{"id":12592,"date":"2021-03-15T11:41:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T10:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uchceu.es\/arquitectura\/?p=12592"},"modified":"2022-02-28T09:46:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T08:46:21","slug":"architecture-buenos-aires-city-and-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uchceu.es\/arquitectura\/en\/architecture-buenos-aires-city-and-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"Architecture in Buenos Aires: a tale of a city and its climate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scale of the place, its refinement, its colour and its contrasts: all these things make the architecture of Buenos Aires unique. Sometimes it feels like New York, sometimes like Madrid, and a lot of the time like Paris, but Argentina\u2019s huge capital city somehow seems to take the best of many different places, give it a twist and create a style all of its own. And that\u2019s what makes Buenos Aires such a fascinating and diverse city and it possesses a range of impressive examples of classic and contemporary architecture<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The contemporary city is also a hive of building activity, with myriad new studios determined to bring the city back into the architectural big leagues \u2013 by creating architecture which is functional, has great design, and yet is also environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n

\"Vista
View of the Puerto Madero area in Buenos Aires, a hub of cutting-edge architecture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Florencia Collo<\/strong> is one of our guest lecturers for our ConnectA<\/strong><\/a> programme, which took us this year (virtually, at least) to the city where she studied to become an architect, Buenos Aires. She also has a Master\u2019s Degree in Sustainable Environmental Design from the Architectural Association School of Architecture and is a director of Atmos Lab<\/strong>. This studio specializes in bioclimatic design and provides evidence-based consulting services regarding sustainable architecture.<\/p>\n

Wladimiro Costa, a pioneer of bioclimatic architecture<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For Florencia Collo and the rest of her team, the key is to scientifically analyse all the climatic factors which impact upon the design of buildings in a city. This is the basis of what is known as bioclimatic architecture<\/strong><\/a>, which seeks to achieve energy efficiency through the use of local resources.<\/p>\n

A good example of architecture which is in tune with the local climate is the \u201cHelios\u201d house in the Villa del Parque area of Buenos Aires, which was designed by the architect Wladimiro Acosta<\/strong>. He was a world pioneer in bioclimatic architecture and, after training in Germany and Italy, he came to Argentina in 1928 \u2013 in other words, just before the construction of two of the great icons of modern architecture: Le Corbusier\u2019s Villa Savoye and Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Barcelona Pavilion. At the time, architecture in Buenos Aires was more focused on style than concepts, straddling colonial and modern aesthetics.<\/p>\n

CONSTRUCTION STRATEGIES CAN REDUCE DOMESTIC ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY A QUARTER<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acosta admired \u2018colonial\u2019 buildings for their thick adobe walls isolating them from external heat, their shady galleries, and their large windows, with their iron bars, blinds and mosquito screens. In the case of \u2018modern\u2019 buildings, he only considered them to be worthy of the name if the result was truly functional.<\/p>\n

In his own architectural work architect, Wladimiro Acosta chose to forge a third way, by incorporating the best of the other approaches. This was a new kind of architecture, which the location\u2019s geographical features and local building techniques into account<\/strong>. It was about the local way of life, specific to that place, as factor in the design.<\/p>\n

Using this perspective, he devoted his life to researching all aspects of Argentina\u2019s climate: the different microclimates, how the weather affects the human body, the amount of daylight time, solar angles and thermal oscillation. The result of all this meticulous research saw the light in his book Vivienda y Ciudad<\/em>, published in 1936, twenty years before the famous Solar Control and Shading Devices<\/strong>, by Olgyay & Olgyay, which is often considered to be the work which founded bioclimatic architecture.<\/p>\n

The climate of Buenos Aires \u2013 the key to its architecture<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In order to create architecture suited to the conditions of a place like Buenos Aires<\/strong>, one has to have an in-depth knowledge of what these are. The city\u2019s climate is similar to that of Los Angeles or Morocco in the northern hemisphere \u2013 it\u2019s closer to the equator than Europe is. In the summer, average daily temperatures vary between 20 and 29 degrees, with winter temperatures ranging between 7 and 10 degrees. However, there\u2019s another important factor to take into account, namely the amount of sunlight, as incident solar radiation is very high.<\/p>\n

\"Edificio
House designed by Wladimiro Acosta, an example of sustainable architecture | Photo Credit: Clar\u00edn<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wladimiro Acosta closely studied incident solar radiation and he designed a singular protection system for his Helios-type homes<\/strong><\/a>. This system consisted of placing a shading device in the form of a two-metre horizontal slab at a height of 5 or 6 metres in order to mitigate the impact of sunlight on the fa\u00e7ade. He was also of the view that the main rooms in a dwelling should face north or east, with vertical slabs also put in place to provide shade from the sunlight coming from the east or west. This approach meant that dwellings would be protected from the summer sun<\/strong> and yet the main rooms on the ground floor would still receive direct sunlight in the winter.<\/p>\n

In the 40s, he also adapted the principles of the Helios system to construct high-rise buildings<\/strong><\/a> in the Palermo Chico area of Buenos Aires. The apartments were oriented in the same way, ensuring that balconies and the main windows would be shaded in the summer and receive sunlight in the winter.<\/p>\n

His system has been tested using modern technology and has been shown to be effective, more than 80 years after he designed it.<\/p>\n

The contemporary city: strategies for bioclimatic architecture in Buenos Aires<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For Florencia Collo, today\u2019s architects face an additional challenge in that they have to design buildings in a much denser urban context than in Acosta\u2019s era. Luckily, in terms of the design of its city blocks, Buenos Aires is rather modular and homogeneous<\/strong>. In Collo\u2019s view, there are three key factors whose impact on buildings must be taken into account:<\/p>\n