Acrobatic Arts Center / DX Arquitectos

Architects: DX Arquitectos
Location: La Reina, Santiago, Chile
Design Team: Juan Luzoro, Roberto Mercado, Diego Pitters, Federico Novoa, Sergio Hidalgo, Claudio Aguila
Area: 700 sqm
Year: 2011
Photography: Pablo Blanco Barros, Courtesy of DX Arquitectos

Collaborators: Justyna Skrobanska, Sergio Villalobos
Constructor: Bio Bio
Calculist: Aquiles Revello
Specialist: Osvaldo Sotomayor
Plot: 1,639.30 sqm

The first mission of the Acrobatic Arts Center building was placed in the city as a container of culture, in which the citizen form an essential part of it. it is in this relation where the building is completed.

The proposal is based on the communion of two architectural elements which support activities to develop and allow the solution to problems and intentions raised: A first element is the platform that seeks to tie the city, outside, with the existing topography. This platform allows citizens to conect with the building inside.

Then, on the generated support settles the container of the specific programme. The container responds to the need for sheltering the scenic space next to the spaces destined for services. Volumetric expression is due to the gesture of pendular swing of a suspended body. This virtual circumference of 9 meter radio is the initial requirement of the artist to produces the show.

The skins of that container receives special care, these are modulated in density and materiality, seeking to be faithful reflection of the activities that shelter and the orientation towards which are arranged. Generate facades ventilated with insulation suitable to the West, seek the light and ventilation from the North and South, are recognitions of the common sense of an architecture that is located within the parameters of energy efficiency.

Towards the east the container desmaterialized and it generates his more striking operation, where the ‘absence’ takes protagonism to give content to the maximum expression of the building: the air square.