Organized by the Central Society of Architects, the call for entries has been launched for the National Ideas Competition for the Saldías District, in collaboration with the Secretariat of Urban Development of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires and sponsored by the Argentine Federation of Architect Organizations (FADEA). Promoted by Autopistas Urbanas S.A., the competition aims to secure urban design proposals to transform and renew the site located in the decommissioned section of the Illia Highway, along with its immediate urban surroundings.
As part of the Buenos Aires waterfront revitalization plan, the designated competition sector plays a key role in connecting the city and the river. In recent years, the City Government has been working on its relationship with the Río de la Plata waterfront, guided by the guidelines of the Urban Environmental Plan and the Accessible Waterfront section of the Urban Planning Code. The Buenos Aires Coast Agenda includes the Youth District Law, the Costanera Norte Master Plan, the Parque Salguero Competition, and Costa Urbana, among others.
Given its proximity to the Río de la Plata, the “Saldías District” urban regeneration proposal aims to repurpose a section along the Illia Highway currently used for toll booths. The goal is to introduce new uses that revitalize both the site and its surroundings, creating a new area for interaction and recreation through a network of waterfront public spaces integrated into the urban fabric, designed to address planning, landscape, and environmental challenges. Out of 26 proposals submitted, the jury awarded the following prizes and honorable mentions, listed in no particular order. Discover them below.
Shared First Prize
Project description submitted by the authors. Buenos Aires's relationship with its river is like the myth of the eternal return: every generation has re-debated this condition. The vast archive of projects and visions—whether built, demolished, or left unfinished—perhaps represents the most significant spatial transformations, both real and imaginary, in the city's history.
At the same time, looking from south to north through the city's developmental history, one can trace a strip of infrastructural land that remained outside the public realm, yet was essential to other layers of the country's urban, productive, and economic machinery. These infrastructures became insurmountable barriers to reaching the water. However, shifting paradigms in transportation, production, and logistics are now transforming them, presenting an opportunity to rethink them as key components of the city's urban future.
Reorganizing these infrastructural zones would allow us to consolidate and optimize productive areas like the port, enabling citizens to reclaim the relationship with nature that has been lost over recent centuries.
The overall strategy is to rethink the urban connection to the river by sequentially converting the urban pieces that make up this strip. Originally built as infrastructure, these sites can be progressively relocated, transformed, and opened up over time. This strip, which includes the former toll booth area, represents one of the most complex contradictions in the city's evolution. Yet, it is precisely where design visions proposing an unprecedented urban future can take root, calling for original projects that can shape a new phase of visions for the city's future and its relationship with the river.
The project proposes viewing the former toll booth site as a strategically important element in shaping a metropolitan vision. This approach allows us to imagine new ways of reconnecting the city with the riverfront by reclaiming and transforming existing sites with strong urban potential and established cultural and social identities. The focus is not on designing individual parts, but on designing the relationships between them.
Shared First Prize
Project description submitted by the authors. The challenge for this entire sector lies in bringing the city closer to the river, reclaiming and enhancing the natural and semi-natural landscape while overcoming existing urban barriers. Within the broader waterfront plan, the challenge for this specific competition site is to inject urban life and introduce green spaces and landscaping into an area dominated by heavy road, port, and warehousing infrastructure.
The area is defined by its massive scale, confusing layouts, noise, high speeds, and freight transport. The remaining pockets of land with intervention potential are merely residual spaces left behind by these transit networks—oddly shaped, non-standard plots marked by discontinuity. The area is filled with urban clutter, inaccessible interstitial spaces, and areas under viaducts that are either occupied by informal settlements or left as vacant lots used as dumping grounds for industrial waste and various materials.
Consequently, the competition centers on a plot of atypical shape and dimensions, left behind after the toll booths became obsolete with the implementation of the “free flow” tolling system. This unusually long and narrow site—approximately 300 meters long by 60 meters wide—presents an opportunity to connect with the waterfront and the Youth District at the edge of Parque Salguero. It serves as a link to the adjacent plot housing the Cristo Obrero parish, while simultaneously addressing the relationship between the proposed programming and its most critical edge along the Illia Highway.
The Río de la Plata Waterfront Sector Plan of the Urban Environmental Plan, the BA Costa plan, the U14 Youth District, and the Costanera Norte Master Plan all align on the historical necessity of bringing the city closer to the river. Integrating active day and night urban life with a series of connected parks, natural, and semi-natural areas to form a green and blue infrastructure network represents a major opportunity for this sector of the city.
Various utility and transport infrastructures form major urban barriers that hinder progress in this direction. Since the city's functioning largely depends on them, we must rethink the solutions to be implemented along the approximately 17 kilometers of waterfront. It is essential to create transverse connections across these barriers, which run in successive strips. We must look for gaps where the urban fabric can reach the riverbank, design pathways of high scenic and programmatic value, and integrate underutilized spaces in this intermediate zone between the city and its coast back into the urban fabric.
For these connections or “bridges” to make sense, they must hold equal value at both ends: the point of departure is just as important as the destination. Both must be distinct places; both must be part of the city. We must start from the formal, consolidated city and arrive at a place of high environmental, landscape, urban, and architectural value that seamlessly becomes part of that city. The “bridge” itself—whether an actual bridge or simply a pathway—should not merely be a tool to connect point A to point B, but a destination in its own right, where the journey is enriched by its scenic and environmental quality.
Third Prize
Project description submitted by the authors. The site's proximity to the Río de la Plata offers a unique opportunity to connect the city with the river—a long-standing and elusive aspiration. What could be done on an irregular, uninhabited plot, surrounded by port infrastructure and highways, and constrained by the airport's takeoff flight path, which limited building height to 17 meters?
With residential use ruled out due to the aforementioned factors (noise, isolation, height restrictions, and subsequent low density), an inviting public program emerged as the best option for the site. Music and sports events are booming worldwide, and Buenos Aires has a limited supply to meet this demand. A 10,000-spectator arena on this site offers excellent accessibility, optimizes the 1,000-car parking capacity required by the brief, acts as a major public draw, and manages large-scale crowd entry and exit without causing disruption.
The existing terrace/plaza of the public television building serves as the starting platform for an elevated pathway just five blocks long. This path connects Figueroa Alcorta and Tagle with the arena plaza, and from there extends 200 meters to end at a viewpoint over Basin F, which does not interfere with port operations.
The shared-use bridge (for pedestrians, cyclists, and minibuses) crossing the Retiro rail yard features recreational and sports stations to liven up the journey. Built over the roofs of existing warehouses, they do not impact ground footprint. Parking, accessible from both local streets and the highway, reduces traffic entering the city and is complemented by a park-and-ride system with an electric bus connecting the competition site to the existing Facultad de Derecho subway station.
Additionally, the proposal suggests landfilling obsolete basins in Puerto Nuevo to create usable land for storage, which would free up current sites and generate public green spaces along the riverfront.
Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)
This article was written by Agustina Iñiguez. The translation is powered by AI.
