Proingas | Gonzalo Iturriaga | Arquitectos

Located in Enea Industrial Complex in Santiago, Chile, this building accommodates the administration offices and a showroom for Proingas, an industrial machinery reseller. The technological importance of the company, together with climate conditions of the site, were taken into account to define the design parameters of the project. The building is composed of three parts: a two story L-shape volume that contains the offices and storage spaces completing the north and west sides of the building, a large double-height showroom space, and an exterior permeable skin that provides solar control to the north and west facades. The offices are organized in the second level along a hallway that looks down to the showroom. The layout of the offices is separated in two parts, one being a flexible open space and the other, a series of administration offices. The showroom is a large storage and exhibition space for the machinery, that is visually connected to the offices in terms of a gallery, that when the client pass through, sees all the products in sale. Stretch Metal Skin Given the site's dry climate and its exposure to major solar radiation from the north and the west, solar control was extremely important for this project. Therefore, a stretched metal skin with 20mm spacing was designed to provide shade and allow the proper ventilation of the office volume. This skin is supported by a painted steel tube structure that gives shape to the faceted façade and provide de distance from the office volume to the skin. The building design was bioclimatically though to maximize the functionality on the interior. Therefore the expenses on the daily uses is lower than any of the buiolding across the street., in this matter, we can call this project a Lower Energy Building beeing friendly with the enviorment and economizing resorces. The difficulties in the contruction of this project were the installation of the metal skin that covers almost the entire building. Fixing it by arming a thin estructure for the soport of the skin, make it invisible from the outside and visible only in his interior face. This was intentionally; because the purpose of the interior view is showing the truth of the building, letting all of the workers and visitors inside see the estructure, the networks, and everything that is usually hide from the eye. The materials contains in this project are basically steel and concrete usual materials in the Chilean industrial construction. The outstanding and at the same time principal characteristic of this project is his double skin, that it brings to light the greater benefit in his inner use. It is generated a corporative image of the building company, creating through her a recognizable brand, reachable to everyone who sees it.