Memoria MUSEAT
David Rodriguez Arquitectos + Combeau & De Iruarrizaga Arquitectos
Cliente
Museo Atacama
Location
Santiago, Chile.
Year 2013
REGIONAL IDENTITY
A representative museum for the Atacama Region should configure an architecture that highlights the region's most memorable aspect: its extraordinary geography marked by the dramatic, luminous, and silent relationship between the land and the sky. The power and uniqueness of this territory have shaped and sculpted the character of various human efforts throughout history, such as agriculture, mining, and astronomy. Accordingly, we seek a massive, gravitational, and excavated architecture that primarily creates an interiority through its exterior spaces.
A museum must be a unique building within the urban fabric, but more importantly, it should possess qualities that reflect permanence, allowing it to distance itself from the stylistic trends of any specific architectural moment. We propose a building with a simple and radical volumetry, capable of highlighting the exhibited contents and also emphasizing the light and shadow of the northern region. URBAN CONTEXT
Instead of creating a building that openly interacts with the public street space, the project seeks a more hermetic architecture, capable of capitalizing on the nature of the site between party walls. In this way, the proposal for the Museat reinterprets a colonial strategy to configure an excavated interiority that is both sculptural and monumental. This approach allows for creating large-scale voids suitable for a public building, as well as the silence and intimacy necessary for a research and work facility.
We understand that a museum of this nature must accommodate or integrate four distinct programmatic dimensions. The Museat must simultaneously function as an exhibition and dissemination building, a storage building, a work building, and a research facility. The project groups the public-accessible and larger programs at the street level (basement, floor 1, and floor 2) and the more compartmentalized work and research programs on the upper floors. The perimeter against the party walls will primarily be used for storage and supporting programs, such as vertical circulation and restrooms.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Given the privileged climate of Copiapó, the project for the Museat aims to create comfortable environmental conditions through a traditional approach to sustainability. The project reuses a set of traditional architectural strategies that enhance intermediate spaces, ventilated shaded areas, evaporative cooling, thermal mass, and microclimatic elements such as courtyards and terraces.
To produce beer, the brewery taps into surface water from an artesian well located nearby. In addition, the brewery boasts 1,250 m² of photovoltaic panels, generating 130 kW to ensure 100% solar-powered production. Environmental sustainability extends beyond energy use: no trees were harmed during construction, and over 100 native trees—quillayes, peumos, litres, and boldos—were planted around the site. This effort is part of a broader conservation initiative within the field, which also encompasses the creation of the El Ajial Nature Sanctuary, a 2,134-hectare reserve dedicated to preserving forests and native wildlife, providing a habitat for the region's rich biodiversity, which has been increasingly threatened by drought.