Estación de servicio Echeverría y Paseo Peatonal
The project was selected as the winner of the competition organised by the client to design the comprehensive redevelopment of an entire city block in Buenos Aires. The competition brief called for a strategic rethinking of the concept of a service station, complementing the functions traditionally associated with refuelling, vehicle maintenance and a retail outlet with an expansion of services for a wide range of users, integrating new technologies and new paradigms of sustainability and community engagement. The project interpreted this brief by proposing a square with services organised into a network of nodes that provide support infrastructure both for the countless activities carried out by walkers, runners and cyclists along the public green corridor, and to support the strategic link between the city’s inner fabric and the motorway network leading to the suburban areas on the city’s northern riverbank.
On this highly active site, an extensive gallery is constructed, which integrates with the continuity of the parks’ tree cover, now including a large artificial shade structure capable of accommodating a variety of facilities that support and stimulate multiple activities on very diverse scales. Whilst the parks, the new square and the gallery and its shade define a stable organisation, underpinned by the quality of the site as a meeting place and supply hub, the individual programmes are arranged with a logic designed to adapt to changing energy and commercial paradigms. The building as a whole integrates into the landscape with a distinctive form that nevertheless complements the sequence of facilities which, from their very conception, bring life to this chain of parks and riparian ecosystems.
The gallery is a long-span concrete structure supporting a green roof, conceived as an ecological patch to reintroduce specific plant communities native to the Pampas and Espinal ecoregions, which were displaced by the landscaping model of the 19th and 20th centuries. This initiative establishes an urban micro-reserve that encourages the reintroduction of animal and plant species back into the city, integrating them into the flow of biodiversity within a favourable corridor serving as an intermediate point between the protected riverside ecosystem at Ciudad Universitaria and its upstream continuation, and the Central Area Ecological Reserve downstream. This native landscape also brings substantial improvements to the views from neighbouring residential buildings and to take-off and landing manoeuvres from Aeroparque, whilst offsetting the heat island effects of the road surfaces—an effect further mitigated by the provision of shade.
The planned activities are organised by positioning the service station facing Avenida Alcorta, concentrating the heaviest traffic flow and manoeuvres within a strip framed by two enclosed volumes and its connection to the public square. On one side, the food and beverage outlets and collaborative workspaces extend towards Calle Juramento and the neighbouring square.
On the other side, vehicle services and administration are situated, confining the refuelling area to a secure zone facing Echeverría Street. On the side opposite the avenue, an open passageway moves away from the noise and creates a safe pedestrian zone that crosses the block, connecting the two side streets and facilitating the continuity of the parks, whilst providing numerous specific amenities for this walkway (drinking fountains for people and pets, rest areas, bicycle repair and inflation points, showers and changing rooms, exhibitions, charging points for personal devices, tables for al fresco dining, etc.). This general layout, which strategically manages the proximity and spacing between uses, simultaneously integrates them into a unified public space defined by a continuous paving surface, supporting planters, lighting and facilities. Concrete columns are installed there, each capable of supporting a circular module comprising a capital and slab. Their variable arrangement allows them to be brought closer together to achieve stability and rigidity, or spaced out appropriately to shape the covered, semi-covered and open spaces of this square for shared, low-speed mobility, with selective priorities guided locally by kerbs, bollards or planters. The new botanical scheme for this site combines the recovery, transplantation and incorporation of trees, proposing a continuity with Thays’ historic project for Tres de Febrero Park, adding trees from Argentina’s Chaco region with a staggered and dynamic flowering pattern.
The enclosed spaces are formed by two volumes of modular joinery—transparent, translucent or opaque—which surround the spaces, forming flat facades with convex edges encircling columns. Their variations integrate, within a highly continuous system, the different degrees of thermal, acoustic and visual comfort suited to each situation. The space defined between the envelope and the roof edge also varies to create semi-covered and open areas where expansions are located, activating all the facades and providing the station-square with well-distributed, lively activities.
The catering area is organised within a space surrounding an open kitchen, designed to heighten interest and make all food preparation processes transparent, with an interface between production and consumption opening onto a double-height hall. This spacious interior is integrated via a hall with a larger and more varied area, featuring communal tables and seating areas with armchairs and low tables surrounding a service hub, and linked by a staircase to the collaborative workspaces on the upper floor. The mezzanine is a steel deck slab and metal beam structure suspended by tension rods from the primary concrete structure, surrounded by low wooden fronts that incorporate air conditioning and mechanical ventilation systems and continue below as sound-absorbing ceilings. Informal workspaces and some services are arranged on this structure, including meeting rooms with more controlled environments.
The volume housing vehicle services and administrative areas also features a suspended metal mezzanine, which is removed on one side to
create a double-height mechanical workshop space, designed as an open, integrated front in line with the increasing technical sophistication of this service. Moulded skylights are incorporated into both mezzanines, bringing natural light into the centre of the enclosed spaces.
The project’s strategy for air conditioning, ventilation, water management and construction technologies is comprehensively and strategically geared towards improving urban and environmental quality through a design that is both innovative and sustainable.
