Baptized as INES, the new innovation center of the University of Bío-Bío, is implanted in the city of Concepción, Chile, and was projected by the local studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen.

The project, directed by the two founders of the studio, Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, is composed as a simple and regular volume, implanted on the surroundings of the Collao Campus, belonging to the University.
The building built in concrete with crimson tint, by Pezo von Ellrichshausen, was designed by a set of superimposed parallel planes that form a cubic volume, virtually crossed by a truncated cone in its center, thus leaving a core of multiple heights that links all levels of the building.

On the outside, the slabs that fly over its four façades also simulate being traversed by leaned cylinders that lighten the structure of the building.

The very irregular distribution of full and empty on the different levels, gives rise to a fluid dialogue between the different spaces of the center, without hierarchies, and with a degree of indeterminacy that allows a great diversity of uses.
 

Description of project by Pezo von Ellrichshausen

We were told that when resources are scarce, intensity compensates for high performance (because there seems to be a deep gap between ingeniousness and intelligence). Of course, we knew that any project is a reaction to its circumstances.

This is an apparently simple, stable, and regular building that contains an unexpected and exaggerated interior. This is the world of innovation; a continuous, fluid, and open space that conceptual and physically translates the creative processes of academic practice, that sequential development of formal research or the reversible and multiple dimension associated with informal knowledge.

The building acknowledges the need for polarizing the innovation time in at least two moments: in a creative experience based on a social, collective and integrated realm, and another rather individual, intimate and solitary experience. The spatial structure of the building is based in these two clearly differentiated conditions. On the one hand side there is an open core that establishes a series of vertically interconnected halls, with a circular void that reduces its size upon ascension.

On the other hand, private working spaces occupy the corners of every floor plan, in a quarter of a circle figure which center pivots around every edge, growing inversely proportional to the central voids. Instead of the traditional system of pillars within a nondifferentiated and nonhierarchical grid, this office plan also provides specific rooms for exhibitions, workshops, and meetings, visual and acoustically controlled by the curved walls that work like opaque screens. The character and diversity of the resulting space somehow promotes the dynamics of a non-categorized work (or with ever-changing positions) between professors, students, researchers, entrepreneurs and the local communities.

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Architects
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Project team
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Lead architects.- Mauricio Pezo, Sofía von Ellrichshausen.
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Collaborators
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Aleksi Vicic, Eva de Hovre, Diego Pérez, Sofie Taveirne, Victoria Bodevin, Caitlyn Flowers. Structure.- Luis Mendieta. Facilities.- CITEC, Ariel Bobadilla, Cristian Muñoz, Sandra Gomez, Isidora Gouet.
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Client
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Area
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2000 sqm.
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Dates
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2021.
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Location
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Collao Campus, University of Bío-Bío, Concepción, Chile.
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Photography
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Pezo von Ellrichshausen is an art and architecture studio founded in 2002 by Mauricio Pezo (b. Renaico, Chile, 1973) ) and Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. Bariloche, Argentina, 1976). They live and work in southern Chile, on a farm at the foot of the Andes Mountains.

They are Professor of the Practice at AAP Cornell University in New York and have been Visiting Professors at the GSD Harvard University, the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the University of Texas in Austin, the Porto Academy and the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Their work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the MAXXI in Rome and as part of the Permanent Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  They have been invited to the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2010, 2016), where they also were the curators for the Chilean Pavilion in 2008.

Among other venues, they have lectured at MIT, Princeton University, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Architecture League of New York, the Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Alvar Aalto Symposium and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Their work has been distinguished with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Emerge Prize by the IIT, the Rice Design Alliance Prize, the Iberoamerican Architecture Biennial Award and the Chilean Architecture Biennial Award.

The work of the studio has been widely published and edited in monographic issues of El Croquis, AV in Madrid, A+U in Tokyo, 2G in Barcelona and in the essay books Spatial Structure (B Architecture publisher) and Naïve Intention (Actar).

Mauricio Pezo (b. 1973) completed a Master in Architecture at the Universidad Catolica and a degree in Architecture at the Universidad del Bio-Bio. He has been awarded the Young Architect Prize by the Chilean Architects Association and the Municipal Art Prize by the Concepcion City Hall.

Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. 1976) holds a degree in Architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires where she was distinguished with the FADU- UBA Honours Diploma. She was the president of the jury at the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2018).
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Published on: March 18, 2021
Cite: "Unexpected and intense. INES Innovation Center by Pezo von Ellrichshausen " METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/unexpected-and-intense-ines-innovation-center-pezo-von-ellrichshausen> ISSN 1139-6415
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