The recent spate of awesome concrete buildings continues apace with the completion of Diego Portales University's new business and economics campus, which a team of Chilean architects designed as a pair of concrete boxes run through by wood-paneled terraces and covered in blocky balconies. Looking to create an addition to the school "with weight that speaks of permanence and stability," Santiago-based practice Duque Motta & AA worked with architects Rafael Hevia and Gabriela Manzi to plan the buildings as the first phase in the construction of the Chilean university's new campus, at a site just north of Santiago.
The architects described the structures' aesthetic as a reaction to nearby developments, made up of "buildings that are mostly for office rental, glass boxes lacking a clear identity and designed with a short term logic." Connected by a basement level that houses a cafeteria, a library, and the university's main auditorium, the narrow undergraduate building and the raised, roof-garden-topped graduate building were designed to focus on the "density of the volumes, the concrete that lasts and ages, walls to be covered with vines showing the passing of the seasons," and "a park that matures in years and stone courtyards."
Dezeen has the full story. Head this way for a similarly stoic, concrete-heavy Chilean aesthetic put to residential use.
· Duque Motta & AA designs punctured concrete volumes for Chilean university faculty [Dezeen]
· 65 Shots of Concrete Houses Not at All Like Parking Garages [Curbed National]
· Two Minimalist Tower Homes Duke it Out in the Death Cage [Curbed National]
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