By Karen Valenzuela

• Architects: Prado Arquitectos
• Location: Arturo Merino Benítez, Santiago, Pudahuel, Región Metropolitana, Chile
• Architects In Charge: Cristián Prado, Tomás Prado, Raúl Espinoza
• Area: 4335.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Daniel Pinilla

• Collaborators: Daniel Pinilla, Daniel Seguel, M.Angélica Díaz, Fabián Riffo
• Calculation: Andrés Canepa Blumenberg
• Lighting: Oriana Ponzini
• Landscaping: Vivian Castro

From the architect. The work is the replacement of the Institutional Building of the “Dirección Regional de Aduana Metropolitana (DRAM)”. The building is located near the international Airport of Arturo Merino Benitez, at the Pudahuel District, in Santiago de Chile.

It’s 3 floored and incorporates an underground level. The program mainly is Offices, Open Work Spaces, Archives, an Auditorium, a self-sevice food court and terraces.

The main concept appears from de abstraction of the meaning of Customs. This institution is the one that welcome, receive, hold and accept the entry of everything in the country so it’s a filter to enter and exit anything or anyone.

The piece it’s a pure lined volume that is contained between his Concrete North and South Facades. This heavy and hard walls delimit the volume that it’s emptied by subtraction. This openings create light courts, gardens and terraces and there is where it appears the real protagonist, the tree that act the part of the filter.

The transparency of the building in addition of trees generates the lived filter that humanize the interior work space being the manifest of the passing of time and seasons along the year.

Source:: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ArchDaily/~3/BNuGKjfB8t0/building-dram-prado-arquitectos