Building out: Uruguay exports architectural services to India and Latin America.

Think "outsourcing" and, not surprisingly, India comes to mind. The subcontinent has been, so far, the place to go for companies looking to buy services from cheaper parts of the world. Call your credit card company to advise on a payment and you'll immediately recognize that nice, welcoming Indian accent. In some industries, however, the tide appears to be turning.

In fact, India is beginning to outsource its own architecture and design work to Uruguayans. Argentina's massive currency default in 2001 bruised neighboring Uruguay's economy. The debacle over the past four years has been traumatic, but one dividend has been that goods and services produced in the country became cheaper and thus more competitive around the world. The country has seen its exports of meat, wood and information technology spike, and now its shipping out architectural brainpower.

Uruguayan architects Carlos A. Ott and Carlos Ponce de Leon recently took on the task of designing a US$175 million software development park in Chennai, India. The project will house 12 buildings and welcome 15,000 workers on a 28-hectare compound. Based on the Zonamerica technology park in Montevideo built for Indias Tata Consultancy Services, it will take four years to complete.

"It will be the largest project that Uruguayan architects have taken on outside of the country, and it will all be designed in Montevideo with Uruguayan technicians and professionals," says Ott, who has worked on projects like the Bastille Opera House in Paris, and jobs as far-flung as Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador; Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina and Germany.

The India software park project will feature a cluster of buildings with two putting greens and tennis, basketball and volleyball courts, as well as a jogging path, says Ponce de Leon, who designed and built the 100-hectare Zonamerica technology and industrial park.

In the 1990s, when the Uruguayan economy was booming, investment flowed into projects ranging from bus terminals to five-star hotels to shopping centers. It was a good run for another Uruguayan firm, Gomez Platero Arquitectos, which designed many of the country's landmarks. Commercial jobs included the Radisson hotel in Montevideo and the Hilton resort in Punta del Este.

When economy went south in 2002, the construction industry plummeted by 50%. Although the outlook wasn't good, company director Martin Gomez Platero knew what strategy he needed to help him navigate troubled waters. "At the end of 1995, I began to study for a masters in business administration in the United States, and I returned convinced that the company had to look to other markets, without neglecting Uruguay," he says.

Gomez Platero Arquitectos looked first to Ecuador, where it beat Argentine, Ecuadoran and Spanish architects for a $40 million contract to redesign a bus station in Guayaquil. It was one of the company's most ambitious proposals, because in addition to the bus terminal, the architects proposed to build a shopping center with a movie theater, supermarket, medical center, hotel and gas stations. "We offered a service that went beyond the architectural," he says. "We added the experience of a Uruguayan accounting company, Luis E. Lecueder, which specializes in administrating shopping centers, offering a business proposal for the shopping center's mix."

In Uruguay, Lecueder manages five shopping centers, one of which also functions as a bus terminal. The company already had experience administrating projects in Asuncion, Paraguay, and Cordoba, Argentina. Gomez Plateros invitation to participate in the Guayaquil deal seemed like a good opportunity to extend its reach beyond the Southern Cone.

Guillermo Gomez Platero, the architectural firm's founder and Martin's grandfather, says that due to expansion abroad the company has hired 30 new employees, including engineers, graphic designers and drafters.

Their architects have worked with Uruguayan and Ecuadoran professionals of various disciplines, says Antonio Rava, manager of the Ecuador project. "Travel becomes an important issue when the objective is winning over foreign markets," he says. "We don't live in Guayaquil, and we made more than 15 trips for planning meetings between Uruguayan professionals and Ecuadoran consultants."

Culture. To succeed at exporting this type of service, it's important to understand the local culture and weather. Architecture takes these aspects into account. For example, the Guayaquil project includes drainage features to handle heavy rains typical of the El Nino weather phenomenon. The design also incorporates reinforcements to withstand earthquakes, something that you wouldn't need in Uruguay, Raya says, because the country is not prone to earthquakes.

Martin Gomez Platero is convinced that international markets are part of the company's strategy. "We're studying proposals for shopping centers, bus stations and hotels in Peru, El Salvador, Chile and Mexico:' says Gomez Platero. "The market is bigger now. The tremendous crisis that Uruguay experience helped us expand."