Alto Bío Bío Museum and Square

©Sebastián Lobos

©Sebastián Lobos

Architects : Víctor Lobos del Fierro, Víctor Lobos Valderrama y Sebastián Lobos Valderrama
Collaborator: Aarón Lagos
Owner: Municipality of Alto Bío Bío
Main Contractor: Cero Ltda.
Structural Engineering: JMC, Juan Marcus Schwenck
Predominant materials: Wood, stone and steel (Museum) / Tile, stone, asphalt, colored gravel (Square)
GFA: 171,24 m2  (Museum), 22.000 m2 (Square)
Location: Commune of Alto Bío Bío, VIII Region.
Date: 2005-2006
Photographs: Sebastián Lobos

Located in Alto Bío Bío, a rural village in the VIII Region of the South of Chile, the Pehuenche Museum concludes a cultural axis with the square and a new high school, constituting an important service center for this town. The museum and the square are the entities entrusted with the Pehuenche cultural ancestry.

The square’s design relates to nature through contrast. It adopts the concept of “weaving”, using motifs and figures of the Pehuenche culture. In such a way, the square does not imitate nature in the way European models do, but acquires its own autonomy and identity.

The pavings combine tiles, stone, asphalt, concrete and gravel that give shape to traditional figures. The same purpose guides the choice of the paths and stout native trees like the Canelos and the Araucarias, which have great significance to the ancestral ethnic groups from the south of Chile. Blending with ground covers of different color patches and types of flowers, grass and shrubs, a tapestry is formed.

The museum, located at one end of the square, supports the linear tension of the cultural axis with a horizontal and orthogonal design, underscoring the exterior meeting place made up of concentric circles –a unique cosmological arrangement from the Pehuenche culture –with a vertical element– the tower. This element brings out the cardinal points, adopting the clear function of the Che –“people” or ethnic community in the original language– in the organization of the entrance square to the museum. Also, the tower is a point of observation, the center and landmark. The warmth of the wood siding on the slim figure of the Che establishes the vertical counterpoint as the center of the landscape, contrasting with the rough horizontal wall that cuts across the museum.

In due respect for the Pehuenche customs, the entrance is from the east, as to all Pehuenche people looking at the sun while it dawns holds great meaning. The organization of the space is linear and its arrangement is based on solid stone walls, which are in contrast with the nature of the surroundings. The design is minimal and the layout is flexible, so as to facilitate the placing of exhibitions in its interior.