Imagining Argentina.

Many of Foster and Partners' commercial buildings these days involve towers, from New York to Asia to the Middle East and back again. But for the practice's first project in South America, in Argentina, nothing will rise higher than nine storeys and the proposal looks all the better for it. Located in the Buenos Aires Puerto Madero dock district, strict planning rules made the prospect of winning permission for a tall building highly unlikely, so the strategy has been to create a distinctly European sense of place for a development mixing cultural and residential buildings with a pleasingly substantial public realm. The project (called El Aleph, a reference taken from Borges) is the last part of a wider development in the area by the Faena Group, which has created a combination of art, commerce and tourism on a site close to the financial district. Alan Faena, who turned to property development after making a fortune from his fashion label, intends the Foster project to be a 'gift to Buenos Aires', to mark the 200th anniversary of Argentina's independence from Spain in 2010, and to recreate the friendly links between Argentina and the UK which were interrupted by the Falklands war.

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The design accommodates an impeccable mixture of uses and possibilities for events and festivals, without the latter feeling like an imposition on bland commercial space. Project architect Brandon Haw points to the breaking down of scale (these are long buildings even if they are not high) through provision of multiple cores and entrances, and through facades which will constantly change as residents take advantage of apartment layouts where interiors and exteriors blur depending on use and season. Vaulted slabs give generous wall-to-ceiling heights, and cross ventilation is used throughout.

Borges wrote: 'I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness ... The Aleph was probably two or three centimetres in diameter, but universal space was contained within it, with no diminution in size'. Towers unnecessary.