Foster + Partners, working with construction firm, CRIBA S.A. and local architect, BBRCH-Minond, has won the competition to design a new corporate headquarters for the Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Plans for the energy-efficient building, which will occupy an entire city block in the neighborhood of Parque Patricios, echo its park-side setting with landscaped courtyards and shaded walkways and will provide a distinctive new presence for the bank in the city.

The scheme occupies the whole site to create an internal campus of ‘villages’, which are connected by circulation routes and external landscaped patios and are unified by a flowing roof canopy. The entrance plaza is sheltered by the deep overhang of the roof, which is supported by slender pillars. A full-height atrium directs circulation into four tiers of terraced office spaces, all of which have direct views of the park. Based on an eight-meter-square planning grid, the generous light-filled floor plates allow the work spaces to be flexibly planned.