Espacio Colaborativo Nalca is a clothes store, creative lab and exhibition gallery located in Santiago, Chile that hopes to stimulate creative interaction within the local fashion sector. By encouraging investment in local producers and designers, the initiative aims to alleviate the dominance of the international fashion industry in regional markets. The space was conceived by designer Pedro Silva through his collaboration with Chilean Brand Nalca Shoes. Based on three axes of interdependent action, Espacio Colaborativo Nalca offers guidelines of production suggested by the space’s three architectural programs.

These programs include a commercial platform, creative lab and exhibition gallery. As a commercial platform, the space plays host to five brands that, with innovative and individual proposals, are aligned under the concept of conscious fashion through local manufacturing. Alongside the store, the creative lab offers a space to accommodate the exchange of ideas and resources through dedicated collaborative facilities. Incorporating transparency into its materialization, the lab is flexible in its dimensions; its scale is modifiable based on the requirements of the artist or designer.

Finally, the exhibition space has been developed as a place to celebrate not just the product but the process of co-creation, creating a forum around production methods and exhibiting the studios various outputs. The result is a clean, aerated space that supports transparency and collaboration. A minimal, industrial aesthetic is present throughout, with chipped white paint and visible plaster providing a rough and ready frame for the refined interior. The pale palette lends itself to constant reinterpretation, and provides the gallery-like setting the initiative hopes to create.

White and wood dominate the studio, with products placed unpretentiously on benches, tables or hung simple from the wall. Offices and meeting rooms are sectioned off using transparent metal scrim, creating a sense of unity between the three programs and dispelling any sense of exclusion about the process of creation. Thanks to its alliance of creatives the espacio colaborativo nalca offers a proposal that constantly renews itself with the work of its members and guests, opening a sustainable channel for local development.

Design: Pedro Silva
Photography: Andrea Bravo

http://www.designboom.com/design/nalca-collaborative-space-pedro-silva-santiago-12-11-2016/