Article title

By Hugo Melo

The Vista Tower Buenos Aires. Case of Deep and Complex Excavation in Urban Area

Authors

Author 1

Author 2

Author 3

Author 4

The Vista Tower is a building project under construction in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a 36-storery tower for offices and residences, built on a structure composed of 5 underground and 2 above-ground levels, reaching depths of 18.50 meters at the excavation works. The project presents many different constraints all over its perimeter: the excavation is surrounded by buildings with heights ranging from 4 up to 14 storeys. The excavation is located at ten meters from the metro tunnels and the Scalabrini Ortiz metro station of the Line D of the Buenos Aires metro network. The stratigraphic geotechnical profile shows soils from the Pampeano formation which contains silts and clays with variable levels of cementation, very common all around the city. All these factors make this excavation one of the deepest and most challenging in recent years in Buenos Aires. This project is a landmark in the construction of large excavations in Buenos Aires, because it is a leading case for the enforcement of the updated code for excavations of the City (Code of building of the city of Buenos Aires; Buenos Aires Parliament. (2013), Law 4580). After approval of this law, the use of temporary anchors crossing the boundaries of the property is allowed, provided the neighbours are informed and that all safety provisions are taken. In this paper we describe the support methods and the construction procedures employed in the excavation, along with their evolution and adjustmene after field observation are presented.