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Hotel in Tierra del Fuego

Part 2 Project 2008
Isidora Irarrazaval Oehninger
 Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Santiago | Chile
The PROJECT is a challenge that seeks to innovate in forms that responds to different climate phenomena in an extreme part of the world, extreme meaning an extreme place and also an extreme climate.

The LOCATION is the austral part of our territory, the southern cone tip of America: “Patagonia” or “the end of the world”, where the vastness and immensity of the “pampa”, coupled with strong winds and low temperatures, result in the cold desert, a place where survival is the way of life.

The CHALLENGE is not only to allow man to inhabit by means of climate control but also one that will orient him and establish a measure that allows him to take ownership of the territory. Following the strategy of the first inhabitants.

The EXCUSE is a hotel in the surroundings of “Porvenir”, the port of entry to the island “Tierra del Fuego”, a program that seeks to empower tourism development.

The HYPOTHESIS comes from the dilemma: How to protect oneself from the wind and face the landscape?
To protect oneself from the wind, one hides, but when one hides one cannot face the landscape. So how do we protect from the wind and face the landscape?

Protection is attained through the windbreak condition offered by a wall that creates two areas: wind area (uninhabited) and wind shadow area (inhabited).
The wall also faces the landscape with an outstanding interruption due to its position and its form, illustrating the wind and by its size, scaling the territory.

The OBJECTIVE is to create through design of a wall a sustainable project that results in maximum comfort. To propose a form of building for the “pampa”, where the landscape, climate and materials are the foundations for sustaining survival. A building from the place, for the place.



The research project deals with the search of an answer on how to settle on a landscape with difficult environmental factors which is isolated from any other settlement.
This weak scenario is at the same time very attractive to people coming from abroad nowadays. The project takes this into consideration when proposing a medium size hotel for “Adventure Tourism”.
In what concerns the weather, very strong winds (up to 100km/hr), intense cold and scarce solar radiation are significant and remarkable. All of these generate as result a weather refuge, that with its design made out of wood (available nearby) generates an interior and exterior area of wind protection.

2008
The “pampa”, a vast landscape with out boundaries, a place where man looses dimension and gets disoriented.
First Approach to the wind, home made wind experiments to understand this climate phenomenon. This pictures show the behavior of the wind when it crushes into different elements.
Strategy: To hide from the wind or to face it. If we hide we do not appear, but if we face it, we interrupt the territory and create a landscape with a scale and orientation.
A wall is the element that will appear in the territory dividing it into two areas: the unprotected area and the protected area that can be habited by anyone.
“Tierra del Fuego” is an island in Patagonia, the southern most tip of America, a potential tourist place that has not been developed.
Site plan showing wind direction and how the hotel confronts perpendicular the wind coming from the west.
Plans showing program, exteriors and renders of the hotel. From left to right: reception, hall, living room, corridor, room corridor and patio.
Seccions, from top to bottom, room section, bar section and restaurant section.
The Entrance: section and view. The inclination of the wall is designed to make the wind go through it wit the less turbulence possible and also reminding us the strength and direction of the wind.
Models showing how the hotel emerges from the pampa creating a landscape.
Two sides of the project. On the top the strong concrete wall that protects from the wind and divides the territory in two. On the bottom the protected side where glass windows make the interior be continued to the exterior.
View to rooms and terraces on the wind protected side.
The Hotel emerging from the pampa as a big wall that scales and orientates in the vast and infinite territory.
Night view shows how the hotel is a landmark in the territory being a reference, just like a light house in the middle of the ocean.
The experience of Patagonia in the hotel, the fire just like the Onas did, in the exterior living the pampa thanks to the protection from the wind.
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