Office building Bip

This office building was constructed between two houses built in the 1930s which are unprotected by heritage laws and have been subdivided. The design respected 80% of the preexisting structures and 44% of the total constructed area (1,200 m²), in a zone that allows a maximum height of twelve storeys. The high cost of real estate in the zone favors building upwards.

In order to prevent the sale of the lot and the consequent demolition of the houses, a new building of only three storeys was conceived. The design, based on a laminated wood structure, allows the building to be dismounted and reassembled elsewhere. Materials can also be recycled, in a sort of architectural "transitivity."

The choice of a single 9-×-34-cm beam section for the entire project allowed for great efficiency in the cutting of the tree. The wood used is an incentive to reforestation, belonging as it does to a kind of renewable forest with very low carbon emissions.

Albert Mozó (New York, 1963), graduated as an architect from the Universidad Católica, has lived in Santiago de Chile since 1970. In 1991 he founded Alberto Mozó Studio.