Unilever Paraguay

Location: Villa Elisa, Paraguay
Area: 44,132 SF
Year: 2001
Role: Designer
Team: Gabinete de Arquitectura
Solano Benitez, FAIA
Luis Ayala, AIA
Alberto Marinoni
Adriana Sbetlier
Silvia Ortiz
Photography: Enrico Cano
Leonardo Finotti
Luis Ayala, AIA

PARALLEL CHRONICLES... OF CONTEMPORARY HEROES

The stories, those we tell or we are told – for a magical metamorphosis - become ours when we are able to remember them. Remembering allows a possession and a belonging to all that has happened and has been captured by our volatile interest. In a memorable story of the Paraguayan folklore lives a character called Peru Rimá Caso. It is told that in 1983, when the immigrant and ubiquitous Peru travelled to New York for psychotherapeutical reasons, he was lucky enough to have met and have as a chronicler of his misfortunes as a world citizen the famous Woody Allen. The American filmmaker portraited him in the most trustworthy way possible - maintaining him in a meticulously anonymity - in a documentary film entitled Zelig: The Human Chameleon. Zelig achieves fame by being endowed with unique characteristics, developing a physical capacity of ubiquity that transmutes the human chameleon as a poetic metaphor into a descriptive statement. He reaches the remarkable awareness that the best strategy for adapting is always, the use of this very resource.

The multinational enterprise Lever is one of the representative companies of this way of thinking, as different trade markets are infiltrated with the presentation of varied products. Rehearsing in different places, with specific products and new alternatives that are at the same time competitors, the continuity or disappearance of any one of them depends on how much the product adapts to foster a market

Research for its headquarters centered on this idea of changeability and how to produce façade panels at an economical price. The project grew out of an architecture competition based on the criteria of project and price for the rehabilitation of a section of a derelict factory as the corporation headquarters.

Given the heat in Paraguay with 45 to 47 °C daily at this latitude, creating shade is a big issue, and to do this with the traditional techniques of brick building would have made the proposal unfeasible. So we had to develop a system of prefabricated ceramic panels, using the ground and gravity as allies. Once we got the panels, we devised a sequence in which they were to be installed, with the same logic used for building bridges, making each part once erected support the next.

This approach, looking at the materials as matter, enabled us to image new forms with the parts we already had, regardless of standard protocols. It ensured the new techniques will be able to respond to new stresses never achieved before in traditional building.