New Head Building for the National Archive - Jorge Cheng, Lorena Franco de Souza Ferreyra - United Kingdom 

In 2013, Cheng Franco Arquitectos won the national open competition for the New Head Building for the National Archive – Archivo General de la Nación, AGN. Due to the poor conditions of the current infrastructure and the lack of a main national archive, the government, under the Cultural Ministry, launched an open architectural competition on 2013.

The 5,785m2 site is located in Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru. The proposal looks at generating the most rational and simple internal layout taking into consideration local constraints and technologies. It consists on a regular shaped volume, mostly closed, with large archive areas on one side and the administrative and service areas on the other. The orthogonal square plan responds to an 8.10m x 8.10m structural grid driven by the two levels of underground car park.

The NEW HEAD BUILDING FOR THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE will keep, protect and restore national current and past documentation with much relevance to the history of the country. Different to a museum, where the exhibition areas are the main public destination and hold varied forms of exhibitions; the archives are to be protected, have restricted access and require highly specific space and ambient conditions.

The proposal focuses on the operational side of the archive areas and looks at accommodating the rest of the program as simple and close as possible to the archive areas to ease operations and circulation flows. The organizational configuration is clearly reflected on the form of the building and the balance of mass and transparency on the elevations reinforces the building’s main accommodation which is the National Archive.

Project Status: Detail design.