The proposal facilitates a form of comfort and private intimacy, by having one home per floor with views of the four orientations and without conditions of location of the kitchen and bathroom facilities, at the same time it aims to blur the limits between content and container, since reinforced concrete walls are both morphological and structural definers.
ICONO Tower by Est Arquitectura. Courtesy of Est Arquitectura.
Project description by Est Arquitectura
Of 140 meters of height, it is the tallest tower in Paraguay, and its emblematic image has become a referential landmark of the city.
The slender volume with liberated edges is defined by red planes that give the building its image of lightness, contrasting with the massive landscape of the buildings that make up the Asunción skyline.
Located at the head of the historic center of Asunción, in a traditional mixed-use neighborhood that houses embassies, cultural centers, residential and office buildings, the building modifies the usual occupation of land to the limit of the permitted percentages, to, with an occupation minimum of 25%, achieve with the same coefficient of construction, a height that doubles that of the Asunción skyline.
The result is an atypical profile for the city center, characterized by compact and wide high-rise buildings that variegate its urban landscape.
The tower thus assumes its vocation as a landmark with a diaphanous presence, identified by independent planes with freed corners, virtually defining the volume and providing diagonal views of the landscape.
ICONO Tower by Est Arquitectura. Photograph by Leonardo Mendez.
These red planes contrast with the dominant green of Asunción, sealing its leading presence as a beacon of the historic center and the bay.
Its apartments are lofts with open floor plans, defined as high-rise plots, open to the interpretation of their owners and architects who intervene.
This solution, freed from functional preconceptions, modifies the elements of traditional real estate investment analysis, relegating the study of surfaces, programs and rigid social characterizations, to prioritize values of efficiency, flexibility, security and decentralized services of the area of each home.
The proposal resolved in a total open floor plan without location conditions or bathroom and kitchen facilities, with one unit per floor, with views of the 4 quadrants, proposes a form of comfort and intimacy, open to the interpretation of its inhabitants.
ICONO Tower by Est Arquitectura. Courtesy of Est Arquitectura.
The concept of flexibility supported by the liberation of space, the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies into everyday life, and the decentralization of services in the housing area, make up the conceptual axis in which the design is developed.
The symbiosis between structural and landscape solution synthesizes the proposal, absolutely blurring the limits between architecture and structure, since the vertical planes that define its morphology are also structural: Very thick reinforced concrete screens that absorb the efforts of its unprecedented proportion in height of 1:10.
The building summarizes the values proposed to its inhabitants, combining them with the use of the best views of the city, the river and the green horizon characteristic of the capital of Paraguay.
His reasons go beyond real estate performance calculations to celebrate what Isak Dinesen teaches us in “Out of Africa”: “The world has been made to be seen from above”.
