Santiago, Chile
The Matta Sur Complex by Luis Vidal + Architects and commissioned by Ilustre Municipalidad de Santiago is made up of a refurbishment of a historic building that houses a range of social services and a new construction that houses a public healthcare center.
The Matta Sur Complex has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The city that takes good care of its cultural heritage is the city that listens to its past without neglecting its future.
This delicate balance between memory and contemporaneity is what a perdurable architecture, committed to contributing to the society, provides.
These are also the cornerstones for the Matta Sur Complex, and Luis Vidal + architects’ approach to what responsible design means: contribution to the social dialogue with an environmental commitment.
The result is an unprecedented building refurbishment that gives back to the city of Santiago de Chile one of its most iconic constructions.
Past, present, and future merge in a building that combines modernity with tradition, technology with sustainability, and innovation with respect for the city’s heritage.
The Matta Sur Complex consists of two buildings located within the same plot: the former Metropolitan Lyceum of Santiago, built in 1891, and restored to host social uses such as a nursery school, a gym, or an auditorium.
Additionally, a new-build construction will accommodate a CESFAM (a Public Primary Healthcare Center).
Both buildings have a total built area of 5,500 m2 that will give support to a community of more than 30,000 users.
Along with these buildings and articulating them, there is the public plaza, located in the center of the plot, which provides the community with an open space to promote social encounters.
This public plaza became the heart of the project.
Luis Vidal + architects accepted the challenge of, on the one hand, restoring this historic building, and on the other, designing a new-build construction that integrates harmoniously into the whole.
Therefore, the new interventions aim to translate the most singular elements of the preexisting building but using a contemporary, austere language that does not compete with the historic building style but enhances it.
A careful analysis of the preexisting building, combined with a delicate and conscious design that involves materiality, spatiality, functionality, rhythm, sustainability, façade studies, and light are the key aspects of the proposal.
As a result, Luis Vidal + architects achieve its goal: to retrieve and reveal the building’s original architectural and aesthetic value, while establishing a dialogue between the historic building and the new.
Project: Matta Sur Complex
Architects: Luis Vidal + Architects
Design Team: David Ávila, Bernat Burguera, Valentina Chisci, José Ignacio Comparini, Sebastián Cruz, Marta Cumellas, Juan Francisco Letelier, Arturo López-Bachiller, Carlos Maldonado, Concha Millán, Enrique Pérez, Patricia Plath, Raúl Rosado, Santiago Sánchez, Paola Seguel, Encarnación Serna, Cecilia Rodríguez, Patricio Fuentealba, Óscar Torrejón, Italo Veas, and Luis Vidal
General Contractor: Boetchs S.A.
Client: Ilustre Municipalidad de Santiago
Photographers: Aryeh Kornfeld
