The Riesco Leguía building is a real estate project that is located on the corner between Presidente Riesco street and Augusto Leguía Norte street in an area of Santiago with renovated offices and residential buildings. There are 36 apartment units of 75, 110, and 115m2 spread over 12 floors. In addition, an access floor, the top floor, common with a pool and barbecue area, and three basements.
The decisions we make for the project are divided into two opposite exercises, one centripetal and the other centrifugal. The centripetal allows us to understand those elements of the neighborhood and environment that intervene in the definitions of the project and the centrifugal, which are the experiences of the user through the project.
The project frees the first floor for all common use, except the reception, transparent and spacious, surrounded by a garden with sculptures as a pause in the transition from the street to the building. There is no visitor parking, or security gates, but an open green area that gives a different width to the immediate public space. Then a drop-off type car crossing is incorporated as a maneuvering area that complements the access and egress of cars to the building without depending on public roads.
The building is developed in an equivalent way towards its four orientations, in order to avoid the scheme of a “front and a back”, allowing to incorporate other views to the units. The structural scheme consists of a system of perimeter columns and a central core. These 144cm x 30cm exposed concrete columns move 72cm along the edge of the slabs in opposing directions. This breaks the vertical serialization of the house in height, with the purpose of increasing the views on the upper floors.
Then, the floors are inverted floor by the middle, seeking to capture as much as possible the metropolitan environment of the neighborhood, through 3 types of apartments in 4 orientations and 12 different heights, which opens up the possibilities of responding better to the user.
The 1 and 2-bedroom apartments are 270cm high, with floor-to-ceiling windows with high thermal performance. Each unit with a balcony that projects 2.5m. The composite climate system based on heat pumps that feed a cold/hot radiative floor, plus a continuous ventilation system, complement the proposal in thermal comfort and low operational cost.
