San Ignacio Tourist Information Center / ENNE Arquitectura

Faced with these variables, and after successive budget cuts during the design process, the building is resolved based on the following decisions: A square, void, intermediate between the fast circulation routes and the building. This will be built at a later stage and will serve to host cultural events, craft fairs, and open-air tourism promotions. The building is a parallelepiped of 6x12x6 meters, placed at the highest level of the lot. As if it were a massif, it is “empty” in one part to house the public service program. And it remains “full” in the areas intended for services, housing infrastructure, and where it is necessary to generate passive strategies for attention to the rigorous local climate. Characterized by high temperature, high humidity, and strong solar incidence. The stereotomic image of the building is reinforced by its stone skin. This, made of red grit, is a local stone with good thermal behavior and noble aging. In its heavy image and the chromatism of its surface, the building begins to establish relationships of belonging with the pre-existing architectures: the vestiges, heritage of humanity, of the Jesuit-Guarani complex; and closer in time, to the popular architecture that finds in the sandstone a favorite coating.

In this way, iconicity is built through the emptiness of the square, the abstract form, and the sandstone skin. Thus, the proposed architecture is a cluster of simple, quasi-simplistic decisions that seek to build a synthetic response that addresses all the complexities of the project described.