Competition · Mobility · Infrastructure
TRANSPORTATION EXCHANGE SYSTEM
La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2002
The competition called for integrating trains, buses, and heritage. The most costly problem was not formal: accidents, delays, and insurance are the price of mixing passengers and vehicles at the same level. The proposal eliminated it by design.
It reformulated the problem before answering it: if the passenger never set foot in the platform area, everything else changed.
The resulting building is U-shaped. One arm resolves the bus terminal: it rises above the maneuvering yard so that passengers circulate overhead without crossing paths with the vehicles. The other arm resolves the train station. Both run parallel to the heritage building, then join in a wider piece that narrows and enters the historic nave. Without touching it. Without damaging it.
Circulation in La Plata is continuous and one-directional: buses never reverse. Without reverse maneuvers, operating times drop, the risk of accidents is reduced, and insurance costs fall.
The platforms are under the building; ticketing and waiting areas operate on the upper level at +4.50m.
The level change between the two floors is resolved without stairs or elevators. Those solutions force the passenger through the platform area and do not resolve universal accessibility. A system of mobile waiting rooms deposits the passenger directly from the waiting level to their bus: they buy the ticket, check their luggage, say goodbye in the fixed area, and descend in a climate-controlled platform. They never set foot in the operational area.
When the platform descends, the void it leaves becomes an interior courtyard with vegetation. The building breathes every time a bus departs.
- Client Gobernación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
- Location La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Site area 72 000 m2 / 775 002 ft2
- Built area 50 000 m2 / 538 196 ft2
- Design 2002
- Status Proyecto [concurso nacional]
- Architects Oliverio Najmias ⋅ Luis Etchegorry
- Collaborators María Victoria Molina Chamadoira ⋅ Paola Schein ⋅ Sebastián Rodriguez Mamby ⋅ Germán Bustamante ⋅ Federico Garrido ⋅ Gabriel Quipildo Asistentes María Guillermina Rolleri ⋅ Isabel Amiano ⋅ Andrés Anzaldo ⋅ Martín Branca ⋅ Pablo Farinola ⋅ Daniel Nazareno
- Exhibition Mob_Lab, 1 a Bienal de Roterdam (2003)
- Publications Making Cities Work (Reino Unido, 2004) ⋅ l’Arca (Italia, 2003) ⋅ de Architect (Países Bajos, 2003) ⋅ OFX Design (Italia, 2003) ⋅ Suplemento Clarín Arquitectura (Argentina, 2003) ⋅ Diario La Nación (Argentina, 2003)
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