Lagos Building / Estudio Aire

Architects: Estudio Aire
Area: 987 m² (10,634 ft²)
Year: 2017
Photography: Walter Salcedo
Lead Architects: Juan Germán Guardati, Román Renzi, Virginia Kahanoff
Developer: Gustavo Sattler
Collaborators: Valeria del Vecchio
City: Rosario
Country: Argentina

Lagos Building, designed by Estudio Aire in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, addresses commercial demands within the constraints of urban regulations. Completed in 2017, the project integrates contextual quality and unique urban appearance through innovative use of space and materials.

The building is situated on a downtown lot in Rosario, characterized by formal and material heterogeneity due to evolving urban regulation policies. The New Building Code restricts height, demanding optimal soil use. The project responds to these commercial requirements architecturally.

The design achieves contextual quality from within, integrating balconies into the built mass to create open intermediate spaces closely linked to the domestic environment. The facade acts as a filter for street noise, balancing visual relationships. The volume addresses objective conditions, acknowledging low boundary heights while supporting urban code aims for block consolidation.

Addressing real estate speculation, the project constructs collective housing for rent. It reflects on design guidelines for similar actions, ensuring a unique, sustainable urban appearance. The facade design accommodates unforeseen user actions, maintaining aesthetic integrity over time.

Material choices enhance the relationship between interior and exterior spaces.

The ground floor extends public street conditions into the domestic space using perforated sheets, ensuring an open atmosphere without explicit exposure.

Concrete extends the interior perception to exterior balconies, viewed as extensions rather than residual spaces. The natural material ensures low maintenance, with table formwork marks on surfaces highlighting the construction system.

Concrete usage combines structural support, spatial structure, and building expression, resolved with minimal formal actions. Exposed brick medians provide a contextual response, extending into the lot and integrating with vertical concrete elements, slabs, and columns.

The contemporary approach is neither about creating something entirely new nor indiscriminately repeating past designs. The focus is on minimal intervention, manipulating form to result in usable space. This paradox drives an obsessive focus on the resulting space from form manipulation.