iron, transparent double glazing, railings and finishes with an industrial instead of a decorative look, bare materials that generate a 'natural' atmosphere and landscape, non-conventional ceilings, acoustic absorption on ceilings and elements, exposed lighting fixtures, etc.
Sustainability
Throughout its development, the proposal has considered and incorporated criteria now called bioclimatic. This reflects not a movement or fashion that encourages the current cultural context of architecture, but a deeper principle, rooted in our creative process, whereby all architecture, to be good and effective, must be 'bioclimatic' as it has always been throughout history. Understanding 'bioclimatic architecture' as an architecture adapted to the local environment, sensitive to its impact on nature, concerned about the welfare of its occupants, and that minimizes energy consumption and with it, pollution. The sustainability of the proposal can be verified by checking it against compliance of the LEED Certification System, which is currently the benchmark in sustainable building globally, accepted as a standard in terms of design, building and management of eco-efficient and sustainable buildings.
For this purpose, we have made a specific analysis of the project taking into account the characteristics of each of the credits based on two variables: the value played by architecture (decision-making at a project level) for obtaining credit, against the value corresponding to issues that are external to design, and which rely more on criteria, processes and controls related to certification. This classification has been carried out considering the additional costs associated with the compliance of each credit, as well as the feasibility of implementation in our country.
