O’Higgins Building

O’Higgins Building is a minimalist residential tower located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, designed by 322A with architecture by Adamo-Faiden and developer Chamber Projects. The project navigates a fundamental tension in urban evolution: how contemporary density can preserve the spatial generosity and connection to nature that defined early twentieth century domestic life. Rather than treating this as an either-or proposition, the architects propose a vertical reconciliation of two distinct architectural lineages that shaped the neighborhood.

Belgrano’s development traces an arc from garden suburb to dense urban district. The original mansions established a particular domestic choreography where interior rooms opened onto wide galleries, creating ambiguous thresholds between enclosed space and landscaped grounds. This sequence dissolved boundaries, allowing inhabitants to occupy both architecture and garden simultaneously. The tower typology that arrived in the 1950s maintained the neighborhood’s relationship with vegetation through a different strategy: free-standing volumes surrounded by greenery, with permeable ground planes that preserved visual and physical continuity with planted areas.

The O’Higgins Building synthesizes these approaches by treating each floor as an iteration of the mansion typology, stacked vertically but maintaining the essential spatial logic. Landscaped galleries wrap each dwelling unit, recreating the same transition sequence the historic houses offered horizontally. This is not simply balconies with planters, but a genuine rethinking of how a tower can internalize garden space as an integral architectural element rather than an amenity.

The envelope strategy amplifies this integration through deliberate visual complexity. A light, reflective curtain wall references the neighborhood’s modernist towers, establishing continuity with mid-century precedent. However, abundant vegetation pushes the glass plane inward from its typical position at the building edge. This displacement fundamentally alters perception: what reads initially as a conventional glass tower reveals itself as a more porous structure where planted surfaces occupy the primary vertical plane. The reflective material captures and multiplies the vegetation, creating layered readings that shift with viewing angle and light conditions.

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