The densification of the city implies an inescapable paradox: to allow more people to live in it, it is necessary to affect something of what was already there. Thus, in consolidated neighborhoods with good services, the new mass living will always compete with the possibility of having left everything as it was. This project is an opportunity to discuss this condition from the point of view of architecture, without leaving aside the other aspects of a problem with many edges.

In the first instance, the challenge for the office was not yet defined: to experiment and add value to a large volume already defined by a preliminary real estate project that genuinely sought to maximize the constructability of the scheme.

The volume in question was required to be “massive” in more than one aspect: in its physical condition, the project had to be conceived as a single concentrated mass of 25 floors, conditioned by the permitted slopes and shadows. On the other hand, in its human condition, the project had to respond to a high demand from a certain age and socioeconomic sector that was leading a real mass migration to the sector, with 424 apartments (mostly of 35 m2). And in quantitative terms, the figures that shaped the volume were also large, both in terms of money and square meters as well as the number of clients (or inhabitants).

Faced with this reality, it was decided to exacerbate the massiveness of the volume through the geometric control of its openings and balconies which, in some way, always represent the individuality of the occupant. Previous experience with projects of this type proved that the differences would be unconsciously externalized in the color of the curtains. Within the grid, the domestic life of its occupants would create a mosaic of changing colors on a larger scale.

In an attempt to complement that coming chromatic composition, massive and involuntary, the muted surfaces of the tower were used as a canvas for individual artistic expression. Unlike what is usually expected of such a project, the ornamentation would not be volumetric but pictorial. The resulting geometric composition was conditioned by the discourse between the massive and the particular; the individual and the group; the part and the whole.

In its current state, the user-inspired façade operation - part of a collaborative work with the Estanpintando collective - invests the mathematical and rentier matrix of the tower with artistic intention. The exercise pursues singularity, trying to build an urban landmark in justifiable terms for the client.

As a counterpoint to the massive, the volume disappears in its relationship with the sidewalk, opening its courtyards to the passerby and giving it a more intimate and closer scale.

- p. 132 - 140. ARQ Editions number 98, Massivity.