I waterscapes
City Waterscapes Wetlands for an office building in Santiago de Chile By: Jimena Martignoni This office building was the first attaining LEED Gold certification in Chile and is part of a large 30-hectare Masterplan which will include additional office spaces, housing and commercial spaces. Located in Vitacura Municipality, one of the most prosperous boroughs in northeastern Santiago, the site enjoys west-facing views of the iconic Manquehue mountains and seamlessly blends with the local landscape. The overall architectural project incorporated energy efficiency systems for climate conditioning based on geothermal energy, collected from a well which goes 75 meters into the earth, and also by the passive evaporation of water into the air. When landscape architect Juan Grimm started to work on the project, the architectural plans showed some undefined water surfaces around the building. Instead, he recommended the creation of wetlands that would not only serve for the project’s original purposes but also would create connections with the living environment, embracing the character of the region and attracting local wildlife.
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Now, with these newly created wetlands, Grimm is working on the next phase of the masterplan, together with the architects, and suggesting taking things a step further in this same direction. “This is the first cell of a much larger system” —says Juan Grimm— “I want the site to offer a natural structure made of interconnected wetlands which over time will become a biological corridor connected to Cerro Manquehue”. The initial reference image he used to design the first two wetlands, located at opposite sides of the building, was that of Lake Caburga in southern Chile. “I found visually interesting how natural slopes, creeks and water bodies form a system and I wanted to recreate that image within the site”, explains Grimm. With this in mind, he modeled two irregular areas at both sides of the building that would make up two different wetlands. One of them is somehow private and only possible to appreciate by people working in the building; the largest, on the other hand, is located adjacent to the sidewalk and can be easily appreciated by anyone passing by. In this manner
