-By Celia Ying, Photography by Cristobal Palma

Today, almost every developed city is ambitious to construct a landmark building in the name of immortality—in terms of height, like the Burj Dubai and the Freedom Tower, or form, like Calatrava's Chicago Spire, Beijing's CCTV Headquarters, or Zaha Hadid's Dancing Tower. The acute competition begins to challenge the origin of architecture, which ironically, makes our cities increasingly more detached.

Unlike the typical 21st-century skyscrapers that are competing for the title of world's tallest building or bragging of the most state-of-the-art construction materials, the BIP Computers Building by the Chilean architect Alberto Mozó, on the contrary, is an intimate three-story structure made of laminated timber. To many people's surprise, it is built in such a way that it can be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere.

Located in Santiago, Chile, the BIP Computers office building rises between two old houses built in 1936, as part of a development occupying a site that allows construction up to 12 stories high. This municipal regulation determines a high value for the land yet depreciates the value of any construction that does not meet this limit.

In planning for the event that the building may not last long, the architect made use of standard-sized, laminated, timber beams that can be dismounted and reconstructed entirely at another location, thus avoiding a potentially contrary demolition. "I was introduced to the client as a 'rehabilitator' architect. Even though the client wanted a 'high-tech' design, he asked me if I could do something with the old houses, because they didn't look like BIP's style," recalls Mozó. "My answer was that the landscape of the city is a mix between styles so this was an opportunity to reuse these structures as a complement of the company."

With a sense of giving the maximum economic value to a new building of just three floors, Mozó built an innovative laminated wooden structure, which can be dismounted in case of a future real estate sale. In fact, this is the first continuous wood pillar building in Chile—a "transitivity" idea, as described by Mozó, which tries to put value on sustainable architecture and town planning. In fact, the design of this building also allows the beams to be transformed into other uses, such as doors and tables, extending the life cycle of the laminated wood.

Other advantages incorporated into the design of this building include the use of the 9 cm. by 34.2 cm. standard-sized timber beams harvested responsibly from renewable forests, which permitted fast lamination of the wood. This specific dimension considers efficiency in the cut of the tree, and the uniformity also makes for easy reconstruction, as there's no need to label the timber beams to make sure they are placed in exactly the same location and order.

Inside the building, the combination of a white interior with the timber roof looks incredibly controlled and comfortable. With full height glass windows installed behind the external timber beam structure, the building draws in ample natural light and provides plenty of useful space. An impressive element inside is a spiral staircase constructed of the same laminated timber. Like the rest of the building, the staircase is also made from sustainably harvested timber with pieces fabricated to be identical and interchangeable, so that it can be taken apart and reassembled elsewhere should it become necessary.

Today we are all living in a world full of changes—our cities, land uses, climates change, even our way of living change rapidly. Sometimes when interventions are unavoidable, the challenge, says Mozó, is the exact measurement: "For those cases where there's an intervention and conservation of existing structures, I apply an equation that determines what I should keep off (demolish), what I should put in (build), and finally what's going to be kept (rehabilitation)."

While it becomes "mainstream" to run after something people see as groundbreaking and unprecedented, perhaps it's time for us, the lucky minority who are enjoying the most of the resources on earth, to think again about the life cycle of our buildings, our cities and our planet. Mozó's BIP Computers Building leads us to embark on a rediscovery journey on the beauty of simplicity. More importantly, it embraces a wish to leave our world better than we found it for our future generations.