Project Name: Mumo Museum of Motorcycles

Location: Puerto Octay, Chile

Design Team: DRAA

Total Floor Area: 1200 m²

Completion: 2024

Photography: Marcos Zegers

Feature:

Project - DRAA reimagined cultural exhibition space in southern Chile, creating the Mumo Museum of Motorcycles——a masterpiece practice in timber construction that transforms traditional craftsmanship into contemporary structural innovation. Located in Puerto Octay and completed in 2024, this 1200-square-meter project directly addresses the challenge of housing the country's largest collection of pre-corporate era vintage motorcycles while responding to the romantic cultural context along the Pan-American Highway.

The project's genius lies in rejecting the enclosed forms of traditional museums, instead adopting a strategy of three staggered wooden pavilions. Lead architects Nicolás del Río and Felipe Camus chose not to fight against the site's slope, but carefully orchestrated exhibition spaces elevated on stepped concrete plinths that serve as both independent narrative units and continuous circulation flows. This creates what the architects describe as "segmented yet undivided exhibition halls"——allowing visitors to experience necessary narrative pauses within a continuous spatial experience.

The design directly responds to the client's request for architecture rooted in local tradition, inheriting the legacy of German colonization in southern Chile from the mid-19th century. These historical elements are reinterpreted through contemporary timber construction techniques, most notably CNC-machined laminated pino insigne components that employ woven wooden beam systems to transform each roof plane into rigid diaphragms. These structural elements connect through steel rings disguised as skylights, creating structural poetry that bridges interior and exterior spaces.

The Mumo Museum's spatial strategy transforms traditional exhibition typologies into more flexible forms. Multiple pavilions——from ground-level service spaces to elevated exhibition halls——capture spectacular views of Lake Llanquihue and Osorno Volcano while creating what the architects call "column-free exhibition spaces" that allow hundreds of motorcycles to be displayed freely. This structural innovation amplifies display possibilities beyond traditional museum constraints.

The result is architecture as technological heritage——every construction detail reveals the technological distance between the original German settlers and contemporary Chilean society. Thermally treated pino insigne exterior cladding becomes the primary material expression, transitioning from natural wood tones through weathering processes to silver-gray surfaces, creating what the architects describe as "wooden buildings clad in wood"——a pure construction logic that maps the temporal layers of regional architectural culture.

Design Team - Founded in 2012 by architect Nicolás del Río López in Santiago, Chile, DRAA has emerged as a pioneering force in contemporary Latin American architectural practice, consistently bridging rigorous design methodology with material innovation technologies. With offices in Santiago and Frutillar, the firm has established itself as a comprehensive architectural consultancy providing professional design services across diverse building typologies throughout Chile and the broader Latin American region.

Del Río López, a graduate of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2001) with a Master's degree from Oxford Brookes University (2011), co-leads the practice with director Felipe Camus Dávila (PUC 2007), bringing international academic background to their work. The DRAA name reflects Del Río Arquitectos Asociados' foundational philosophy of achieving design excellence through collaboration——a principle that manifests throughout their comprehensive project methodology.

The firm's design philosophy centers on thorough investigation of diverse building typologies, with particular emphasis on the outcomes of tectonic expression and structural innovation. This approach synthesizes proportional analysis, tectonics and structure, and responsible crossover with materials and energy efficiency, yielding significant works from timber museums to residential projects that demonstrate continuous advancement of contemporary architectural technical boundaries.

DRAA's mastery of CNC-manufactured timber construction technologies and engineered connection systems, along with applications of advanced construction techniques such as Rothoblaas engineered screws, underscores their contribution to Chile's evolving architectural discourse, positioning them as thought leaders in contemporary material innovation practice——honoring regional construction traditions while embracing progressive technological methodologies.