There are buildings that age with dignity and there are buildings that age with eloquence. The building Espadrillesthat mass of exposed brick that stands on Regimiento de Patricios Avenue in the neighborhood of Barracksbelongs unequivocally to the second category. Its façades, today invaded by weeds that climb with the stubborn patience of what is in no hurry, keep in every crevice a memory that the metropolitan city has preferred, for too long, to look askance at. But that elusive gaze is about to change: in October 2026, The building that was the nerve and muscle of industrial Argentina will host the 42nd edition of Casa FOAthe most significant exhibition of architecture, interior design and landscaping in the region.
Before celebrating the future, it is advisable to dwell on the past. In 1885, a Basque named Juan Echegaray and a Scottish engineer named Robert Fraser They founded the Argentine Alpargatas Factory on this same soil. What was born as an artisan workshop grew, with the characteristic voracity of industrial capitalism at the end of the 19th century, until it became one of the most extensive and powerful manufacturing complexes in the country. The complex occupied entire blocks on the artery that today bears the name of Patricios, and its presence was not merely economic: it was identity-related. Barracas was, to a large extent, Espadrilles. And Alpargatas was, to a large extent, the Argentina that manufactured, that sweated, that exported.
The architectural language chosen by its builders was not accidental. It was that formula that in the 19th century was as seductive as it was effective: facades of severe classicism —pilasters, arches, baked brick cornices—that gave the industry an image of solidity and permanence, almost of nobility, while the interiors responded to a radically different logic. Large windows, metal structures, wood, spaciousness. Spaces that in another context could have been confused with the halls of the universal exhibitions that fascinated Europe at that time. It was, in short, the aesthetics of the functional elevated to the category of the beautiful by pure accident—or perhaps by the intuition of those builders who knew, without theorizing about it, that the honesty of the materials has its own eloquence.
In the 1930s, the complex expanded at the pace of business expansion, adding new reinforced concrete pavilions that multiplied the minimalist vocabulary: systematized modules, clean lines, an austerity that was no longer that of necessity but that of style. Alpargatas grew on both sides of the avenue and the neighborhood grew with it. Then came the decades of industrial decline, the closure of plants, the deindustrialization that emptied entire neighborhoods of Buenos Aires of their productive meaning.. And the building remained there, resisting, which is what honest constructions know how to do when no one attends to them.
That resistance—physical, material, almost biological—is what makes this case something more than a real estate operation or a seasonal cultural event. The weeds that today cover their facades are not a sign of defeat but, paradoxically, proof of underlying vitality: something like the dream of someone who still breathes. The 1890 brick withstood more than a century of weather, abandonment and neglect without giving way structurally. That is not a minor fact. It is, in the language of architects, the difference between a ruin and a discovery.
The upcoming operation recognizes that distinction. GES Developments, with Fernando Barenboim in front —the same architect who led the reconversion of Molina Ciudad fourteen years ago, on the opposite sidewalk— will approach the restoration of the complex on a scale that deserves attention: 12,765 square meters of lot, a total projected area of more than 58,000 square meters, lofts within the historic building, a gastronomic interior atrium and a careful articulation between the heritage and the new. It is not a cosmetic rehabilitation. It’s an apple transformation.
Before the work begins, Casa FOA will arrive. And that sequence is not accidental: the exhibition, which since its first edition in 1985 has functioned as a revealer of spaces in transition—those that are ceasing to be something to become something else—will find here a setting of exceptional resonance. The 5,700 square meters that visitors will visit will also, inevitably, be a reading of the building: its proportions, its materials, the memory that emanates from its walls. The 35 spaces intervened by architects, interior designers and landscapers will not simply be settings superimposed on a neutral container. They will be a dialogue—sometimes tense, sometimes lyrical—between the present of design and the past of the industry.
Barracas has been described for years as a neighborhood in the process of transformationwith all the ambiguity that that phrase carries. But there are transformations that occur on the surface and there are others that work from the foundations. The enhancement of Palacio Alpargatas belongs to the second category: it is not about installing a specialty cafe where there was previously a warehouse, but rather about returning to the city a piece of its productive architecture that deserves to be inhabited, discussed and admired. The south of Buenos Aires has one of its most powerful arguments in this building. October will highlight it again.
Casa FOA will be held at the Palacio Molina, Barracas, Buenos Aires, during October 2026.
by RN
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