AMBASSADOR BUSINESS CENTER
The tectonic character of the Ambassador Business Center contrasts with the generic appearance of a glass office tower. In the project we have sought to adapt the formal principles of modern architecture to the climatic and productive conditions of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Instead of thinking of the facade of the building as a continuous surface, the envelope is designed as a space, in itself, capable of mediating between the climatic conditions of the environment and the interior space.
The Ambassador Business Center have it´s main facade open to San Martín Avenue, a bustling boulevard full of activity and urban life, and it´s rear facade facing a neighborhood passage that gives access to a series of houses and ends at the entrance of a nursery school.
In front of the Avenue is projected an open space that articulates the height of the tower with the horizontality of the surroundings. This continuous void is conceived as a pedestrian walkway, releasing all the outdoor space available for public use. Like a podium, this square accurately draws the boundaries of the site, giving a particular sense of scale and grace to the project and its context.
On the rear facade, towards passage 1 of Hugo Wast Street, a horizontal building that takes the height of the immediate neighbors is proposed, visually reducing the apparent magnitude of the project in a domestic environment. A pedestrian passageway has been designed that connects both fronts facilitating the transit of children and adults. In order to liberate the ground floor for public and commercial use, 3 underground levels of parking have been built.
The architectural challenge was to develop the potential conditions of the site about the city; integrate the autonomous form of an office building, with the particular characteristics of the site and the climatic conditions of the tropical savannah.
The tectonic character of the Ambassador Business Center contrasts with the generic appearance of a glass office tower. In the project we have sought to adapt the formal principles of modern architecture to the climatic and productive conditions of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
Instead of thinking of the facade of the building as a continuous surface, the envelope is designed as a space, in itself, capable of mediating between the climatic conditions of the environment and the interior space.
The concrete structure and the glass skin are wrapped with a linear system of balconies that project in cantilever to the outside of the structure, that together with a reticular lattice of aluminum provide protection against the sun and rain, and at the same time which ensure easy maintenance of glazed surfaces. Individual units of air conditioning per floor have been arranged which are accessed from the side balconies.
The multi-laminar, grooved and deep envelope provides the tower with an environmental control system that ensures a high level of interaction between workspace, city and landscape.
The building is formalized from the clash between an idea of archetypal simplicity; the tower conceived as a succession of cantilevered horizontal trays and a specific field of material conditions.
The technique is the medium between a conceptual force and a natural force, and it´s giving back to us a new hybrid entity that we perceive as form; either as a representation of the construction or as a dynamic presentation of the radical conflict between the support and the load.
