Nothing lasts forever, but we usually expect buildings to stick around long enough to become familiar parts of a neighborhood or district. When Alberto Mozó designed a new retail and office building for BIP Computers in Santiago, Chile, however, he knew it might not remain for long. The modest-size, three-story structure sits on a site zoned for a 12-story building, so the economic pressure to erect something bigger began as soon as it opened in 2007. But instead of being discouraged, Mozó took the notion of uncertainty and made it an essential element in his design.
First, he inserted the 17,225-square-foot building between a pair of existing houses on the site, creating the sense that the new structure had merely been slid into place and could just as easily be removed. He retained 80 percent of the two houses, then renovated them for use as computer-assembly space, storage, and customer service. “We wanted to rescue the existing structures as much as possible,” says Nicolás Moens, the owner of BIP Computers, “because they were seen by the community as old country houses in the middle of the city.” While the houses date from 1939 and have tile roofs, Mozó used a very different design vocabulary for his BIP Building to set it apart in terms of time and materiality. Rather than firmly rooting the new building in its context, the architect set it on a concrete podium that separates it from the land and gives it the sense of floating 11⁄2 feet above grade.
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