Nordelta Urban Design & Development Project Buenos Aires is the fifty-nine article on projects from practice. The district was built on swampy land after the developer shaped it into a series of lakes surrounded by grass and trees, making the place attractive for people seeking a calm life. Nordelta is a small development located in Tigre Partido in Buenos Aires 30 km away from the capital of Argentina. Nordelta is a gated community including 9 neighborhoods founded in 1999. The site is located in established green space areas with a lot of open large-scale farms on the outskirts of the site. Nordelta has been referred to as “the Miami of Argentina”. See Figure 1, the Nordelta urban design & development project Buenos Aires from Google.
Nordelta urban design & development Project location and Urban Context
Italian engineer Giuliano Astolfoni invented the concept of Nordelta. In 1972 he set out to transform his idea to build a new city, from scratch an urban nucleus “like La Plata”, as a private development. He bought a field 30 kilometers from Buenos Aires, in the northern zone, and presented his project to the authorities of the Province of Buenos Aires. The Nordelta development process and the creation of the master plan took 20 years to realize. Then, through a mutual friend, he found the perfect partner: Eduardo Costantini. Together they built the most ambitious project of their lives: the “city-town” they called Nordelta.
Because Nordelta previously consisted of below flood level plain and a swampy land the two people (developers) targeted to elevate the land above the flood plain. The adjacent river and water table and soil water gave the development advantage of supplying water to the development. The developer constructed Nordelta development as the first of its kind in Argentina’s capital. See Figure 2 the development from the inside view.
Nordelta Urban Design & Development Project Causes of development
The developers composed of two persons an Italian architect and the owner of the land joined to create a development company to create the neighborhood and to start collecting investors after the master plan approval in 1998. The Tigre district adjacent land is a shanty land including poor community and area of poor quality of life. The inventor of the idea purchased the land due to the lower cost of land than other areas. As mentioned earlier the Nordelta land is a former swampy land adjacent to a river, adding to that the high level of water table made it fit for the development concept.
The area needed a development that would bring in new infrastructure and residential and commercial development to enhance the income of the poor community in the adjacent land. Adding to that increases the opportunity of raising land prices to the advantage of the shanty homeowners in the area. The completion of Nordelta development will give the area an advantage of accommodating high-quality urban development and encourage developers to construct something similar.
Nordelta Urban Design & development concept
Nordelta’s urban design and development concept includes creating 22 neighborhoods of different densities. The master plan design included educational facilities at all levels, retail centers, offices for high-end enterprises, marina and docking facilities near the river Lujan, and all amenities for the predicted 120 thousand inhabitants of the future.
All the houses are organized around small lakes connected and created by soil movement. All plots are about 800 M2 integrated into the green landscape originally existing and created water lakes to have a sense of being close to nature looking to water and birds. Residents of Nordelta development can enjoy water sports and fitness facilities. The urban designer designed the buildings raised 2m above ground water level to give the same advantages as the small houses surrounding the lakes.
The master plan includes specific rules and regulations regarding building heights, material use, and setbacks. The development and developer invented the idea of having a designed master plan and selling plots for investors that can commission an architect either to proceed with construction and approval or redesign the plot as per the owner’s demand. See Figure 3 the Nordelta urban design and development master plan.
Nordelta urban design and development effect on modern urban design and development projects
In many countries in the Middle East, I have witnessed the recycling and repeated ideas invented by the Nordelta developers. At the beginning of 2006 development created by a Gulf country to include luxury villas in the Arab gulf sea that halted by the developer several times due to lack of funds or global crisis. The idea was developed to include buildings in many of the developments in the country (UAE) that simulate the Nordelta urban design and development created nearly 60 years ago. Figure 4 shows one of these developments including buildings surrounding an artificial lake.
After the global crisis and the bubble in the real estate market exploded many Arab locals lost interest in buying properties in these developments due to its high price. The developers adopted the idea of Nordelta development of pooling plots to investors and buyers to build their preferred type of house and buildings. Nordelta development idea was adopted and is still used by main developers to attract buyers and investors to purchase plots in their development to this date.
Nordelta’s urban design and development project was not only a successful development in all measures of social, economic, political, and environment in Argentina but its influence and creative ideas affected many developers in the world in general and the Middle East and Arab gulf region.
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