Edificio del Plata

/ Competitions

2024

Carlos Pellegrini 211, Buenos Aires
See plans >>
Project Team

Arch. Fernando Hitzig
Arch. Leonardo Militello

Arch. Sofía Kesting
Arch. Ludmila Timmerman
Arch. Jerónimo Blanco Pepi
Arch. Victoria Repetur
Arch. Tomás Levy Daniel
Arch. Camila Lacarpia
Arch. Belén Irigoytia
Micaela Broggi
Evangelina Ramirez
Victoria Nabias

Program

Private Contest

Area

473612.06 sqft

Renders

PB Visualizaciones

Consultants

Lighting: Arq. Giuliana Nieva

Services

CD

Concept Design & Art

HMA Arquitectos

Abstract

“…Today, 63% of the microcenter corresponds to offices: more than 600 office plots per square kilometer. Meanwhile, housing space is 20% with less than 200 housing plots per square kilometer…”
Year 2020 Pandemic City of Buenos Aires. The city empty of traffic and people. Its services closed, an internal migration towards the periphery. Microcentro, as never before, suffers the most important abandonment since its beginnings as the mecca of the city’s financial district. As a consequence, the following years began policies of reorganization of uses through financing and new tax regulations.

The population gaps in the commercial and executive uses of the microcenter blocks, show a new demography which we use as a conceptual trigger in our proposal. This register of full and empty spaces is a resource that allows us to organize a compositional plot under a system of replicable cells and applicable in various areas of intervention, in different scales, materials and textures.
This cellular composition creates a map of textures that organize the flooring, vegetation and furniture both on the terrace and on the first floor. It also functions as a morphological piece which folds and allows a fractal game, and depending on its application, gives response to various pieces that define the interior design of the building. What, in short, allows us through its configuration a sort of texture map applicable to all areas of intervention. In the interior of the monoambiente again makes its appearance the system materialized in a piece that functions as a divider and support of uses, under the same formal slogan.

From the tectonic logic, the material strategy aims to partially dress the existing building, leaving a visible record of the original building. The project has an industrial imprint where sand and gray tones prevail, with certain brightness and flashes focused on different areas where a certain sophistication stands out. The strategy in the application of the ceilings allows the existing slab and its installations to be seen between its interstices as part of a group of textures that commune between the existing and the contemporary intervention. The interventions with applied stone materials dialogue with the existing concrete columns whose rustic “hammered” treatment highlights the existence of a container with a long history.

The first floor is functionally integrated between the hall and the stores through two large access portals and visually integrated between the Carabelas passage square and the sidewalk on Carlos Pellegrini through a compositional system applied to the floor and an artistic/lighting ceiling transversal to the building. We incorporated a reception area that resolves both accesses.
Taking into consideration the multiple uses of the building, the proposal addresses communication and archigraphy integrated to the holistic design of the proposal. The native vegetation (grasses, salvias, lavender and herbaceous) are organized within the compositional cellular system as well as its small root trees (Aguaribay, Anacahuita, Bahuina, Hacer palmatum, Citricos). The suspended artistic/lighting object that acts as a ceiling also responds to the same composition/fractal.

The materials chosen in addition to representing an industrial aesthetic also meet certain sustainable requirements such as the suspended ceiling made of acoustic felt (100% recyclable components), projected cellulose applied to the slab, screen planel, geoclad Sw 1520 sheet, among others.
We understand that the interior design proposal must not only comply with compositional balances but also with a conceptual coherence where a “holistic design” criterion converges to understand the totality of a set of elements.