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ESO Hotel by Auer + WeberThe ESO Hotel seems to be an inexplicable project.
If you were to look at photographs of it without knowing the project's motivations, your surprise would be considerable.
A landscape that can scarcely be imagined as earthly, a site that appears only because of the movements of the land, the earth covered by gravel and stone slivers an iron red color like you would expect to find only on Mars.
A place where you can't see the boundaries and where there is a perfectly clear sky that forms a backdrop to the whole scene.
The building that stands in the desert of Atacama, on the Cerro Paranal in Chile, is not a tourism hotel.
The ESO (European Association for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere) needed a center to accommodate researchers and specialists working on the Very Large Telescope, because of the extreme climatic conditions.
The problems brought by the hostile environment provide the explanation of the design choices; the lack of water and vegetation, extreme sun radiation, strong, uncontrollable winds, considerable nocturnal drops in temperature, extremely low relative humidity and the chance of earthquakes.
Every aspect of this hostile place suggested both functional and formal solutions to Auer and Weber.
Protection and contemplation support the entire project.
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29/11/2005 | Viewed 15,961 time(s)
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