Alejandro Aravena is the winner of the "Nobel Prize" of architecture, the Pritzker Prize. Here are some of his greatest designs...
Novartis Office Building, 2015 (underconstruction), Shanghai, China —
The office building in the Novartis Campus Shanghai seeks to provide spaces that encourage knowledge creation. The office spaces are designed to accommodate the different modes of work -- individual, collective, formal and informal -- and foster interaction between the users. Around a forest of Metasequoias, the ground floor accommodates the Fitness and Be Healthy Center which are part of the campus public level where users from the different buildings meet. The outside of the building responds to the local climate with a solid facade of reclaimed brick facing south, east and west. On the north facade, the building is open to let indirect light get inside the open office spaces.
Writer's Cabin, 2015, Montricher, Switzerland —
This suspended cabin had to balance comfort and compactness. We opted for a linear volume so that we could place it with freedom within the existing column grid but also as a way to counterbalance the reduction of the living area; the length of the cabin compensates and decompresses the compactness allowing the writers to transit through different situations: cooking, eating, and sharing. Structurally the cabin is just a very efficient and simple slab that supports both the living space on top of it and the hanging system of the existing canopy. We introduced a pivot and a lateral force to stabilize the system, but also as the way to provide access to the cabin and allow all the services to reach the ground.
UC InnovationCenter AnacletoAngelini, 2014, Santiago, Chile —
Innovation and knowledge creation requires on the one hand, to increase the encounters among people, so openness is a desired attribute for its architecture; on the other hand, developments and inventions have to be protected, so security and ability to close and segregate are appreciated architectural conditions as well. We proposed a rather opaque construction towards the outside, which is also efficient for the Santiago weather and then have a very permeable architecture inside. Having the structure and the shafts on the perimeter of the building reverts the typical curtain wall building layout and concentrates openings in a very specific points in the form of elevated squares.
Constitución Seaside Promenade, 2014, Constitución, Chile —
Developed in the context of the Post-Tsunami Sustainable Reconstruction Plan of Constitución, Chile, the project consists of a series of coastal lookout points along the way from Maule River's mouth to Maguellines Port, in order to reinforce and highlight the natural heritage embodied by the huge rocks of this landscape. The platforms are connected to a 4.5 km bicycle lane.
Villa Verde Housing, 2013, Constitución, Chile —
Arauco Forest Company asked us to develop a plan to support their employees and contractors so they could have access to home ownership, in the context of Chilean housing policies. This allowed us to work for the first time with the high end of housing policy. Given the greater availability of resources, instead of taking one of our less expensive housing units and delivering it more finished, we applied again the same principle of incremental housing, but with an initial and final growth scenario of a higher standard: these houses begin with an initial area of 57 m2 and can grow up to 85 m2.
Las Cruces Pilgrim Lookout Point, 2010, Jalisco, Mexico —
We were one of several firms asked to re-imagine rest stops along a Mexican pilgrimage route. Building in such a remote place should generate an architecture able to age as if it were a natural element. So, we thought of a kind of hollowed stone, bent to rest calmly on the hill side, and whose only purpose is to offer pilgrims a resting place with dark shadows, cross-ventilation and two vantage points, one: a view over the path they walked for a hundred kilometers to arrive there, the other, the landscape ahead.
St. Edward's University Dorms, 2008, Austin, Texas, USA —
We needed to accommodate 300 beds, some social areas and some services for the whole campus in a narrow lot. We thought of creating a plinth with the more public facilities to activate the ground floor, then the social areas carving the volume's core and finally articulate the perimeter of the building as much as possible, increasing the linear meters of façade in order to guarantee views and natural light to each room. To be able to resist a tough environment we opted for a sequence of skins that are hard and rough in the outer layer and become softer and more delicatewhile moving towards the core.
Bicentennial Children's Park, 2012, Santiago, Chile —
A four-hectare Children's Park on a hillside, part of a program to celebrate the bicentennial of Chile.
Monterrey Housing, 2010, Monterrey, Mexico —
In the Mexican housing market, the cheapest solution that is offered is about $30,000 dollars. So the poor are not being reached. We developed an improved version of Iquique, Chile, where houses underneath and duplex apartments on top, have an initial cost of $20,000 dollars, but can achieve a middle income standard of 72 m2 after self built expansions. The efficiency in land use without overcrowding, allowed us to purchase land in a neighborhood where the average cost is $50,000 dollars. We expect the families to benefit from that value gain, and from the fact that cost of land expresses close availability of services and opportunities.
Siamese Towers, 2005, Santiago, Chile —
We were asked to do a glass tower. Glass is very inappropriate for Santiago's climate, because it generates greenhouse effect, even though it's a nice material to resist rain, pollution and aging. So we thought of using glass for what it's good, on the outside, then do another building inside with efficient energy performance and allow air to flow in between the two. Convection of hot air creates a vertical wind which is accelerated by the "waists" of the building by Venturi effect, eliminating undesired heat gains before they reach the second building inside.
Quinta Monroy Housing, 2004, Iquique, Chile —
The challenge of this project was to accommodate 100 families living in a 30-year old slum, using a subsidy of USD $7,500 that in the best of the cases allowed for 36 m2 of built space in a 5,000 m2 site, the cost of which was three times what social housing could normally afford. The aim was to keep the families' social and economic networks, which they had created close to the center city, instead of evicting the families to the periphery. And we wanted the families to live in houses able to achieve a middle-class standard instead of condemning them to an everlasting socialhousing one. None of the solutions in the market solved the equation. So we thought of a typology that, as buildings -- could make a very efficient use of land and as houses — allowed for expansion. We provided the families with the "half a house" that would be difficult for them to build for themselves and we gave them space to "complete the
house" as their means allowed. After a year, property values tripled and yet, all the families have preferred to stay and keep on improving their homes.
MedicalSchool, 2004, Santiago, Chile —
"We were asked to do all kinds of classrooms, from seminars to auditoriums, in a very dense context. The only way out, was to go high. Given that massive student occupancy in higher floors has always been hard to solve, we decided to bring the courtyard closer to each upper floor. This building is a vertical cloister."
Mathematics School, 1999, Santiago, Chile —
"A mathematician is a machine of transforming coffee into equations." We thought that joke, expressed one of the dimensions by which knowledge is produced: the casual encounter of people. Besides the coffee room, we identified the corridor as a design opportunity, as the moment where you see other people before they disappear into the isolated retreat of the individual working unit. We decided to add the new building to two existing ones, so that after the operation we had fewer elements than at the beginning.
