Design firm: Ariel Jacubovich Oficina de Arquitectura
Project name: Block Building
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dimensions: 2,014 square meters Block is a multi-use building that forms part of a series of collective housing projects developed by Ariel Jacubovich Arquitectos. Unusual and “playful” geometries are used to experiment with new organisational models and break the monotony of metropolitan living. Inspiration for the project stems from memories of the Abasto neighbourhood, where goods were stacked in crates and containers along the streets of the former wholesale market, creating voids and interstitial spaces. This imagery is translated into architecture through an interplay of interlocking forms, shifts and variations, creating a composition of elements assembled like a giant three-dimensional puzzle. A Brutalist vocabulary is revived through the choice of materials and the directness of the construction logic. Spanning ten floors, the building houses commercial spaces and offices, with twenty unique residential units starting from the third level. As one moves up, the apartments’ layout becomes increasingly complex, opening up into terraces, balconies and double-height spaces. A defining feature of the project is rendering this internal complexity legible from the outside. The exposed reinforced concrete envelope is articulated through a sequence of solids and voids, projections and recesses, rotations and shifts, revealing a spatial and structural organisation based on variation rather than typological repetition.