Costanera La Dehesa Building

by Alemparte & Morelli

© Alemparte&Morelli

© Alemparte&Morelli

Architect: Alemparte Morelli Asociados Arquitectos Ltda
Collaborator: Mario Folchi – José Benavides
Location: Raúl Labbe Nº 12.613
Built Area : 24.728 m2
Project Year: 2009
Client: Inmobiliaria Costanera La Dehesa..
General Contractor: Novatec Constructora
Structural Engineering: René Lagos Associates-Civil Engineers
Photographs: Alemparte Morelli Asociados Arquitectos Ltda

The project is located at the base of the Andes range, at the side of the Mapocho River where new urban highways are constructed leading to new service centers in the city of Santiago. This building is used for offices and shops.

The scheme consists of a building of six storeys high and five underground levels of parkings with a height that is based on the regulation of the area that favours the buildings of low height to preserve the magnificent natural environment and the sights to the mountain range.

For this, the form of the building that fits to a “U”, generates two opposite realities among in agreement to the urban conditions.

The first one, to create a unique public space, for which one accedes to the lobby of the building and is in addition the place where cafes and small shops are grouped, answering to creating a pedestrian continuity with the residential neighborhood La Dehesa.

This opening of the public space towards the north as orientation, frames across a “portico” of great scale that completes the unit of the building in longitudinal sense to its front. 
In opposition, for the external side of the “U”, the building contemplates neutral and opaque facades, which answer to supporting privacy with the neighbors and to the climatic solicitations of the orientations east and west.

Towards the south direction, in which the river and the highway goes, the project contemplates a more neutral facade, still corresponding to a great plane, a glass wall projecting in all it extension, to be read from the highway and from the interior of the offices, being opened to the sights of the mountain, without visual and thermic restriction.