The inter-workshop competition project "Sede Social Conchalí" is a pedagogical methodology of academic-social connection proposed by RADAR, the Municipality of Conchalí and the Faculty of Architecture and Art of the Universidad del Desarrollo.

Year 2012; RARAR was born as an architecture laboratory in the development of this first Project, for the design of the Social Headquarters - Neighborhood Unit nº25 in Conchalí, through a participatory and pedagogical system. In this instance, we worked with the 3rd year Workshop of the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad del Desarrollo (Díaz-Yazigi-Prado), linking them with the Planning Secretariat of Conchalí, and the community (Neighborhood Board) that used the future project. The competition sought to design together with the community a 300 m2 building, on a 700 m2 plot.

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During the competition process, various days of interaction between the community and the students were organized, where the needs, characteristics, venues and spaces that the future project should host were discussed. After this, the process continued in the classrooms, where RADAR supported the teaching team in weekly corrections, data and information delivery, technical advice and in coordinating the final delivery. This delivery took place in the field, where twenty-five Social Headquarters projects were presented, and in which a jury made up of the community, the architects of the Secpla, the teaching team and RADAR, chose the winning project (project by the student Francisca San Martín ).

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After this academic stage, the student entered the RADAR office to carry out her professional practice, an instance in which she developed and professionalized her project together with the RADAR architects, for the subsequent delivery of the project to the Municipality, who would manage its execution to through state funds (National Regional Development Fund), its construction is projected for the year 2014 - 2015.

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This project, in architectural terms, seeks to turn the conventional structure of Social Headquarters, based on the RADAR Architecture principles (participatory design, coherence between form and foundation, relationship with the environment, energy efficiency, and social sustainability), focusing also on three specific aspects: functionality, security, and neighborhood image:

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Regarding Functionality, the spaces were designed to house the specific venues requested by the community (meeting rooms (2), events room, administration office, media library, terrace / orchard, dressing rooms, interior and exterior cellars, kitchen, and services), seeking to grant freedoms and flexibility to these (mergeable spaces, differentiated accesses to enclosures and outdoor areas, proposal for future extensions, etc.), in order to promote the different uses and empowerment of occupation of the work.

 

In terms of Security, a passive protection strategy was developed through a comprehensive design. This is evident in the treatment of its exteriors (perimeter grid design), facades (type of windows and dimension of fenestrations in walls to incorporate external lighting), and the organization of enclosures (location according to the vulnerability of the spaces).

 

Finally, in relation to the Neighborhood Image, the aim was to generate a recognizable landmark from this project, with its own identity, drawn from the citizen consultation and from what the project would seek to be in the future. In this way, positively impacting the environment, positioning itself as a visual pole of neighborhood regeneration, through a simple, coherent image (uses and materiality), and representative (citizen) image.