EFE – Adaptive Reuse Competition

The joint venture of architects PRODUCTORA and UMWELT, together with landscape architect LANDMRX are selected as the winning team in an anonymous competition to renovate a brutalist landmark into the new headquarters of EFE, the national train company of Chile. The former post sorting facilities, designed in the 1970’s by Chilean architect Boris Guiñeman, will be transformed into a publicly accessible building that includes EFE’s corporate headquarters, commercial spaces, access to urban transport systems, and a publicly accessible roof terrace as part of a larger development of the Estación neighborhood.

The winning proposal integrates the ground floor of the building with a newly created square to provide better access to the adjacent train station and the subway network. The office spaces are organized around new CLT mezzanines and carefully set back behind the structural concrete lattice facades of the existing building, protecting the workspaces from the sun and allowing the activities to spill out onto green terraces. The rooftop of the building is crowned with a new CLT structure, providing shade to a publicly accessible roof garden and creating a large platform for solar energy collection. The proposals has the ambition to remediate the carbon-heavy concrete structure from the 1970s, by as much carbon negative interventions, materials and strategies as possible.