Castillo Forestal

33°26’6.58″S / 70°38’33.60″O
MATHIAS KLOTZ / LILLIAN ALLEN

Hector Hormazabal

Santiago, Chile
2013

The so called “Forest Castle” is in reality nothing more than a modest lodging built in the Parque Forestal on the occasion of Chile’s 1910 Centenary celebrations, to house the park’s gardener.

The park, which dates from the Centenary, was inaugurated at the same time as the Fine Arts Museum on the other side of the street. Over time the house lost its original function; it was extended and occupied on a temporary basis, and gradually deteriorated until it was abandoned altogether a number of years ago. For this reason Santiago city council tendered a 30-year concession to restore the structure and find a new use for the building.

Our proposal was to demolish the successive extensions and replace them with a single-story volume housing an intermediate space between inside and outside.

The two rooms of the original structure were restored, removing the stucco and leaving the brickwork visible, with the exception of the cornices. These were painted the same dark gray as the steel structure of the new volume, in order to link the two structures together and emphasize the original building. 

The new uses it has acquired are a bookstore, restaurant, ice-cream store and

exhibition space.