Reporting From SANTIAGO, Chile — One in a series of dispatches by Carolina A. Miranda on the art and architecture of Chile.
Of the Chilean architects working today, Alejandro Aravena is the most high-profile — and, with his good looks and spiky salt-and-pepper hair, perhaps the most mediagenic.
Internationally, the 48-year-old architect is best known for his innovative work in low-income housing developments in communities around Chile (as well as one project in Mexico), which maintain density while providing amenities such as outdoor space and the ability to expand.
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The Catholic University’s Innovation Center is located at the university’s San Joaquin campus, south of downtown Santiago. The building appears to reach toward the elevated metro rail at left - an iconic blocky landmark that can be seen for miles around. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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Capturing the rear of the building (which is just as dramatic as the front). The oversized window gaps create a series of outdoor terrace spaces where the building’s occupants can gather. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The Innovation Center has a couple of access points. The principal one is reached off the main gate into the university, just off the metro, past a series of orb-shaped sculptures. Altogether, it exerts a strong gravitational pull. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The building has a dense concrete skin, but it’s interior is a sunny open space featuring a boxy geometric pattern made from steel and oak. The steel frame to the left carries the elevators. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The architects wanted to create a building that had a transparent interior - where the occupants of one floor might be able to see what another was working on. This is the view from the glass-walled elevators, which provide a staggering trip through the structure. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The rectangular oak beams add a bit of warmth to the steel and concrete interiors. They also frame the views of each floor. This one, at ground level, provides a sense of scale. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The building’s elevated terraces serve as impromptu gathering spaces where people can meet, eat a sandwich or have a cigarette - all with views of the city. This was a key part of the design: to create social spaces where surprise interactions could occur. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The interior is truly breathtaking: a combination of power and function and geometry. The first thing most visitors to the building do when they arrive inside is look up and just stare. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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Seen from the east, Aravena’s building appears to extend a hand to the Catholic University’s Education School, which was designed by another architect, but is also made with Béton brut concrete. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The building as seen from the eastern side of campus -- from another Aravena-designed building, the Siamese Towers. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
But he has an extensive resume worldwide. Since 2009, the 47-year-old architect has served as a juror for the Pritzker Prize — architecture’s most prestigious award — with the likes of figures such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Pritzker laureates such as Richard Rogers and Glenn Murcutt. He has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (when he was still in his 30s) and delivered a TED talk on the nature of architecture and participatory design. In 2000, he was a finalist for the Mies Van Der Rohe Award, and in 2008, he won a Silver Lion at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale.
In Chile, he also has an extensive portfolio of structures that go well beyond social housing projects. Aravena, in his private practice, along with his socially driven architecture office Elemental, have built structures all over Santiago — from private homes to office towers to classroom buildings. And some of his most significant works reside at the university from which he received his degree and at which he later taught: the Catholic University of Santiago, one of Chile’s oldest and most prestigious educational institutions.
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The front view of the Catholic University’s School of Mathematics, designed by Alejandro Aravena, and completed in 1998. The architect’s interventions united two older buildings into a single unit -- and in the process gave a blocky, modernist building some interesting angles. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The addition is in Béton brut concrete with details in wood and copper. This raw form of concrete ages well with minimal maintenance. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The design offers a shady esplanade in the middle of campus (which can be blazing during the summer season). A triangular motif on the ceiling echoes skylight shapes from inside the building. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The building is three stories tall and has a terrific series of bridges that connect passageways to offices and help keep the space feeling open. More importantly, the spaces keep the air circulating. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The rear side of Arevana’s Mathematics School building is clad in copper (a metal that is native to Chile). The oxidized metal creates an interesting pattern on the surface of the building. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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Just a few hundred feet from the Mathematics School at the university is Aravena’s Torres Siamesas -- or Siamese Towers -- which in their form resemble a tree branch. The building was completed in 2005 (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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Aravena’s tower is entered through one of two raw wood porticos which offer a stark contrast to the shininess of the building’s glass skin. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The Siamese Towers consists of a traditional tower surrounded by a glass skin that resides a couple of feet off the surface of the building. This is to allow for the circulation of air currents to aid with cooling. Even so, the building contends with ventilation problems. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The Siamese Towers are used primarily for administrative purposes, and contain offices and meeting spaces that offer views of the campus and the city beyond. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The tower does contain some classroom and study space at ground level, where students gather for lectures or group study. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The side view, with one of the entrances to the building -- which have a certain mineshaft quality. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
The university’s San Joaquin campus, located south of downtown Santiago, is dotted with a trio of important Aravena-designed buildings: the Mathematics School, completed in 1998, which he helped reconceive, from a pair of existing Modernist structures (and for which he was nominated for the Mies Van Der Rohe Award); the Siamese Towers (Torres Siamesas), an administrative tower at the heart of the campus finished in 2005; and the just-completed Innovation Center, a building that, though it may sound impossible, tips its hat to brutalism as much as it does to transparency.
The Innovation Center, in particular, which was designed in collaboration with fellow architect Juan Cerda, is especially wondrous: a powerful concrete behemoth that secretly harbors a day-lit atrium composed of an oak-and-steel checkerboard geometry. It is the sort of structure that exerts its own gravitational pull.
In a future post, I’ll be exploring why Chile is having a bit of an architecture moment and why Chilean architects are enjoying, for the first time, international acclaim. But for now, I simply want to share my initial impressions of these key Aravena buildings, some of which offer plenty of reason to endure the crazy-long plane ride all the way to Santiago.
The photo essay at top features my images of the Innovation Center (whose interior is still being finished in parts), while the bottom contains images of the Mathematics School and the Siamese Towers.
Find me on the Twitter, @cmonstah. Want to see my architecture pix from around Santiago and beyond? Hit me up on Instagram @cmonstah.
