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Architects: GMM Arquitectos
- Area: 12000 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Aryeh Kornfeld
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Manufacturers: Cipa, GLASSTECH, Hunter Douglas, Melón Hormigones
Text description provided by the architects. The new City Hall building is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Santiago. As we analyzed the site area, we discovered that the privation of public spaces and the poor conditions of the infrastructure were key factors for unsafety in the neighborhood, leading to lack of social cohesion and therefore to a less fluid relationship between the local government and the community. We believe that bringing people together through the value of architecture and public spaces we could improve the quality of life to both the city hall employees and the community in general. That became one of our main goals and key concepts of our design.
On the other hand we wanted to design a low height simple building that enhances the public areas connecting them through a mayor inner public space that could bring the local community inwards the building.
We designed a building that relates to the neighborhood by means of the construction of a U-shaped block that maintained the continuous façade towards the street and towards the interior a façade with an inner angle to achieve a passive control against sunlight. In the interior, we located an oval that contains the community dependencies and the municipal conventions hall. The roof of the building was thought as a large terrace and public space for exhibitions and events aiming to multiply the diversity of public spaces for the community and give greater possibilities to the municipality's infrastructure.
