Edificio Safico, a Beacon of Modernity in Buenos Aires

The population of Buenos Aires exploded at the beginning of the 20th century, and the city had to undergo radical transformation to adapt to the changes. The Safico building, from the top of its pyramid, witnessed these transformations, heralding a new era of modernity.

Buenos Aires in the 30’s, a City on the Verge of Modernity

Between 1870 and the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Buenos Aires experienced a massive population influx. Immigrants, mainly Italians and Spaniards, flooded into the Argentine capital, totally changing the city’s social and urban balance. In 1920, more than half the inhabitants of Buenos Aires were born outside the country, and the city was faced with a critical density problem. In 1925, the Buenos Aires City Council launched a plan to regulate and reform the city. One of its main objectives was to relieve congestion in the city centre by promoting a new zoning system. In other words, the creation of new districts while maintaining a form of balance in relation to the historical shape of the city, in particular the urban grid.
The plan estimated that the capital’s population would reach 2.5 million (which it did). This meant that there would have to be major transfers of population between the different areas of the city. Transport had to be extended and the road infrastructure had to link the city’s various economic centres. This development plan heralded the major works that would be undertaken in the historic centre in the 1930s. These included plans to extend Avenida 9 de Julio (which was to become the widest avenue in the world), crowned by the construction of the obelisk in 1937. The avenues of Corrientes, Santa Fe and Cordoba, for example, were widened by demolishing numerous buildings.

The Edificio SAFICO, a building sculpted by urban evolution

This era of urban transformation saw the construction in 1932 of a building that embodied this modernisation, the Edificio SAFICO. Right in the centre of Buenos Aires, along Avenida Corrientes, the SAFICO company wanted to build a edificio de renta (Apartment building for rent) that could function as a hotel, offices and flats. Avenida Corrientes, which was beginning to be widened, imposed new municipal rules on new construction. The new buildings had to be built behind the building line, to follow the new course of the avenue. The general building regulations also imposed a height limit of 40m on the facade of buildings, in order to ensure a proportionate balance with the 25m width of the Avenida Corrientes.

Swiss engineer Walter Moll won the SAFICO competition to build the edificio de renta. Taking into account the urban constraints, he managed to maximise the available surface area and volume of the land to build a 92 metre high tower. The facade facing Avenue Corrientes is almost symmetrical, regular and 10 storeys high, with a width of almost 28 metres. On the back of this rectangular volumeh is built a 26-storey tower that ends in a 6-storey pyramid. This stepped pyramid gives the building a form reminiscent of a temple of modernity overlooking the city. The last three habitable levels form a single triplex designed for one of SAFICO’s directors who lived there. Although the entrance hall features art deco details, the regular façade and the monumental simplicity of its massing are symptomatic of the rationalist imagery emerging in the city at the time. The Safico Building would later be joined by the Kavanagh (1936), a true emblem of the Porteña’s rationalist architecture, and the Cine Gran Rex (1937) on the same avenue Corrientes.

The SAFICO building was the second tallest building in the city and the country when it was built. A veritable beacon in the city, it was shaped by the urban planning constraints that would transform Buenos Aires. Although it adopts the zigurat pyramid shape, symbolically it prefigures a new modernity, a point of reference in a city in the throes of change.