Recently awarded “Design of the Year” by London’s Design Museum, ELEMENTAL’s UC Innovation Center is a striking sculptural triumph in Santiago, Chile. Santiago’s climate requires a change to the conventional approach to architectural design. The city has been populated with glass towers to meet the contemporary look desired by clients, but the hot desert climate has caused serious greenhouse effect in the interiors of these buildings. While still needing to meet the contemporary design expectation of the client, ELEMENTAL found ways to avoid this climatic issue. The architects substituted the contemporary typical glass skin, for a thermal mass on the perimeter that avoids undesired heat gains.

Aravena, the founder of ELEMENTAL and lead architect, instead created the building from concrete and carved site-specific openings to help prevent overheating, reduce energy consumption, and avoid the greenhouse effect common to all-glass buildings. Another challenge of innovative space design is creating a building that can stand the test of time. In an effort to fight obsolescence the building was designed as if it was an infrastructure more than architecture to allow for continuous change and renewal. From a stylistic point of view, the design used strict geometry and strong monolithic materiality replacing trendiness by timelessness.