World Architecture Community Awards, 10° Cycle, 2011, Winner
XIII Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires, Argentina 2011 – Exhibition
AI Architecture Israel Project of the Year 2012, Third place
XI Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Costa Rica 2012, Exhibition
The Project for the new museum and the historic museum renovation was an order for the General Director Alejandro Bernales (R.I.P)
The idea of Carabineros de Chile consists in the challenge to get the expansion of the old museum and the new museum highlights the historical value.
A first consideration is to hollow and redesign the interior of the historic building preserving the facades and getting a new spatial interior. Paintings white all the facades and interiors and getting the connectivity between the new and the renovation and the intervention.
A second action is the architectonic idea to cave and put the buildings in several levels underground. Then we obtain the double purpose to not touch the park and the trees of the site and to highlight the historic building that now reflects the facades in two big water mirrors to Antonio Varas Avenue.
Then it a building that gets the most spaces underground but getting natural light for interiors patios and cracks that permits a path also for the exterior.
All the facades of the new volumes are resolved with Concrete incorporating titanium dioxide and a system of phenolic molds with 5 inch wide planks.
The white walls highlighted in the abstract between the intense green of the trees and the green roofs of the buildings.
The program also provides the showrooms of museums, the cultural center’s administrative offices; an underground parking building and a theatre with capacity for 740 people with boxes allowing the orchestra and the choir of the police play along.
The theatre is resolved entire in Cedar wood and the waving roofing permits an acoustic experience and an excellence vision. In the same level is the cafeteria and restaurant with an expansion to exterior terraces that permits good ventilation and natural lighting.
