Buenos Aires, Argentina
Shopping center
This is an opportunity to reflect on the commercial and residential architectural types, identifying the uniqueness and multiplicity of factors, location conditions, physical support characteristics, legacy of buildings of architectural interest to be included in the project, and the coexistence and synergy with the existing commercial usage.
The master plan defines two differentiated areas by introducing a boulevard that organizes vehicular traffic in the lot. Its 40-meter width pursues maximum vehicular fluidity and spatiality in tune with the borderline constructions volumetric and the characteristics to be transmitted.
The matrix that generates the housing units and of the public and semi-public spaces for entering the lodgings is based on the industrial program’s legacy, with the potential offered by the grid in terms of flexibility and spatial structure. Emphasis is placed on the design and conception of spaces of the complex, public streets, interior streets and courtyards. The proposal balances the composition of the medium-density residential fabric and the building construction, in order to reach the requested building conditions.
The existing storehouses are the physical support for the shopping centre. Its spatiality is the essence, and as from this spatiality it anew organization is created, evoking the memory of the past and projecting it towards a new destiny. The expressive criterion exposes and explores the manufacturing nature, using noble industrial-type materials and where the use of flat concrete floors, asphalt pavement, sheet metal, visible facilities and technical walkways points to strong impact and low cost aesthetics.
The spatial structure of the aisles allows for flexibility in terms of usage and configuration, interweaving circuits and themes and transforming the spatial experience into something changing and unique. The nature of the common free spaces, understood as empty urban organizers (squares, streets, galleries, gardens and passages), is rojected within the unitary volume. This operation’s remaining space may be organized in multiple ways and adjusted to the comercial program. Full and void areas define circuits comparable to the amplified urban experience. With an extrovert, permeable and dynamic nature, regenerator of public space, a new commercial centrality is conceived.
The capacity for restructuring and enlargement constitute a genetic fact once platforms allowing vertical development are planned, detail that increases the value of what is established and makes the incorporation of department stores feasible.