Metal Facades in Buenos Aires: How to Provide Privacy and Openness at the Same Time?

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Siting a building in a city is no easy task. The quest for isolation and privacy within a complex, heterogeneous, and constantly changing urban space creates a dual condition during the design process. How can an urban building offer privacy and openness at the same time? Consequently, there arises a need for various control mechanisms to mediate between exterior and interior spaces, filtering sound, screening views, managing intimacy, and ensuring anonymity without losing the connection to the city.

Particularly in Buenos Aires, where constructions are typically developed on infill lots, the design of the street-facing facade can even define a building's raison d'être. In these cases, the facade is the only plane capable of expressing the building's identity to the urban space.