How many square meters your office needs before you sign

An office does not get its size from the payroll. It gets it from the desks that will be occupied at the same time, plus the rooms around them. An open workstation carries the desk, the chair and the circulation a person needs to get in and out, and that circulation already sits inside the per-desk figure.

The calculation has five parts: open workstations, private offices, meeting rooms, reception, and storage or archive space. On top of that comes a percentage for shared amenities, such as the cafeteria or phone booths. PlataStar’s space calculator uses the ranges below as planning assumptions, not as a legal or architectural standard.

Two details about that calculation. The total runs at the middle of the density range and the result is published with its low and high ends, so what you get is a band rather than one exact figure. And the result leaves out restrooms and the building’s common circulation: meters that exist, but that you will not furnish.

When the team comes in five days a week, each person takes one desk and the math is direct. With hybrid work the desks are shared, and the question changes: how many people sit in on the peak day, not how many people are on the payroll.

The calculator assumes peak days cluster together, and adds 10 points to the share of days each person spends in the office. That gives you the share of the team seated at once.

Example with round numbers: a team of 30 people coming in three days a week asks for 21 seats at once. With two private offices, one meeting room and the calculator’s other default values (reception, light storage and 8 % shared amenities), the total lands around 270 m² at standard density, published as a band of about 260 to 280 m². Between the compact and generous ends, the same office runs from about 200 m² to about 360 m². The band is the value here, not the exact figure.

Remote work has rules of its own. Argentina’s Law 27.555 talks about a telework contract when the job is done fully or partly away from the employer’s premises with digital tools, and it sets no minimum number of remote days. This reference concerns 2026: its repeal by Law 27.802 takes effect on 1 January 2027, so plans reaching that date require review of the applicable employment rules. That is a reason to pick a floor that holds up on the peak day without coming up short if the team starts coming in more often. For small teams, coworking or your own office compares the two routes.

Argentina’s Law 19.587 on workplace hygiene and safety covers every workplace in the country, profit-making or not, and it calls a workplace any place where work is carried out with people present, plus the rooms those people use.

The regulation under that law is Decree 351/79, and its Annex I fixes no minimum square meters per office worker. What it does fix per person is something else.

1. Air. Article 66 pairs the room’s air volume per person with the airflow the ventilation must deliver per person per hour. For sedentary work, 3 m³ of volume call for 43 m³/h, and the required airflow drops to 29, 21, 15 and 12 m³/h as the volume per person rises to 6, 9, 12 and 15 m³.
2. Sanitary fixtures. Article 49 asks for them in proportion to the people working each shift. Up to 5 people, one toilet, one washbasin and one shower with hot and cold water are required; from 6 to 10, one of each per sex; from 11 to 20, the article lists toilets, washbasins, urinals and showers; from there it adds one toilet per 20 people or fraction, one washbasin and one urinal per 10, and one shower with hot and cold water per 20 or fraction.
3. Service rooms. Articles 54 and 55 in Title III regulate premises for occupational medicine (50 m² covered) and hygiene and safety services (30 m²). Decree 1338/96 repealed Titles II and VIII, not these Title III articles, and allows internal or external services. They are not a per-desk sizing rule: a professional should assess which services and premises the establishment needs and any applicable exemptions.

The hygiene and safety legal floor covers air, sanitation and safety, not comfort per desk. In CABA, Building Code article 3.8.6.2.1 sets 12 m² for individual offices and allows 9 m² for offices ancillary or complementary to another main use. A single office room needs a minimum side of 2.80 m; multiple rooms have an alternative subject to area, circulation and accessibility conditions. It refers to the occupancy coefficient in article 3.4.7.2. These are premises and safety requirements, not furniture densities: have a professional check the actual plan and use.

A listing can say 300 m² and be measuring three different things. The Buenos Aires City Planning Code defines its categories in article 1.4.3.

• Covered area (superficie cubierta): every roofed surface whose perimeter is closed, or open on less than 50% of it.
• Semi-covered area (superficie semicubierta): every covered surface whose perimeter is open on at least 50% of it, such as a gallery.
• Uncovered area (superficie descubierta): every surface with no roof.
• Total covered area (superficie cubierta total): the sum of the rooms, mezzanines, intermediate floors, eaves and porches of a building, walls and partitions included, out to the side lines of the lot. Its scope is the building, not necessarily the floor you would occupy; when they coincide, the figures can be equal.

Lease a whole floor and another measure appears: the floor area used for occupancy calculations. Do not automatically treat it as usable furnishing area or as the lease area. Ask for a plan identifying each measure, its exclusions and the part reserved for your company’s exclusive use.

Then come useful area and rentable area. BOMA publishes professional standards for calculating rentable area as a leasing metric; do not assume a local listing follows that standard. In practice, the area you pay for may include a share of the building’s common space. Ask which area sets the rent, what it includes and how it was measured.

On PlataStar, non-compact views can show the covered area and, when the total is meaningfully larger, the total area as a separate fact. Area filters and the price per m² use the covered figure and, when it is not on the listing, the total one; land uses its total area. When you compare two floors, compare them on the same measure. Choosing an office carries on with location, the visit and the lease.

The space calculator turns people and work style into a band of square meters, with a breakdown by room and three density scenarios. The assumptions are printed next to the result.

1. Ask in writing which area the contract fixes: covered, semi-covered, total, or a figure the landlord measures itself, and which plan it is measured on.
2. Ask whether the rent applies to that area or to another one, and whether the building’s common space sits inside the number.
3. Count the desks on the peak day and check them against the plan, leaving room for the meeting rooms, reception and storage.
4. Check that the floor’s restrooms can serve the busiest shift, because the law sizes them per shift.
5. Look at what happens if the team grows or shrinks: the lease sets the area, the use and the term, while hygiene and safety conditions are not negotiable.

With the band of square meters in hand, each visit turns into a check rather than an impression. The space calculator gives you that band in two minutes, with the assumptions in view.