Foster + Partners designed the Buenos Aires City Hall, a 484,380 square foot building with four above-ground floors and two below. The glass-walled building features an undulating reinforced concrete roof supported by columns. Sustainability was a top priority, with passive design features like shading louvres, courtyards, and thermal mass to regulate temperature without mechanical cooling for seven months per year. The exposed concrete, wood, and stone materials provide a neutral backdrop while allowing natural light and providing thermal regulation.
Foster + Partners designed the Buenos Aires City Hall, a 484,380 square foot building with four above-ground floors and two below. The glass-walled building features an undulating reinforced concrete roof supported by columns. Sustainability was a top priority, with passive design features like shading louvres, courtyards, and thermal mass to regulate temperature without mechanical cooling for seven months per year. The exposed concrete, wood, and stone materials provide a neutral backdrop while allowing natural light and providing thermal regulation.
Foster + Partners designed the Buenos Aires City Hall, a 484,380 square foot building with four above-ground floors and two below. The glass-walled building features an undulating reinforced concrete roof supported by columns. Sustainability was a top priority, with passive design features like shading louvres, courtyards, and thermal mass to regulate temperature without mechanical cooling for seven months per year. The exposed concrete, wood, and stone materials provide a neutral backdrop while allowing natural light and providing thermal regulation.
Foster + Partners designed the Buenos Aires City Hall, a 484,380 square foot building with four above-ground floors and two below. The glass-walled building features an undulating reinforced concrete roof supported by columns. Sustainability was a top priority, with passive design features like shading louvres, courtyards, and thermal mass to regulate temperature without mechanical cooling for seven months per year. The exposed concrete, wood, and stone materials provide a neutral backdrop while allowing natural light and providing thermal regulation.
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Buenos Aires City Hall
Architect: Foster + Partners
Client: CRIBA Where: Buenos Aires, Argentina What: 484,380 total square feet on four floors, plus two below ground Cost/sf: Withheld at client’s request
Buenos Aires Ciudad Casa de Gobierno is the first office development in Argentina to have been designed by Foster + Partners. It is also the first LEED Silver certified public building in the country.
The building was originally commissioned as the headquarters for Banco Ciudad, but has since changed hands and instead will be home to city's mayor and 1,500 staff. It covers an area of 32,000 sq m (345,000 sq ft) – an entire city block – and is aimed, in part, at being a catalyst for regeneration in the surrounding area. PLANNING AND DESIGN
Foster’s highest priority was to create a sustainable, light-filled work environment. The glass- walled building rises to a height of 80 feet and encloses about 484,380 total square feet on four levels, plus two levels below ground. The facade’s curtain wall is supported by an independent steel structure. Given the expansive floor area, rather than have one broad flat roof, Foster designed an undulating, reinforced-concrete roof supported by concrete columns, with three central vaults and two partial vaults at each side. “This is a place to engage citizens, and it’s conceived as an extension of the park across from the entry plaza,” says Partner-in-Charge Juan Frigerio, who heads Foster’s Buenos Aires office and worked closely with Head of Design David Nelson, who is primarily based in the London office. The glass-walled cabinet room can be viewed from the publicly accessible portion of the atrium’s ground floor, and senior executive offices on the second and third levels are equally transparent. The 300-seat auditorium hosts public screenings and meetings, and its foyer can be accessed from the plaza.
The workspaces span four storeys, featuring staggered terraces and a visible open plan desk area that promotes communication and interaction between employees. The building’s full height glazing not only makes the most of natural light, but also takes advantage of its picturesque parkside location. The latter is mirrored in the interior design through the presence of leafy landscaped courtyards and elegant sheltered walkways dotted across the layout.
Amongst the other sustainability features are cycle racks and showers to encourage workers to commute by bike. Rainwater is harvested to irrigate landscaped areas and greywater is collected and reused for flushing toilets.
Lord Foster said: “Sustainability relates very strongly to local resources and climate, and Buenos AiresCiudad Casa de Gobierno is a great demonstration of how architecture can work with nature via passive environmental means to naturally reduce energy use. The roof extends like a canopy to provide shade, its flowing concrete structure is both symbolic as a civic building and functional in regulating temperatures. Shading louvres on the east and west protect the interior from direct glare, while courtyards allow sunlight into the heart of the building – in this way, its design is very much a response to place and climate. The project has played a vital role in regenerating this former industrial quarter of the city.” Ground Floor Plan Upper Level Floor Plan
Cross Section Longitudinal Section
FAÇADE DESIGN
Passive design features that take into account the environment in which the city hall was built are used to contribute to its sustainability performance. The thermal mass of the concrete structure helps to protect the interior from the heat of the sun and to regulate the temperature inside, as does a white finish on the building's exterior.
Externally, the building is characterised by its flowing roof canopy, which is supported by pillars and extends in a deep overhang to shade the entrance plaza and facades. Inside, the concrete barrel vaulted roof is textured and exposed. The use of industrial materials reinforces the formerly artisan character of Parque Patricios, while the thermal mass of the concrete soffits, combined with chilled beams, help to naturally regulate the temperature and keep the offices cool. Every aspect of the scheme was designed in response to the local climate, including the composition of each facade – the eastern and western elevations are shaded by a screen of louvres, which rise the full height of the building.
Louvres, or angled slats, are installed on the east and west sides of the building to provide shade, whilst the overhang of the roof provides shade for the entrance plaza and façades. Courtyards, meanwhile, allow sunlight into the heart of the building.
Natural ventilation will be used to cool the building for around seven months of the year, whilst an insulated double-glazed curtain wall, skylights and low-emissivity glass also help to regulate temperature. To minimize energy usage within the city hall, light and movement sensors are employed as part of the building management system.
Many modern Argentinean buildings are made of concrete, and Foster decided to showcase CRIBA’s expertise in fair-faced concrete, which requires no additional treatment after curing, by exposing it on the roof, the terraces, and the columns. The concrete’s warm tone is complemented by pierced wall panels and staircases of American oak, and the atrium floor is paved with a pale, red-flecked Brazilian stone. These three materials provide a neutral backdrop that is subtly animated by the patterns in the stone, wood, and hand-finished concrete. “We wanted the furniture to add vibrant accents, so we chose [furnishings primarily in] four colors from Le Corbusier’s palette,” Frigerio explains. “Each floor was given a different hue: yellow, orange, light blue, and, at the top, a regal eggplant.”
The Foster team designed the large painted aluminum-hoop light fixtures that hang in the atrium and brought in theatrical-lighting consultant Eli Sirlin to provide added illumination. “It was a challenge to light this tall volume and the terraces,” Frigerio recalls. “We didn’t want to clutter the floor with poles, and we realized that suspended fittings could be beautiful objects in their own right while dramatizing the grand open space and the more enclosed office areas.”
Little heating is required, thanks to the climate as well as Foster’s design. Concrete slab undersides are exposed, allowing for significant thermal mass. Cold air is introduced through displacement ventilation, and chilled beams cool the air that is warmed by both bodies and computers.
Acoustics were another challenge, but the noise within the atrium is diffused via ribbing added to the concrete vaults and the use of sound-absorbing material in the carpets, pierced- aluminum soffits, and pierced-wood wall panels. “By April,” Frigerio says, “a thousand people were working here, and the building manager congratulated me on how quiet it is.”
