Past and present of the IBM Mexico office Building
An emblematic, iconic and innovative building of the Seventies. It was at the time the materialization of the ideals of a company: efficiency, functionality and effectiveness. Now, more than 30 years later, his story continues along with his architects ' dream of someday seeing the original project complete.
The economic policies of the 1970s opened the way in the country to a considerable increase in the number of corporate buildings that housed companies. These same policies led to the emergence of different genres in this area, such as franchises. This is the case of IBM, a company that at that time found a higher growth in the hand of the so-called computer boom.
Founded in 1914 in the United States, it arrived in Mexico only in 1927, although for those years, its machines did not have much to do with the computer services that it would offer years later, since they included industrial scales, chronometers and even meat cutters. What the catapulted to stardom, in the last decades of the twentieth century, was to have offered to the market the first personal computer with which it opened way for the technological companies to conquer the world.
But the "blue giant" has not only left its mark in Mexico because of the type of services they offered for so long, but for the constructions they raised to house their offices, research centers, design and other activities related to their Bouquet. Before IBM's facilities moved to the Silicon Valley in the El Salto region, Jalisco, the headquarters of IBM Mexico were scattered throughout Mexico City, but it was just at the beginning of the decade, in the year of 1970 when the directors of The company decided to centralize several of them in a single building.
The terrain chosen for this construction measured 3778 m2 and was located at the head of Apple of the streets Mariano Escobedo, Champs Elysées and Rincón del Bosque. This space was at the confluence of important avenues and could be seen from different angles, which was also convenient for the company that at the time was trying to attract as much attention as possible to its new facilities.
IBM's buildings in other countries had been built with strict quality parameters and in Mexico this would not be the exception. In addition, according to the company's requests, the building had to show an optimal balance between economy, quality, appearance and functionality, same values that IBM handled in their products and services as in their day to day. To all these demands was added that the elaboration of the project was to be carried out in a very short time because this was part of the policies of efficiency of the company.
It was the first time that a building of this corporation would be built by a group of architects who were not Americans and this added more pressure to those who were in charge of elaborating it. Although the panorama was complicated, in just nine weeks, the group formed by the architects Augusto H. Álvarez, Enrique carral and Héctor Meza, studied the architectural program, made the conceptual design and the Executive project. But more than a disadvantage, the architects managed to take advantage of the limited time with which they counted and therefore proposed in the project a series of elements of quick manufacture and assembly.
The result was a building of horizontal volume in seven levels with ground floor and an eighteen-storey tower with a square in front, which was not realized at the time for economic reasons and because only with one of the buildings enough to satisfy the demand of ESPA Cio. The technology used in it was avant-garde and many of these advances were created directly in the architect's workshop for specific purpose for this building, as happened with the case of the Acro dividing panels, which were modular and Removable, subject to the ceiling and floor consisting of a metallic structure covered with polystyrene drywall as insulator, which were used to divide the interior spaces.
This converted the building into an example of flexibility because of the high degree of feasibility of internal transformation of its spaces not only in the area of the offices, but also in the bathrooms, which could be dismantled if necessary. In addition, these offices were the first in Latin America to incorporate a computer IBM 360, which occupied almost all the lower part of the building, but certainly made it one of the most modern of Mexico in technological question.
Another element of interest, and which fulfilled the guideline of economy posed from the beginning, was the use of reinforced concrete, material that since the fifties was put to the test by different architects to experience its possibilities Structural and plastic. In this building, the concrete turned out to be a key piece both for the structure and for the aesthetics, because by allowing a deep depth of the vains, an interesting game of Shadows and Chiaroscuro was generated in the façade, giving it a very peculiar distinctive to This outfit.
The architect's workshop also carried out the integral interior design project. The furniture was made, the signage, the selection of the works to be hung, the rugs, accessories and others, which shows the way in which a building became the integral work of an architect or a group of architects: it was cared for to the minimum Detail, especially when it was a very meaningful work that would be the center of attention of many national and international viewpoints. The work was completed in the year of 1972 and now the property is catalogued in the patrimonial zone of Polanco because it was built by Augusto H. Álvarez.
In 2014, 42 years after it was built, the proposal was presented to complete the original project and finally build the eighteen-level tower that never arose. As was to be imagined, the proposal caused controversy, voices in favor and against were raised at the time. The company GICSA would be in charge of completing the project, which meant building a priori patrimony, return to the origins, return to that beginning in which it was projected and that for reasons outside the architect, was not carried out, opportunity rather rare because they are Few times when you can see finished an unfinished project.
In spite of everything, architects and specialist in the subject agree that it is a success to complete the project of 1970 and to give life to the tower of eighteen floors that would rise in the area that occupied the building like parking, besides integrating also the square that accompanies it ABA, achieving in this way a space of contemplation, rest and respite in front of the complicated bustle of the avenues that frank it. In the same way, it would articulate a space of itself important in that area of the city given the buildings that are around it, like the case of the Hotel Camino Real or the Club Chapultepec. From what we have seen, the construction of the tower is taking place and hopefully the result is what everyone glimpses and what the architect expected of his project.
by Paulina Martínez Figueroa