IQON Quito

At 130m tall (426 ft) IQON is Quito’s tallest building - a 390,000 sq ft mixed-use residential building, including 215 residences, commercial units, office spaces, and a variety of amenities.

The tower is designed as a vertical community, and an extension of the neighboring La Carolina Park, which conceptually continues up onto the building facade. The building features a notable curved corner, wrapped by terraces that continue around the building's perimeter with views of the park, city and the Pichincha volcano.

IQON’s architectural identity is defined by its elemental façade; the raw, exposed concrete simultaneously functions as the building’s structure. Individual ‘boxes’ are stacked 32 floors high and rotated to provide the best possible views while simultaneously creating terraces for the apartments. Celebrating native trees and plants, the building integrates greenery wherever possible to take advantage of the temperate climate and ecology of Ecuador – the country with the most plant species per square meter in the world.
Sculptural tree planters that are integrated into the architecture of the building. The planters become a unique concrete sculpture inside the apartments – creating space for the root zone of the tree for the apartment terrace above – while transforming the façade of the building into a celebration of Quito’s verdant biodiversity.

IQON is the first mixed-use building in Quito to have an EDGE certification – a green building standard rewarding conscious use of building materials and sustainable strategies.

Lorenz Krisai was the project design lead for IQON during his time at BIG.