The refurbishment of the Chile headquarters of the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) transforms the project’s strict budgetary constraints into three very distinct spatial conditions:

Thick Screen – A translucent yellow screen is used to turn entrance, reception and patio into a single indoor/outdoor space. The strong hue of the mesh visually unifies the heterogeneous surrounding. Parts of this borderline are programmatically thickened.

Lenticular Space – The new corridor connecting the reception and offices appears to change continually as one moves through it. Fixing the clients’ logo to a lenticular glass facade that runs along the length of the corridor creates an effect that that changes the perfectly recognizable visual identity into an abstract line pattern step by step.

Quadratura – The video conferencing room follows the renaissance principle of merging physical and pictorial space. Instead of the traditional single-perspective ceiling painting, this space is extended through a video conferencing setup: the camera and the projector. The project uses the VC-system’s green-screen technology as a pictorial plane for extending the physical space. This new physical/digital hybrid extends the ubiquitous 600mm grid of the raised technical floor and acoustical ceiling tiles into infinite and abstract perspectival idealized space.

Photographies: Copyrights by FAR frohn&rojas