With the support of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Argentina (FNA).
A work in collaboration with Tomas Perez Amenta.
The year is 2023, and in its physical and tangible environment, the City retains the qualities of an empty town. However, while the building stock of the neighborhood still remains out of sync with the current demands of the tertiary sector, isolated rehabilitations of buildings are beginning to take place. On paper, a climate shift is anticipated: an injection of capital will trigger new living scenarios for the City and its buildings.
The office buildings of Buenos Aires’ Microcentro have begun to lose their original significance in the wake of widespread remote work. Many now face demolition or severe transformation, often without preservation status or official concern. In this climate of indifference, graphic documentation becomes one of the few remaining traces of these structures.
Supported initially by Argentina’s National Fund for the Arts, this work offers a visual and textual analysis of select mid-20th-century office buildings, proposing their value as cultural and architectural artifacts worth preserving. Through a collection of architectural drawings, cartoons, and reinterpreted plans—derived from archival materials and contemporary surveys—the study explores the latent complexity and contradictions within these buildings (Venturi, 1966).
Their envelopes and interiors often reveal inconsistent but expressive relationships, embodying a moment in the city that continues to change full-time and at full capacity. The case studies examined include Mercado del Plata (1948–1961) by Oscar Crivelli and Jorge Heinzmann; the Bank of America (1963–1965) by Mario Roberto Álvarez, José Aslan, Héctor Ezcurra, Alfredo Joselevich, and Alberto Víctor Ricur; and Galería Jardín (1974–1984) by Mario Roberto Álvarez and associates.
By tracing the evolving meanings of these spaces through programmatic shifts and cycles of neglect, crisis, and reuse, this work highlights their enduring qualities. Rather than calling for large-scale interventions, it proposes new ways of seeing and understanding as tools for reuse—eventually serving as a resource for the collective redefinition of how buildings are preserved, repurposed, or erased
Galerias Jardin
Mario Roberto Alvarez y Asociados (1974 - 1984)
The parapet is constructed from compact glass fiber panels. The panels are covered with baked paint. They are insulated by a layer of polyurethane foam and a fiber cement sheet painted on the interior side. The fan-coil equipment needed for air-conditioning is supported on this blind plane. The enclosure contains adjustable roll-up curtains that provide shade from the sun.
I entered the office tower thanks to my friend Augusto. I saw him coming from the entrance to Florida while I was sitting with Guillermina in the basement. The place was a shadow where only broken wire sculptures and discarded keyboards remained. Passing the closed travel agencies, we took the stopped escalator. As we climbed the technology posters and video games stores appeared.
Upstairs, the parts of the building were the same, coffered with metal carpentry. What changed was the sun that filled it with slightly more prosperous shops and people. Except for the sex shop on the second floor and the perfumery, the rest was computing. Augusto was waiting for us at the door of the office tower. After the glass enclosure, we arrived at a renovated hall with turnstiles and elevators. In the cabin, Guillermina slid her hand along the buttons board pressing them all. On the third floor, an office worker got on and when he realized the joke, he insulted us and got off immediately. Guillermina copied him by crouching down and making his movements. At the remaining stops she took a photo of each floor staying inside.
Each floor was different from the previous one and all were renovated with new porcelain or floating floors that imitated wood. The layout was the same with an elevator hall bordered by the entrance doors on each side. Some belonged to the same company and others were divided into two.
On the 17th we went down behind Augusto. The door to our office was made of frosted glass and had an aluminum ball as a door handle with a fingerprint reader next to it. In the reception area there were three Breuer chairs and a security camera pointing at them.
Alicia, the secretary, greeted Augusto and he explained that we were following him to see the tower, which he immediately got on with telling us what he knew about the building, even with general notes such as that the towers swayed so as not to break. As soon as I could, I approached his desk and leaned over to look at the videos from the cameras on his monitor. Within a minute, the four of us were glued to Alicia’s screen checking the cameras. Nothing was happening. There were hardly any people in the tower, partly because it was January, but in reality many companies had moved and what was left was the hangover from a few sub-rented ones.
We were in the secretary’s area separated by a black painted stone counter and synthetic blue walls that gave the feeling of being in Panama. Memories of when I visited it eighteen years ago. The windows were still made of thicker metal, prepared for the height and with a panel to open above. One was blocked because it had a split outlet embedded in it. The view looked out onto the apartment tower of the same building with the rest of the downtown area and the river. The window and its landscape escaped the local references and introduced us to an international code.
Original occupancy of the shopping center in 1976;. Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in.
When we got bored of looking at the Tucumán tower, Alicia offered to show us the rest. We left the reception area passing the elevators and knocked on another identical door with the “Technology Bureau” logo engraved on it.
Inside, there was a wall that formed rooms around the perimeter. It was white with windows that led from the office to the reception area and you could see the aquamarine painted back side. I could see the light blue and grey background of the mass of buildings that formed a continuous stripe passing through the rooms. In the meeting room on the corner, the colorful stripes were covered at times with a curtain to cover the sun. The floor had dichroic lights and the curtain didn’t touch it.
We appeared in the kitchen, tilting our heads to take a complete look. Every part of the room was generic, from the view of other towers shining under the sun to the labels that spoke like the Have a Moment coffee maker and the Coca Cola pictures. The office workers stood in a circle in the small dining room. They all wore the same shirt with their hands on their waists. Guillermina took a photo of the group behind them. Alicia had a white and light blue striped shirt like theirs but hers was sleeveless. Her obsession with the outside staircase to the kitchen seemed right to me. It was a technical staircase, made of bars, attached to the building with air passing through it.
The kitchen was 3x4 and there were 9 of us in total. We decided to leave and the last thing we heard from Alicia was that the fire escapes had been separated from the hall and were between the kitchen and the offices. For me it was something atypical that came from renovations. We went down those stairs and came across a tunnel that left us in the tropical offices of Bolivian oil fields. Each new part seemed more foreign and timeless than the previous one. In those weeks the news was talking about the sale of YPF. Back in the tunnel I was kicking a fallen garland.
Ground Floor Plan; Type
Floor Plan; Section. Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in.
The Horizontal Property Law of 1948 and the pedestrianization of the commercial street Florida in 1971 allowed Mario Roberto Álvarez to experiment with an unusual typology for Buenos Aires: the open L-shaped mat-building. Álvarez’s project organized air in such a way that allowed for the maximum utilization of space, bringing occupancy to the utter limit permitted by the Building Code at that time. The structure houses residential towers and shops in open air hallways.
The block resisted the flow of commercial pedestrian traffic with two patios, which spanned 360 square meters and 175 square meters. These patios extend vertically for three floors, and as such provided light and ventilation for the first three levels of the gallery - the basement, the ground floor, and the first floor, as well as for the successive floors of the residential towers, which possessed strategically hidden cores.
The ceiling coffering resolves the loads of the slabs of the building and organizes the elements that make up the two
hundred and fifty shops of its first three levels. Made from a polyester formwork reinforced with fiberglass, its panels are each of 1.2 by 1.2 meters and feature a rib height of 0.45 meters. Shops that cater to limited markets, such as record stores, computer supply stores, and sex shops, are concentrated on the ground floor. Each such shop is gathered near to other shops of the same kind in order to amplify their collective draw on pedestrian traffic.
During the past two decades, the computer supply stores have crowded out the others, as all the shops are managed by only a few tenants. The tourist shops are placed along the part of the building which is directly accessible from Florida Street.
Office Tower in 2023 and 1980, Buenos Aires, Argentina..
Revista Construcciones 1974 V.248
The new commercial galleries have had an undeniable influence on the history of commercial life in Buenos Aires. This particular gallery is located on a vast land of five thousand square meters that forms an "L", linking the two streets of Florida and Tucuman.
For many years the land had been a vacant lot. Now it is filled with a modern shopping center and two twenty-four-story towers, one on Florida and the other on Tucuman. This unique phenomenon, an "open sky" gallery in the center of the city, with its garden pots and the variegated colors of the shop's stained glass windows, creates a contemporary architectural language that causes us to experience the space as an extension of the street.
In fact "the street" was the conceptual starting point for the whole project. Architect Mario Roberto Alvarez and his associates sought to create a seamless continuation of the pedestrian flow of Florida. In order to emphasize this intention, the dimensions of the interior paths generously exceed the ones provided by Florida, achieving wide perspectives and complete views.
The pedestrians are invited by the internal space of the gallery as an extension of the street, helping to include natural light on the different levels through two large open-air patios, from which a complete vision to the stained glass windows of the shops can be achieved, as well as the circulatory nuclei to access them. The two entrances of the building, one through Florida and the other through Tucuman, give rise to a spontaneous circulation that endows the gallery with the dynamic character of a true interior street.
On the garage levels, a conventional structure of columns supported by beams receive the loads transmitted by crossed slabs. The axes of the columns are 8.4 meters apart from each other. So between each pair of columns there is enough space for three large garages. On the other levels, loads are transferred by coffered panels. Each panel spans 1.2 by 1.2 meters and possesses a rib height of 45 centimeters.
This structure was made using fiberglass-reinforced polyester formwork, which provides a perfect surface finish and allows for simple and quick stripping. The front of the building facing Florida street is extremely valuable for use by retail vendors. So there was an incentive for the architecture in this part of the building to feature more space in between columns. More space between columns would allow for greater flexibility in the arrangement of shops, making it easier to fully harvest the commercial value of the location. A special structure was created to allow spans of thirty meters free using tensioners that hang from two large beams that extend from the terrace of the third floor offices. Excellent craftsmanship, and in particular the intelligent treatment of the formwork, have resulted in a structure that although it is made of reinforced concrete and has a single layer of waterproof paint, possesses an impeccable visible surface texture.
The air-conditioning system is well-thought-out from an economic perspective. The user of each space in the shopping gallery or offices can regulate their own air-conditioning with an electric key. It consists of a central water-air system with a total cooling capacity of 600 tons of refrigeration with terminal units from Louwette and Luwair S. (fan-coil). In the machine room of the second floor, a place was set up to house all the equipment that makes up the hot and cold plant. The whole innovative arrangement was designed and implemented by the company Moravia, with S.A. Engineer Roberto A. Sobbrero acting as technical representative.
The offices of the second and third floors can be accessed through two different elevator systems. The first elevator system is integrated with the vertical circulation core of the residential tower on Florida street. It is located close to the entrance from the street. Pedestrians who distractedly circulate into the building from Florida are surprised with the sensation of depth created by the vanishing perspective of its sheer black walls.
A metal bridge at the second floor level catches the seventeen meters of light arriving from the first patio. The other elevator system rises like a tower from the central patio. The coffered paneling of the gallery ceiling continues uninterrupted into the ceilings of the offices. The office floors are prepared so they can be laid with carpet. The exterior enclosure is designed to respect the original concept of the building's overall structure. The fixed elements were built with folded iron sheets and the opening panels with sliding leaves of extruded and anodized aluminum.
The parapet is constructed from compact glass fiber panels. The panels are covered with baked paint. They are insulated by a layer of polyurethane foam and a fiber cement sheet painted on the interior side. The fan-coil equipment needed for air-conditioning is supported on this blind plane. The enclosure contains adjustable roll-up curtains that provide shade from the sun.
Technology Bureau in 2023, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mercado del Plata
Oscar Crivelli and Jorge Heinzmann (1948 - 1961)
The 1947-1951 Municipal Works Plan of Buenos Aires introduced modern architectural and urban planning principles to the city. This measure inspired Oscar Crivelli and Jorge Heinzmann to test a functionalist monoblock typology on an unconventional block in the city's center.
Since the end of the 18th century, cart and food sales operated in the land between the Carabelas passage and the streets of Carlos Pellegrini, Sarmiento, and Cangallo. In 1856, the first covered market of Buenos Aires was built there. By the 1940s, the market became an anachronism. Its antiquated structure contrasted sharply with that of the financial enterprises which had sprung up around it.
In 1947 a further evolution took place on the plot. An eight story building was constructed. Its ground floor served as a new space for the market. Below that, underground, warehouses were created where goods could be stored and lifted, when needed, by forklifts to the market above. These warehouses were provided with underground entrances and exits so that trucks arriving from the avenue "9 de Julio" could easily deliver goods. And each floor above the market offered one-thousand square meters of office space.
The design of the new building was influenced by the drive for efficiency and versatility among the international scene. As was that of most of the urban and architectural projects promoted by the state, given that they were carried out, as part of the Buenos Aires Municipal Works Plan, between 1947 and 1954. The project sought to integrate the old market into the city. And it also sought to increase the performance of an area of land that had grown in value. Eventually, open-plan apartments were added that possessed independent, detachable facades, turning it into a versatile object
Following a decade of construction, the market became once more out of date. The neighborhood had become only more oriented towards office tenants. A market was no longer the best use of the space. The ground floor which had originally housed the market was converted for use in administrative activities. The warehouses underground, formerly used for storing market products, were converted to store documents. Food freezers became office archives.
The building, which occupied a full city block, and had allowed passage from the streets into its basement, now closed three of its sides in order to better control the incoming flow of office workers.
Basement
Floor Plan;
Ground Floor Plan; Type Floor Plan; Section. Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in..
Magazine Nuestra Arquitectura n 230 1948
The first basement, the ground floor, and the mezzanine are all intended for use by the market and the operations it depends upon. The second basement features an access floor connected to the avenue "9 de Julio" by ramps. This floor also includes a large work area and 500 square meter refrigerated rooms. Artificial ventilation and light arrive through a floor made of glass and cement. The third basement is intended for use by the engine room.
The ground floor and the mezzanine are organized around a window hall with 124 removable seats made up of modular, prefabricated elements. Pictured are escalators, artificial ventilation, and underfloor heating. Space remains for 42 outdoor businesses facing towards the avenue "9 de Julio". The roof includes water tanks, fire management equipment, toilets, and housing for two doormen.
Between the first and the eighth floors there is a total of 11,320 square meters of usable office space. Each floor spans 1,415 square meters, and is divisible into modules of 0.95 meters. Each floor features air conditioning, double glass, and plastic blinds. The grammar of the grid was initially designed for the arrangement of prefabricated and removable office partition modules. But the depth of the typical floor plan guarantees the kind of ventilation and lighting needed to make the premises habitable. Therefore, reconfigurations are possible which allow for new uses and forms of association.
Air conditioning is distributed to each 0.95 meter module through fan coils on the parapets of its enclosing walls. Two large vertical lateral pipes enclose the ducts of the thermomechanical installations. Fixed centers are grouped around these pipes.
The concrete structure consists of two parallel continuous beams of several sections with 7 meter span slabs that cantilever towards the fronts. Multiple porticos project from the sides to absorb the action of the wind. The removal of columns from the facade permits the full entry of light. The envelope of metal carpentry composed of vertical uprights holds adjustable brise-soleils as a passive system to control direct solar radiation.
Mercado del Plata in 2023 and in 1953, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During the last twenty years, gigantographs on the facade rendered the building into a decorated shed. Interventions resulted in the production of advertisements, tributes, and art.
In 2012 the Government of the City of Buenos Aires declared the building's use unnecessary. The government noted the specific nature of its state of disrepair. Apparently the enclosure was detoriorated, rusty, and prone to leaks. The elevators were unusable. Its facilities were generally in poor condition.
During the early 2000s, large-scale murals of art, often featuring giant portraits of Argentine writers, dominated the facade, which was 100 meters long and 34 meters high.
Photographers such as Marcos López brought their works to hang upon this facade. Artists such as Fabián Burgos and Max Gómez Canale wrought their colors upon its surface. Public figures such as Ernesto Sabato and Pope Francis passed proudly, in image-form, across this XL urban canvas. The intervention generated impact and surprise. Pedestrians and motorists who surrounded the Obelisk or travelled along Carlos Pellegrin could see it.
Before cars and buses, horse carts passed by. A good part of the economic, social and cultural life of Buenos Aires transpired here. The location could not be better. Situated between Sarmiento, Tte. General Juan Domingo Perón and Carlos Pellegrini, with its back towards Pasaje Carabelas, the perimeter coursed with the pulse of the city.
The market where cereals, watermelon, and firewood, all arriving from the north, were sold, went on to witness the construction of the Obelisk in 1936, as well as other events which redesigned the urban grid.
Around the time of the construction of the Mercado del Plata, new government regulations had been put in place to promote hygiene in the food industry. These regulations included a prohibition against open-air markets. The Mercado del Plata, being indoors, pioneered a new format for complying with these regulations.
In 2016 the market was acquired at auction by the company Inversiones y Representaciones Sociedad Anónima (IRSA), an operator of shopping centers.
Projects are currently underway to transform the building into housing units.
Original occupancy of the market in 1961. Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in.
Bank of America
Mario Roberto Alvarez y Asociados (1963-1965)
After nine years of establishing itself in Argentina, Bank of America finally opened the doors of its own building on the corner of San Martín and Cangallo streets. To design the building, and to manage its overall construction, the Bank enlisted the help of the architects Mario Roberto Alvarezy y Asociados and Alan y Ezcurra y Asociados. To carry out the actual construction, the Bank contracted Crivelli Cuenya y Goicoa Construcciones SAICD and the works began in 1968.
The architects for the project faced a problem: how to fully occupy the permitted buildable volume. Their close attention to this problem would ultimately result in one of the building's defining characteristics: its maximally rational use of space. In their approach to this problem, the architects sought to avoid the kinds of mistaken solutions that had already begun to plague the city of Buenos Aires. Year after year, in this city once known for its ornate 19th century european style, more and more buildings were removing their facades, melting together into one continuous, monotonous wall that hid from sight the inner diversity of parts.
The ground floor begins further back than the rest of the building, conceding space to the city and granting the otherwise narrow street a bit of extra width. A partially covered terrace and a suspended mezzanine constitute a communal and programmatically variable space. A complexity of overlapping fragments is exposed to the sight across a double height. Over the years, with the relocation of the lobby and the addition of ATMs, the envelope was displaced. The extent of the building's covered surface increased, and the relationship between the building and the sidewalk changed. The building's contour reveals to the street the clear differentiation of its two main original programmatic components - the banking program below and the rentable office floors above.
The building was abandoned following the financial crisis of 2001, and later purchased and re-functionalized in 2021 to serve as part of the engineering campus for the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA).
ITBA University in 2023, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The project was guided by three premises:
1. Withdraw the facade on Martin street about 3.5 meters from the municipal line. This causes the front of the bank to coincide with the front of the neighboring house, which is a National Historical Monument. It also grants extra space to pedestrians outside the building. At the same time, optimal proportions can still be achieved in the building's rectangular floor plan.
2. Withdraw the facade on Cangallo street about 0.7 meters from the municipal line. This lends the building a more striking and conspicuous profile, since in the floors above the ground level the exterior of the building protrudes up to the aforementioned line.
3. No functional architectural elements or furnishings should be permitted on the ground floor unless they are absolutely necessary. Aside from escalators to provide employees with access to upper floors, the ground floor only houses those elements that a bank requires for in-person transactions with consumers, such as information desks and booths for opening checking or savings accounts. This disciplined approach to the utilization of the ground floor made it possible to reduce the size of its floor plan considerably and grant the leftover space to the pedestrians and cars of the street. It also simplified the nature of the kind of security needed for monitoring foot traffic in and out of the main ground floor entrances, since that traffic only gains access to the consumer-facing functions of the bank.
The entire load-bearing structure of the building is made from conventional reinforced concrete. The mezzanines run parallel to each other. Each sits above its own support line. One of the mezzanines hovers above the municipal line of Cantagallo Street, hoisted by a pair of double columns. The other mezzanine, more simple, rests atop the party wall. Over the columns which support the first mezzanine runs a beam with a height of 0.6m and a span of 14.7 meters. This beam extends 5.9 meters beyond the building to form a cantilever over San Martin Street. The perimeter of the building along San Martin street includes 0.6 meter beams that have passes for thermomechanical installations.
The location of services and walking routes on the party wall parallel to Cangallo street, along with the concentration of the supporting structure of two pairs of columns on the municipal line ensured the maximum performance of the floor plans. Indeed, these floors devoid of interior columns and with the largest possible lighting perimeter, are susceptible to experiencing any type of subdivision.
Original occupancy of the ground floor in 1965; cpencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in..
The director's floor served as a transitional level between the consumer-facing ground-floor and the protruding volume above housing the bank's internal offices. A sunken enclosure on the director's floor provides those who work there with terraces and gardens. The total covered area of the building is about 10,000 square meters, nearly half of which is occupied by the bank. The building includes three basements. The first is for safe deposit boxes, vaults, and the unloading of armored trucks. The second serves as a garage. The third houses air-conditioning, tanks, meters, drive pumps, and machinery for lifting cars.
The ground floor was designed to be the entrance hall to the in-person consumer services of the bank, as well as to the offices of the upper floors, the car control offices, and the car elevator. The operations room and internal offices of the bank are located on the first floor, the mezzanine, and the second floor. The second floor features a conference room and opens onto a terrace. All the floors from the third to the ninth are for offices. The tenth floor is for dining rooms. The next two floors, which are the final floors of the building, house the water tanks, the cooling towers, and elevator machine rooms.
Ground Floor Plan; Type Floor Plan; Section. Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in.
Climate control is in part managed through the use of interior curtains. Nothing prevents direct sunlight from reaching the exterior glass of the building. The envelope of the building implements air conditioning through the placement of inductive equipment under the windows. This allows for fan-coil technology to be utilized along the perimeter of each floor. In the lower third, the ground floor contains escalators to access a double-height volume, where its enclosure is the result of a double module in height, with bigger entire glass pieces.
Escalators on the ground floor provide transport across the vertical expanse of that floor's abundant volume. The floor is enclosed by a module that is double the height of the other analogous modules used in the building, and accordingly features larger continuous glass sections. The exterior carpentry resolves into a set of identical modules, each 2.88 meters in length, on the integrated bronze facade. These carpentry modules are attached in such a way as to absorb possible deformations of the large spans of the building's load-bearing structure. Each module contains a set of sliding steel leaves mounted on a folded bronze sheet frame. The enclosure of the operations hall is built around the use of double modules. It avoids the problem posed by its great height through the means of suspended glass.
Original occupancy of the first floor in 1965; pencil on paper, 16.5 x 23.4 in.