René Lagos is a structural engineering firm founded in 1977 in Santiago, Chile specializing in designing tall buildings. The firm is led by its founder, René Lagos, who has overseen the design of many high-rise buildings over 200 meters in Chile and other countries. Some of the firm's most notable projects include the 300-meter Gran Torre Santiago, the tallest building in South America, and the 132-meter Telefónica Tower, one of Santiago's first skyscrapers. René Lagos prioritizes innovation through research and development, adopting new technologies like BIM modeling, and exploring sustainable design approaches like structural efficiency. The firm has expanded internationally over decades to countries with active construction markets like
1. René Lagos to stay
Our work is here
www.renelagos.com
2. René Lagos
Our work is
here to stay
René Lagos recognised and respected for its expertise
in realising the aspirations of architects to build tall
in challenging environments
written by: John O’Hanlon
research by: Abi Abagun
3. René Lagos
The Santiago Justice
Center under construction
W
hen René Lagos looks
out from his 25th floor
office in Santiago de
Chile he gets a good
view over the capital
that now has so many high-rise buildings that
part of it is known as Sanhattan. He is looking
out over the history of the firm of structural
engineers he founded in 1977 and it never
fails to excite him. He likes to identify to his
two small grandsons the many buildings in
the panorama that he calls his ‘children’, so
much work was put into their conception.
Santiago has 75 entries on skyscraperpage.
com which is good going for a city with a
downtown population of fewer than 300,000
(though greater Santiago is home to 6.5
million). More to the point Chile lies along
the destructive plate boundary between the
Nazca Plate and the South American Plate. It
has experienced 13 earthquakes in the last
year: it stands to reason that in one of the
world’s most active seismic countries you
can’t be in construction and not know a lot
about how to build a structure that will not
fall down when shaken.
Lagos has always had a passion for tall
buildings. “Structural engineering became
my passion from the earliest days as a student.
After working for a few years in firms that
specialised in structural design of high-rise
building I started my own firm, focusing on
high-rise buildings.”
The firm of René Lagos started by designing
mainly buildings of up to 15 storeys but in
1993 it had a breakthrough when it was
commissioned as the structural engineer for
the 22 storey headquarters of Camara Chilena
4. René Lagos
Seismic hazard
assessment for
resilient and
performance design
of buildings in South
America and Dubai
Santiago Justice Center - Santiago, Chile
Forty years of leadership in seismic design and risk assessment
for buildings, bridges, industrial facilities, mining projects,
thermoelectric and hydroelectric power plants and large dams.
Artificial accelerogram used in the seismic design of the tallest
buildings in South America of 300 m and 200 m height in
Santiago, Chile and Lima, Perú.
S & S CONSULTING
ENGINEERS LTD.
Forecast of design spectra for Costanera Center and Titanium
buildings, shown in the figure, coincided with measured spectra
for Chile 2010 Mw = 8.8 earthquake.
Telephone: 56-2-22318406 | Email: info@sysingen.cl | www.sysingen.cl
de la Construcción, the organisation that about how high buildings ought to go in a
represents the largest construction companies seismically unstable country. Santiago after
in the country. That project put the firm all was flattened in 1647’s 8.5 magnitude
on the map and proved its competence by event, while Chile experienced the severest
successfully withstanding at least two major earthquake ever recorded in 1960 at
earthquakes as well as countless minor ones. 9.5 magnitude and the sixth largest at
Three years later in 1996 René Lagos 8.8 on February 27 2010.
The Telefónica building came through that
landed, through a competition, what was
then the tallest building in Santiago, the 132 without any damage but it was designed to
do that. Lagos is proud of
metre high Telefónica tower.
this iconic structure for many
It is shaped to look like a big
cellphone (and from that
reasons. “The client told us
point of view is now clearly
that the one thing they could
dated) but the engineering
be certain of was that they
challenges were considerable
would be changing their
and in overcoming them it
layout frequently and did not
The year René Lagos
attracted a lot of professional
want to call in the structural
founded his firm
interest – as well as a debate
engineer every time to decide
1997
5. René Lagos
300 Metres
Height of the Gran Torre Santiago
Al Bandar, Al Raha Beach - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
how to do that. We took on the challenge
of giving them internal open space of
30 by 20 metres, with no intermediate
columns – even today that would be a tall
order,” he says proudly.
The company today has in its portfolio
many buildings over 200 metres high, so
size is no longer the driver it once was.
Nevertheless the Gran Torre Santiago, part
of the spectacular $1 billion Costanera Center
containing offices, hotels, shopping and
entertainment, is today the tallest building
in the southern hemisphere. At 300 metres it
is about the same height as the Shard or the
Empire State (minus the latter’s pointy bits)
and twice the height of the Telefónica tower.
Seismic performance is not just about
being able to make buildings that don’t fall
down, he explains. “The question is, do
we create buildings that are flexible, with
long displacements, or do we make them
stiff, with very little displacement? You
could take the view that a building that is
flexible and has what we call ductility will
dissipate energy making the basic structure
safer, at the cost of non-structural damage
“The client told us that the one
thing they could be certain of was
that they would be changing their
layout frequently”
to partitions and the like: if they are stiff
there is more acceleration, which means that
your fridge is more likely to fall over – but
stiff buildings experience less non-structural
damage and remain usable, without major
repairs being needed.”
Where in other seismic countries the
ductility argument has won, there has been
a social cost. The buildings remain standing,
but their inhabitants are made homeless
while they are repaired. “There has been
a lot of discussion about this, but the only
thing we can say from our experience here
in Chile is that the type of design that we
have used has proved very successful from
a social point of view, with very little failure
of buildings or need to evacuate them. We
have to design for safety of course, but also
for performance and usability.”
This approach typifies his attitude to
innovation – he loves it. Though he laughs
when he recalls starting out with just a
couple of scientific calculators, René Lagos
has absorbed new technology as it has been
developed. That is why he sets such store by
the R&D group he has set up to do research
on production tools such as software applied
to engineering analysis and design and also
in collaborative technologies such as building
Telefonica Building - Santiago, Chile
6. René Lagos
“There is another way to think
about sustainability, and that
is structural efficiency”
Corp Group Building - Santiago, Chile
information modelling (BIM).
“We also research technical
solutions for our clients,” he
says, “which means things like
the use of seismic protection
techniques like isolation or
energy dissipation in high
rise buildings.”
He was an early adopter
of the BIM concept, and has
been using model based
software from Revit and
Tekla for more than ten
years. “We started to use
it internally to collaborate
with different disciplines
– not too many other
people were using it. Now
that is changing. We have
even been training clients
and other firms.” BIM, he
explains, enables you create
much more than a 3D model
and to factor in cost and
time, making it effectively
a 5D model of the project. Using BIM tools
brings a project to life, René Lagos says:
as well as making it better BIM makes his
work a lot more fun to do!
Growth in the company has been entirely
organic, and very pragmatic. If there’s a
market for the firm’s expertise René Lagos
will follow it: if the market dries up the firm
withdraws. The first venture outside of Chile
was Argentina, however it was felt that the
company would be more effective abroad if
it engaged with more stable economies, so
in 2006 an office was set up in Miami in
René Lagos head office
collaboration with a local partner – it was a
very successful venture as construction was
booming in the US at the time, and though
things slowed down after 2008 and the
average size of projects became smaller, that
market is again looking up. “At that time we
were looking for technologies that we could
apply in the Costanera project,” he continues.
“So we travelled round the world to the places
where the tallest buildings were being built
including Dubai. By the time we had made
three trips out there we were already engaged
in some projects in Abu Dhabi, teaming up
7. René Lagos
with local operators on a project by project
basis including one of more than a million
square metres.”
Always choosing the right business
model for the market, René Lagos then
started looking again at the South
American market, and in particular the
active economies of Perú and Colombia.
After some market research, in December
2012 a branch office was set up in Lima,
employing Peruvian structural engineers
and training them in the company’s
culture. “Wherever we are in the world,”
says Lagos, “we work together through
cloud computing technology: it is just as
if we were all in the same office. In Lima
we have been active over those months,
engaged on high-rise projects, many of
them very challenging.” The experience
has been a happy one. Growth has been
“Wherever we are in the world,
we work together through cloud
computing technology”
Residential property
René Lagos (left) on site in the United Arab Emirates
steady and better than expected, and he
sees a great future for the Peruvian market.
Though neither Miami nor the Middle
East are particularly prone to earthquakes,
seismic performance remains a key core skill
for the company. When a group of Chilean
architects invited René Lagos to become
involved in some projects in China, he jumped
at the opportunity. René Lagos has been in a
consortium with Seismic A&E of Beijing for the
last two years and has provided consultancy
services for many project, so far mainly in
the mid-rise category, in China. “Once again
it has been again very interesting to have the
opportunity to work with different cultures
and methods,” he says. “It fits with the spirit
of innovation and fun that we all share in this
firm.” Earthquakes do happen in China, and
there has been much loss of life. Where better
for them to look for sustainable solutions than
Chile, with its unique experience?
That word, sustainable, sets Mr Lagos
off on a new tack. “If you spoke about
sustainability in structural engineering five
years ago there was not that much to say:
today it is becoming a very sophisticated issue
with many variables involved.” Think of the
structure of the building – its skeleton , he
says – everything is hung on to that after it
is built. The traditional way of thinking says
it has to be built using recyclable materials
like steel. “But there is another way to think
about sustainability, and that is structural
efficiency. When you design an efficient
structure you need less material. And why
always think of recyclability as only applying
8. René Lagos
Workers on top of the
Gran Torre Santiago
(Costanera Tower)
when the building is demolished when you
hope it will never be demolished! Better
surely to builds structures that can be
upgraded every so many years while still
occupying the same skeleton.” That, he says
is an equally valid conceptual approach to
structural sustainability.
Either approach will need to take into
consideration things like sourcing raw
materials locally, but sustainable design does
not end when the building is handed over. It
is a whole life issue. Seismic performance is
an obvious case – the ability of the building
to stay standing and usable, without needing
costly repairs – but sustainability is a never
ending concern for René Lagos’ researchers.
“If you always do the same thing you did
before, you are dying! There is always a new
perspective. That is what keeps you alive –
fun and passion. We do it that way here, and
incentivise younger engineers to feel it too.
That is probably why people stay here and
look on the firm as a place where it is worth
spending a large chunk of their career.”
After a good few years it is clear that
René Lagos has lost none of his joie de vivre.
“Never get so used to the things you do that
you lose your ability to be amazed. You have
to be able to be astonished – that gives you
energy and tells you where you are – and
how far you have come. I am still amazed
when I look out across Santiago! It makes
me emotional and proud.”
For more information about
René Lagos visit:
www.renelagos.com
