-
Architects: TSM Asociados
- Area: 2880 m²
-
Photographs:Gonzalo Cáceres
Text description provided by the architects. The project is a Commercial Complex where all the MAPFRE services may be found. MAPFRE is a Spanish transnational insurance company with presence all over South America. With a total built up area of 7,872.84 m2, it is composed of a Commercial Office two story building, a Medical Center with two levels, a Chapel and a six stories Columbarium building, and finally a Wake Area, plus two basements. The main design principle was to arrange all functions around a square inside the property.
The chapel has been placed on the left side of the entrance, with seating for 100 people. It has been design so it could hold most types of Christian services. It is more like a neutral temple. The external and internal cladding is a flagstone which is extracted from quarries in the Peruvian state of Arequipa. Inside, the altar has been decorated with a back of wooden veneer and with a top natural skylight. The altar table is an inclined marble table. The lighting fixture includes LED strings inside the windows to always give the effect of daylight permeating through them.
The chapel volume tops off with the Columbarium building, in contrast to it, lightening the building by the use of ellipsoid sun louvers to keep a more private atmosphere inside without compromising the entrance of natural light. The Columbarium starts on the second floor and spread over 6 floors.
Towards the right side, also facing the street is the two stories Medical Center building. It has a continuous glass façade which enters into the complex ending in the office building. It has been design as a multiple combination of different types of glass that goes from light and transparent to dark and almost opaque. The reception, offices and services, such as pharmacy, X-ray, laboratory, etc. are on the first floor. The second floor consists of medical offices and administrative areas.
Between the two outbuildings there are two clearly defined pedestrian accesses. One is a corridor that continues in the first level, next to the chapel and columbarium until reaching the entrance to the Wake Area. This area has been design with a type of “public” space which allows interaction among attendees, maintaining the necessary respect to private wake spaces. Between this area and the basement there is a vertical connection with a specially sized elevator for the entrance of the funeral procession with the coffin. In the basement there is also the mortuary room through which the coffin and body passes before being taken to each wake room.
The second path is via a slope and open staircase that ends in the upper plaza where the entrance to the Mapfre Peru office building is. This office building has the same façade treatment that continues from the Medical Center, whose design has been proposed as a continuous membrane that connects the exterior and the interior facades of the complex.
