EN
One of the main attributes of Club Hípico de Santiago, which differentiates it from most racetracks in Latin America – in addition to its remarkable architectural heritage, inherited from the architect Josué Smith Solar – is its magnificent 1,200 meter long grass track. A team of 30 gardeners work there daily, completely exposed to the sun throughout the day, stopping their work at noon to have lunch and rest under a shade.
In midst of 2021, Club Hípico commissioned us to design a lunchroom for these track maintenance workers. In a complex economic context, due to the pandemic, the assignment had to respond both to strong budget limitations and high expectations from users, who were finally hoping to have a comfortable place to rest and have lunch.
In the past, the track maintenance workers rested under a vine that gave this place its name, of which today only the memory remains and an old dying vine that barely supports itself on its ancient trunk. The idea of the vine understood as a foliage shade, cool and soft, that filters direct sunlight, allowing the passage of natural light between the leaves of the vines, served us as a starting point for the project.
We thought of brick as a cheap material that can be manufactured in Chile, thus eliminating huge import costs, at a time when shipments from abroad have quintupled their value. It’s well-known construction technique, it ́s resistance to the passage of time and it ́s low maintenance cost, are attributes that seemed ideal to us for building this cool resting shade. Finally, the brick gave us the versatility of use that we were looking for to achieve a "monolithic" construction, thus solving, with a single main material, the entire built volume, eliminating items that require specialize high-cost labor.
The project seeks to build a cool shade, which, like a vine, allows the passage of filtered natural light, controlling the direct rays of the sun. We envisioned a volume with a rectangular floor plan, parallel to the track, with a very simple construction order: a small plinth with two concrete benches that flank the inside, on which this small brick pavilion is built. The major facades – east and west – are made up of two lattice brick walls that face each other, while at both ends – north and south – the volume is completely closed with two opaque walls. The volume is completed with a brick pavement – the same size as the modules that make up the walls – and upper wooden beams that supports the roof. Two 1.5 m wide pivoting doors open to the center of the pavilion, defining an access with 3 openings: a larger central one and two smaller lateral ones.
The natural light that enters through the lattice walls during the different hours of the day, is undoubtedly the most important material of the project. We could say the same about any architectural project, but in this case, in which there were no resources to build this space, the void of the lattice bricks literally allowed the construction of these walls of light that gives life to the new “arbor” of the gardeners of Club Hipico.
