amputation and graft vol. 2 amputation :
BUE NOS AIR ES 1
A cura di Alejandra Esteve, Alexis Schachter & Anna Serio
Preface This book is part of a three-book publication that took form during the 21st edition of the Wave Summer Workshop at the IUAV University in Venice. It aims to summarise and collect the work of the 81 students in the WS_17 workshop led by Arch. Alexis Schachter, together with Alejandra Esteve and Anna Serio. The idea of the workshop was to create a new connection between the South American culture of Buenos Aires and the city of Venice by suggesting different ways of operating in the urban context. We proposed the theme: amputation and graft. Before being ready for their architectural graft, the students spend some time studying both the city of Buenos Aires and the city of Venice. This investigation work can be found in volumes 1 and 2, while volume 3 presents the student’s proposal for the city of Venice.
We would like to thank the students for their work and dedication and the wave staff for giving us this unique opportunity and helping us out when we were in need. Finally, a special thanks go to the guests who participated in this: Professor Roberto Lombardi from the University of Buenos Aires, Architect Juan Cruz Acevedo Diaz from PIEZA practice and Ignacio Fleurquin from BULLA practice.
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Amputation and graft.
In Botany, the idea of the graft that appears from cutting gives place to fantasizing with hybrid species, in which the potency or resistance from one accompanies the growth of the other. In Architecture, the idea of grafting something that has been amputated can give place to imagining ruptures in the inertia of traditions and cultures, creating an open platform for debating the future of the problems of cities and buildings. From the American point of view, Venice and its imaginary universe appear as untouchable and fragile. Its buildings, eternal. Americans, tourists. From the Venetian point of view, how does Buenos Aires or any other Latin-American metropolis appear? Cities in which urban transformation happens faster than any other plan, and the self-management of habitat seems to do without Architecture as a discipline. Could a Latin American architect think in Venice? Could an architect formed in Venice think in Buenos Aires? Furthermore, if so, which disciplinary hybrids would result in such incursions? The workshop proposes to set an exercise of project exchange between these cultures, starting from the problem of the University Campus, to understand which hybridizations can exist between both as sources of new visions and possibilities. Several friends of the Monoblock office and colleagues who are thinking about the future of cities and the consequences that those visions can have in Architecture, together with students of the universities of Buenos Aires in which we are teachers, partecipaded in the workshop, exposing their experiences and opening moments of intercontinental debates.
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Buenos Aires: a subjective catalogue of urban typologies
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mosquito building 1 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC Testa, Bullrich, Cazzaniga Buenos Aires 1900
The resulting monumental volume is visible from different perspectives from the surrounding avenues and parks. The author was guided primarily by the criterion of respecting the existing characteristics on the land and surroundings, making use of an impeccable implementation of the building that is located in a space without occupying the land. The exterior space maintains its character as the protagonist of the composition: it freely crosses the building and is always present in all the main environments from which the surrounding landscape is dominated by means of wide visuals.
The Argentina’s Mariano Moreno National Library is located on a raised area of land in the elegant Recoleta neighborhood and is based on a modernist architectural project from the architects Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich and Alicia Cazzaniga.
The entire plaza in which the library sits has been worked architecturally, setting up a space dominated by multiple activities spaces in the “belly” of the building. This mass of concrete was worked with such strength and subtlety that is in fact the fifth facade of the building. From the distance it appears as a colossal sculpture, and from nearby it conveys all the symbolic emphasis required by its function.
The construction started in 1972, and, although it could not be finished until 1992, the monumental silhouette of the unfinished building defined the city’s shape for a long time. Respecting the precondition to leave as much free land as possible, and to reduce to a minimum the cut down of old trees, the architects decided to liberate the main floor, to elevate the reading rooms, and to place the book deposit in two basements. The building corresponds to the architectural style denominated Brutalism, with the main structure resolved in concrete. 8
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meteorite 2 BANCO DE LONDRES Clorindo Testa Buenos Aires, Argentina 1959 - ’66
and to create a sort of covered square without divisions between the internal and the external space. The building consists of three floors below and 6 above the level. The main corner entrance is emphasized by a suspended concrete element that limits the visual space. Inside the bank, the six level fragment the area of the central hall, that is the main element of traditional banking institutions. The levels are hooked to the ceiling with steel tie rods. The entire construction works like a single volume defined by tre key elements, that are the roof block and two median walls. The roof is supported in part by the colonnade, which is a protective screen against the internal reflections of the sun. The special treatment of reinforced concrete, modeled like a sculpture with formwork treated in curves, jagged and perforated along geometric patterns, reinforces the innovative character of the work.
Banco de Londres was built in a block of Buenos Aires City, which developes in a urban mesh of streets and cuadas, like other cities of Spanish foundation, around Plaza Mayor. The building is situated in a financial district near Plaza de Mayo.
The project goes back to a competion held in 1959 and associated to SEPR A Society, whose members were Elia Sanchez, Peralta Ramos e Agostini. The assigned lot is located on the corner of a street in the city center. Because of its urban architectural approach, this project was one of the most original, daring farreaching in the international architecture of the Sixties. In addition, it is one of the most important examples of the Brutalist architecture. It is a huge rectangular structure of reinforced concrete, which takes on a position of contrast with the traditional bank buildings around it. This break with tradition can be perceived in the first place in the approach of integration between the building and the existing urban landscape as a space of continuity. This is because the project had to exploit a delimited angle defined by the neighbouring buildings and the two narrow streets. So the idea was to incorporate the city in the project so as to extend the streets’ narrowness 10
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landscape roofs 3 ATC BUILDING MSGSSVST Buenos Aires 1978
The surface of the square is marked by a square module of 7.20 meters per side that governs the entire work, and is crossed by a water channel that flows into a lake, from which the high transmission tower emerges, a sort of urban hallmark. A colonnade leads to a glazed structure this is the public access to the studios, as well as games for children, pergolas and fixed benches. Staff access is located on Avenue Figueroa Alcorta, marked by a marquee. From there originates a covered road that crosses the complex and organizes the entire system of connections of the project by connecting the studios with the workshops, offices, the dining room, warehouses and garages. On the square there is also a colonnade, which leads to a glazed structure, this is the public access to the studios, as well as games for children, pergolas and fixed benches. Staff access is located on Avenue Figueroa Alcorta, marked by a marquee. From there originates a covered road that crosses the complex and organizes the entire system of connections of the project by connecting the studios with the workshops, offices, the dining room, warehouses and garages.
The project in question is a substantial dialogue between technology, modernity and landscape. Through functional architecture, quality public space was created in the city.
Although this construction contrasts with the surrounding environment due to the synthesis of its guiding idea and the purity of its forms, it achieves an important integration with the urban landscape. This is achieved through two operations: one is the continuity with the surrounding green spaces that is generated through the inclination of the roof / square; and the second consists in taking for the facade on Tagle Street (perpendicular to the avenue) the height of the pre-existing residential urban fabric at the edge of the park.
The project has a wedge shape, with the surface slightly inclined towards the park located to the south, with which it merges. From this floor, a sort of square is created, crossed by a series of patios from which emerge the 4 pure and opaque volumes in which the recording studios, television and audio rooms are located.
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various styles and different European schools. With a total of 24 floors, it reaches a height of 100 meters, made possible thanks to a concession because it has exceeded by almost four times the maximum allowed by the avenue. The highest point is reached by a large rotating lighthouse of 300,000 candles that made the building visible from Uruguay and that, according to the intentions of the client, was to serve to frame with its light the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, as a welcome for visitors arriving by ship from the Atlantic Ocean. Opened in 1923, the palace was until 1935 the tallest building in Buenos Aires and in 1997 it was declared a National Historical Monument. It was also the first “intelligent” building having already in 1920, its own power plant, which made it self-sufficient. Originally the building was born with the idea of preserving the ashes of the famous Dante Alighieri, so much so that its entire construction is inspired by the work of the poet: “The Divine Comedy”. The general division of the Palace and of the work itself is in three parts: hell, purgatory and heaven.
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Palazzo Barolo, also known as Galería or Pasaje Barolo, is located in the heart of Buenos Aires, in the Montserrat district, the oldest in the city, between Avenida de Mayo and Avenida Hipólito Yrigoyen. Its construction was commissioned to Mario Palanti by Luigi Barolo, a textile entrepreneur who arrived in Argentina in 1890. The architectural style of the building is difficult to define but we can say that it is a truly eclectic construction, blending elements of
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Hell refers to the ground floor and in the two basements; purgatory from the 1st to the 14th floor; finally, heaven extends from the 15th to the 22nd. floor. The building then has a height of 100 meters like the 100 songs that the Divine Comedy has, which in turn have 22 verses corresponding to the 22 floors. The 9 access times represent the nine steps of initiation and the nine infernal hierarchies while the lighthouse represents the 9 angelic choirs. The structure of the building consists of its two basements, the basement or ground floor, the main body and finally the crowning. The main space on the ground floor is the large central passage with imposing portals that enter on two roads, in addition to some commercial premises and access to vertical circulation cores. The central body is divided into two blocks, with 11 offices per block on each level, connected to the center of the passage and on both sides by 6 elevators and stairs leading to the upper floors. The top of the tower can be reached by winding stairs. Crowning the tower is the lighthouse reached through a narrow staircase with an access surrounded by a window that allows a 360-second view. The lighthouse every year on June 4, from 19.45 to 20 aligns with the constellation of the southern cross, symbolically creating a gateway to paradise. The palace has a twin in Montevideo: in the central Avenida 18 de Julio there is Palazzo Salvo, also equipped with an equally powerful lighthouse. Luigi Barolo did not have the good fortune to see it completed: he died at 52, a year before its inauguration.
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PALACIO BAROLO Mario Palanti Argentina 1923
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private\common space 5 CONJUNTO LOS ANDES Fermín Bereterbide Chacarita, Buenos Aires 1925 - 1928
of the center of the block, conceived as a large space for public use. The open areas occupy almost seventy percent of the total area of the property: interior streets, squares and expansions with recreational and sports equipment. No volume cast in the other buildings shadows, thus achieving optimal use of natural light. In addition to the shops, the complex includes spaces arranged for community use: a small theater, a kindergarten, a library. The general image is resolved by appealing to a repertoire of shapes and materials commonly identifiable with middle class homes. The attenuation of contrasts -both in volumes and in the combination of materials used- defines the built exteriors. The blocks are characterized by a simple geometry, pure expressiveness with a mixture of tradition and modernity. The excellent balance obtained in the proportions and the different scales of the complex (private, semi-public and public) together with a careful design of the exterior spaces and their vegetation, help to show the general image of the complex.
The Los Andes Housing is located in the Barrio de Chacarita in Buenos Aires. It is a social housing project started in 1925. It occupies 13.188 m2 of space. In 1924, the radical major Carlos Noel asked the Deliberative Council for authorization to carry out a project contest, sponsored by the SCA -Central Society of Architects-, for three areas in Buenos Aires for the construction of social housing. The chosen locations were Chacarita, Flores and Palermo. The first prize, for all three, was won by the young architect Fermín Bereterbide; and only this complex was built, which occupies the entire block located in front of Los Andes Park. In 1928, the first municipal housing complex was inaugurated.
The lot is designed by two perpendicular axes of symmetry that articulate the layout of the city. On the fourth side, which face the square, there is a big arbor that works as a visual integration of the large central public space with the green park of the neighborhood. There are 12 blocks composed of a ground floor and three upper floors, surrounded by internal gardens. The units present a standard of comfort that was not usual at that time for affordable housing. One of the most notable features of the project is the resolution 16
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TEATRO S.MARTIN Y CENTRO CULTURAL M. R. Alvarez, M. Ruiz Buenos Aires 1953-1960
This has a great spatial force, since it has both an architectural and urban value, thanks to the view of the square in front. Through a first urban analysis it is interesting to observe how the urban genesis of this stretch of the square between the two medianeras took place. The original project has undergone changes over time, as you can see from the traces of the generating walls. Thus, one recognizes the cutting of the walls where the university tower was grafted, the addition of auxiliary spaces such the box of the conference hall on pilotis and the demolition of buildings so that it was possible to create a new public space, the Plaza de las Américas, from which it is possible to enjoy the building of the cultural center from a better point of view. This empty space generates an internal spatial arrangement of the square that differentiates it from the other city squares and that recalls the same attitude adopted by Mies Van Der Rohe regarding the insertion of the Seagram building in the urban context of Manhattan.
The architectural complex consists of the presence of three volumes, organized perpendicular to Avenida Corrientes and Calle Sarmiento, occupying the center of the block called quadra, one of the blocks that form the grid of the city. The buildings are grafts that have been built in sequence from north to south, following the orientation of two generating paths that are represented by the medianeras, or the walls that always characterized the urban fabric of Buenos Aires.
Within the grid that represents the urban layout of the city, these walls become part of the buildings and the empty space between them has been filled with juxtaposed volumes that identify different functions and internally communicate with each other. The architect Mario Roberto Alvarez who designed this building supports the idea of form linked to function, as he stated:”No se puede meter todo en un rectángulo como lograba hacerlo Mies”. The first block of the theater, which overlooks Corrientes Avenue, includes seven floors where the service spaces and offices are placed, while the second block, towards Sarmiento Street, houses a theater school, theater halls and an underground parking lot. The cultural center is another graft that connects to the previous buildings through a corridor that function as an art gallery. 18
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open fabric 7 VIVIENDAS GUEMES Fermin Bereterbide Palermo, Buenos Aires 1948
These concepts applied to the Guemes project were the main themes to which Bereterbide devoted himself throughout his life: collective housing, public housing, minimal housing, forms of occupation of lots, urban fabrics, subdivisions and blocks. Indeed, Fermìn’s socialist ideology was based on the criteria of justice and social equality, to which the European avant-garde hygienic ideas were added: physical hygiene such as sunlight, natural ventilation and lighting; and moral hygiene, understood as units that have the same functional criteria, adequate living comfort and a balanced relationship with the common outdoor green spaces.
“Viviendas Guemes” is a building that is part of the YAVA cooperative, designed by Fermín Bereterbide in 1948. It is located in Buenos Aires, in the Palermo district. In 1941, Bereterbide won the competition for collective housing, organized by the El Hogar Obrero Cooperative. The intervention included a massive housing program, which included both constructive and functional characteristics of the houses.
The proposals for this housing program have respected the urban checkerboard fabric of Buenos Aires, consolidating the block with pavilions that respect the typical broken corners of the lots and leaving the internal areas to green spaces and for social use. In 1948 Bereterbide built the building in Güemes 4426, identifying the pavilion separated from the perimeter of the lot, thus increasing the relationship of the building with the ground floor garden. He also staggered the different units thus obtaining that all the houses have three different ones thanks to the large windows on the facades. The objectives for this project were also: correct solar radiation and ventilation of all the departments that make up the building. From these premises the atypical layout of the building was born, the purpose of which was that all the housing units have the same functional characteristics of comfort and relationship with the green spaces. 20
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building in the air 8 ESTADIO ALBERTO JOSÉ ARMANDO Viktor Sulčič Buenos Aires 1940
The Stadium has the structure of the houses of La Boca, developed vertically to prevent the Riauchelo River floods from causing significant damage to the buildings. This feature gave the Stadium an unprecedented verticality, thus managing to optimize the 21,000 square meters of land available for construction. The morphology of the terrain led to design a peculiar shape of the structure like a D (the only example of this type). The Bombonera involuntarily assumed the shape of an ancient Greek theater: the stands neatly arranged almost in a semicircle resemble a yellow-blue cavea while the perpendicular structure follows the physiognomy of a proscenium. The project allowed the stadium to take on the incredible peculiarity, thanks to the combination of shape and height, of expanding any sound inside the stadium as a true perfect sounding board. “It’s not the tremor of a building, it’s the beating of his heart”.
Designed by Viktor Sulčič and his collaborators Raul Bes and Josè Delpini in 1937, built in 1940 in the “La Boca” district, the Estadio Alberto José Armando consists mainly of reinforced concrete and steel. Its famous nickname “La Bombonera” is due to the comment of one of his designers, José Delpini, who compared the plant he built to a box of bombones (chocolates), the ones he had received as a gift on the day of the inauguration.
It has been expanded several times: 49 thousand seats and 57 thousand capacity. A project idea is currently underway, the “projecto esloveno”, where the following is envisaged: the redevelopment of the stalls, acquiring 19 neighboring lots to expand, implementing pedestrian paths and reaching a capacity of 70 thousand. The peculiarity of the stadium is its position: a decidedly reduced space for the capacity of a stadium (in this case it had to contain at least 50 thousand people). Viktor Sulcic solved the problem exploiting the same structure of the barrio, thus managing not only to satisfy Cichero’s requests but also to perfectly integrate the stadium into the urban context. 22
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KAVANAGH BUILDING G. Sanchez, E. Lagos, L. M. de la Torre Buenos Aires 1934
The building has a towering shape, with symmetrical setbacks and gradual surface reductions that create green terraces overlooking the city and the park. At the beginning of the life of the Building these terraces faced towards the Dock, but over the years they have built a series of skyscrapers that block the view to that side. It was created from the outside to the inside, adapting extraordinarily comfortable facilities to the available area. Design combines modernism and Art Deco with a rationalist approach and is considered the pinnacle of early Modernism in Argentina.
The building was commissioned by Corina Kavanagh in 1934, an Irish millionaire who sold two ranches at the age of 39 to erect her skyscraper, a luxurious 120-meter tower staggered in height to be the first skyscraper in Buenos Aires.
An urban legend in Buenos Aires tells that the birth of this building is almost a source of fiction, the story tells us that one of the Anchorena madly falls in love with Corina Kavanagh, but their love story was not approved by her family, so he decided to take revenge with an architectural to prevent the view of the church from the palace Anchorena. The architecture is located in the neighborhood near Plaza San Martin at the intersection of Florida Street and Saint Martin. The lot in which it is born makes it have a triangular shape that breaks the grid fabric of the city going to create a bifurcation between the park and the urban fabric. Its shape and volume create a series of visual sequences that change the viewer’s perception of the architecture itself. We talk about illusions and visual distortions due to symmetrical elevations that push the observer to think that the building is a rectangular volume like the other buildings that characterize the development of the square fabric of the city. In reality, instead, it is a series of rectangular volumes of different heights that form a triangular whole with a semicircular tip that invites to this beginning of visual distortions. 24
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matrioska 10 BANCO CIUDAD- CASA MATRIZ Solo Solson Bueno Aires, Argentina 1968
winds around the imposing obelisk, a national monument and popular destination. The sumptuous Teatro Colón, renowned for its acoustics, also organizes guided tours behind the scenes. Art Deco theaters with neon signs, casual pizzerias and late-night bookstores line Avenida Corrientes.
The Municipal Bank of the City of Buenos Aires was planning to move from the old offices to a new location in Florida Street and Sarmiento, would occupy the building that had belonged to the shops “A la Ciudad de México”, built in 1907.
1968 a new opportunity arises for a team of 5 young architects to present their project for the new bank de la Ciudad to impose the image of the building in the city.
The architects’ idea was to transform the bank’s headquarters into a box inside another, taking the old building as an external container very different from the inner container. For this reason they decided to build the entire interior with caramel colored glass blocks, a material that, until then, was used sporadically to allow natural light to enter the basements. Propose an image based on the transparency of the material, discovering the existing steel columns to create a triple height where everything will also be visible the “treasure” that was also visible from the road.
Known as Microcentro, San Nicolás is the most important district of the city for business and performing arts. Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the widest streets in the world, 26
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meeting void 11 FADU UBA Catalano, Caminos, Sacriste, Picarel Buenos Aires 1958
made up of cruciform columns, which generates a free plant with distant support points, to allow flexibility in distribution and compartmentalization, and the natural illumination from the perimeter. The facades are characterized by the alternation of continuous strips of exposed concrete slabs and modules made of iron and transparent glass, with a large central fixed cloth and smaller opening cloths at the top and bottom. Sun protection was solved with vertical pre-molded concrete sunshades (currently removed due to anchorage problems).
The Ciudad Universitaria in Buenos Aires is located in an irregular land in the Nuñez barrio. In 1958 a competition chooes the architects Catalano, Caminos, Sacriste and Picarel, whose project was much bigger but it was interrupted and only Hall 2 and 3 were build, besides pavilion 1 was already there. The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism was installed in Hall 3 in 1971. The area is located between the dense urban agglomeration and the gulf Rio de la Plata, in which the water of the river and the water from the ocean mix together. During the years in this wetland has developed dense spontaneous vegetation. An artificial bay, called el pantano, divides the University campus from the Ecological Reserve Costanera Norte. Hall 3 is a concrete and glass massive block, which is not projected towards the interesting surrounding landscape, but it structures itself around a court: a big hole that represents the fulcrum of the students life, used sometimes for temporary exhibitions, and it’s covered by a ceiling of acrylic skylights that gives natural lighting to the space. The pavilion is a rectangular prism 150 m long by 74 m wide, and consists of underground floor, ground floor, 4 floors high and roof terrace. The plan is organized on a 2 m x 2 m module defined by the dimension of the beam. The structure is
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filter space 12 EDIFICIO LOS EUCALIPTOS Jorge Ferrari Hardoy + Juan Kurchan Buenos Aires 1941
has a complex meaning: reasons are existential, philosophical, social and esthetical. Architects, conscious or not, leave us a building that if read in the right way gives testimony of the historical moment of its construction, which elsewhere would acquire totally different meanings.
The Building Edificio de los Eucaliptos, designed by Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan in 1941, it’s located in a residential neighborhood in Buenos Aires, and this is an essential element for interpretation of this building. We have to look at the universe in which is inserted for understand the deep significance of this building. This, that seems a typically European building, inserted in Buenos Aires’s context, takes on a unique meaning, also given by some elements of the South American fantasy.
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The empty space is the project’s heart, architecture becomes a rational construction of spaces. The city shapes up to be a tidy succession of blocks of built, whose surface is given by the building’s facades. Here there is a renounce to build to make space for the garden, pushing the complex to the bottom of the lot. The architects, pupils of Le Corbusier in the Europe of rationalism, inherit its forms, as is easily seen. However, there is something different from the almost Platonic abstractionism of the Marseille housing unit, which pushes the laws to its own will. Here the trees already enter the building directly and control its shapes. The first difference, therefore, is not trying to impose oneself on nature. And it is precisely nature that becomes the protago nist, unique here in the perpetual succession of built blocks.
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The void-garden brings with it something very profound that draws on the most important experiences of the 1900s. We can feel the drama of the latest Mies van der Rohe, where buildings isolate itself, to show its essence. But there is also the Frank Lloyd Wright’s lesson of the organicist architecture, the relation between created and built, nature and light. But in the choice of this configuration we can see another element: give garden to people, maybe aided by the cultural atmosphere of the South American left, this anticipates something of the second half of the second half of the twentieth century. It is therefore evident that this building, insert in the urban and cultural context of the Argentine capital
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diagonal flows 13 GALERIA JARDIN Mario Roberto Álvarez Buenos Aires 1974
the entire space. The three levels are connected fluidly by a series of escalators, arranged in two open courtyards located within the property. At first, the premises of the Garden Gallery presented a varied spectrum of goods, similar to that of any other commercial complex. In recent years there has been a specialization of its offer; the premises on the Florida front are intended for the sale of typical Argentinian products and those arranged inside, telephone items and digital equipment. Two towers complete the building: the Florida Tower for offices, with 23 floors, was completed in 1978, while the Tucumán Tower was intended for accommodation, with 80 apartments distributed between the 4th and 24th floors. It was completed around 1984.
The complex is located in the center of Buenos Aires (Argentina), in the San Nicolas district, not far from the port and the main railway station. The urban context is predominantly commercial (financial), characterized by streets lined with buildings of banks and offices, making the area chaotic and noisy during and peak hours. It is located in a district defined by four streets: Tucuman, Florida, San Martin, La Lavalle.
Part of the land that now occupies the Garden Gallery was the building of the Jockey Club, male club of the Argentine aristocracy, but in 1953, an arson completely destroyed its structures. In 1962, a design competition was held for the construction of a commercial gallery and an office tower, won by Mario Roberto Álvarez, and other architects but completed ten years later. The opening of the gallery in 1974 consolidated the commercial footprint of Florida Street, the most important pedestrian street in the city. It has access through Florida and Tucumán, which generates large circulation spaces with natural lighting and a large number of plants and flower beds, which give the name to the gallery.
The most interesting thing about the project is the movement that takes place moving between the floors of the gallery that is divided into 3 underground floors. It is described by a diagonal displacement, allowed by the precorriment of stairs and escalators. Finally, it is curious to think how you find yourself catapulted inside this building. When you find yourself in the corner of the block, turning you enter the gallery and its spatial fluidity.
In its heyday, it was an innovative proposal that combined public, semi-public and private spaces. The shopping arcade has 250 shops which occupies 32
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floating cantilever 14 AEREOPUERTO DE BUENOS AIRES Amancio Williams Buenos Aires 1945
the location itself as there were no needs to destroy nor take propriety from the land. To accommodate all needs from the river would have been taken sand, water and mud, while from the harbor would have come steel and cement. Taking a look at the drawings they are almost speaking for themselves thanks to their minimalistic nature and to the intuitiveness of a project where everything is well thought out. This deep thinking about nature and man-made nature is reflected not only in the drafting process but in the whole philosophy of the Architect whom, by drawing inspiration from his colleague Le Corbusier, came up with a new synthesis that is as topical now as it was in the ‘40s.
Amancio Williams’ project for the Aeropuerto de Buenos Aires, drafted in 1945, tied by the chains of necessity and natural limitations, adopts defining solutions that could only work in this specific environment. The first important decision made by the architect was to conceive a structure placed over the water so that the airport could be connected to both the city center and the harbor. Thus he gave birth to the idea of using concrete pillars of huge height as a palisade instead of building an artificial island made of mud from the river’s bed. By elevating over the water the airport and with the help of a great draining system, Williams had created 3 major strengths: the river’s flow was impacted in a very subtle way, Buenos Aires’ peculiar fog wouldn’t be a trouble to flights and, finally, the landing center could be used not only for regular planes but be open for hydroplanes as well. Another great benefit of the location comes in the “economy” given by both construction materials and
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hypogeus courtyards 15 CEMENTERIO DE LA CHACARITA Itala Fulvia Villa Buenos Aires 1950-1958 A cemetery is the reflection of a society at a given time in history. As a mirroring of the city, it illustrates the social and cultural vision of human beings: their vision of death, their beliefs and ideals. Itala Fulvia Villa conceived the Sexto Panteón (also known as Panteón Subterráneo) in the context of post WWII prosperity in Argentina. The country was then one of the firsts global powers and the second country in terms of population of Europeans migrants after the US. The number of inhabitants of Buenos Aires tripled between 1920 and 1960, growing from one to three million citizens and with it followed a need for more space in necropolises. The city entrusts Italia Fulvia Villa (who at the time was working for the city’s architecture and urbanism department) with the task of envisioning the solution to the urgent need of managing the increasing numbers of deceased. Disrupting the tradition of funerary architecture from the past, the architect proposes to reinvent the modern cemetery. Built between 1950 and 1958, the Sexto Panteon is a unique experiment of the modern architecture precepts applied to the funerary world at such a scale. Itala Fulvia Villa reimagines the Roman catacombs conceiving a subterranean necropolis organised on two levels, thus leaving the ground floor open in the form of a garden. The plan consists in a square of 260 meters per side for a total of 67˙600 m². The access points are brutalist temples drawn by the Argentinian pioneer of mid-20th century Brutalist architecture Clorindo Testa (1923-2013) which symbolize the entry to the underworld. The Sexto Panteon is a labyrinthine and futurist world. The maze of funerary tunnels is lit only by the patios where concrete stairs unfold like escalators and where coffins travel by elevators.
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exoskeleton 16 SOMISA BUILIDING Mario Roberto Alvarez Buenos Aires 1966-1977
One of the main features besides the steel structure and glass infills is that it has a helioport on the roof (one of the few buildings to have it). The 7 basement floors, on the other hand, are made of reinforced concrete with a total depth of 24 meters while the above-ground floors were prefabricated and then dry-assembled directly on site; the structure we see is composed of 4 large steel columns tapered upward. The materials used for the above-ground floors consist of flat 3 mm steel sheets that form the columns, beams, and mezzanines while the entire perimeter that is glazed consists of double heat-resistant glass panels with an inner air chamber. The ground floor consists of a double-height ado and is 1 meter below the street level while for the upper floors we also find some double-height parts here. The building relates to the context while being completely different from the present buildings and realizes urban completion through the morphological continuity of the block but differs in its adopted form and technological condition. It represents the idea of technical progress as supporting innovations in architecture.
Somisa building held a national competition to design the new headquarters of the company, which is engaged in steel production and processing. The building then constructed consists of 7 floors underground and 14 above ground. Regarding the load-bearing structure, this is the first building in the world with a welded metal structure and at the same time the first in Argentina made of steel.
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AXONOMETRY 39
floating ufo 17 SALA PARA EL ESPECTACULO Amanacio Williams Buenos Aires 1942
The design of the Sala de Espectáculos Plásticos y del Sonido en el Espacio is composed of a main hall, around which orbits a somewhat Saturn-like ring containing the atrium. These two elements are located well above the ground, so they appear almost floating in space, generating minimal physical contact with the ground. The hall design seeks to generate maximum sonic balance within an enclosed space. Although at an early stage, the project was designed for a concert hall, the acoustic, visual and spatial conditions allowed for the development of a hall for performances of all kinds offering scenic possibilities for theater, dance, sound and theatrical performances of shapes, colors, movement and light.
Amancio Williams, besides being a great architect, was a researcher, creator and visionary. He believed that, as an architect, he should first observe, study and diagnose the problems of living and cities and then produce and design his own answers and solutions. The possibility of imagining a future with potential scientific advances, added to his belief in the progress of humanity, led him toward a quest for perfection that, deepened by his concern for technology, ended up condensing into the development of Away, Amancio’s designs can be understood as a desire to transform reality. When we talk about design, we are inherently talking about the future. For Amancio, designing always meant anticipating, planning for the future, rethinking and re-reading the present. The design of the Sala de Espectáculos Plásticos y del Sonido en el Espacio is composed of a main hall, around which orbits a somewhat Saturn-like ring containing the atrium. These two elements are located well above the ground, so they appear almost floating in space, generating minimal physical contact with the ground. The hall design seeks to generate maximum sonic balance within an enclosed space.
The design was developed from the study of the work in section, managing to achieve an ideal acoustic profile due to the special shape of the building, produced by a body in revolution. Within the hall the different rows would receive an equivalent proportion of sound, achieving a balance in sound intensity.
In this way, Amancio’s designs can be understood as a desire to transform reality. When we talk about design, we are inherently talking about the future. For Amancio, designing always meant anticipating, planning for the future, rethinking and re-reading the present. 40
SECTION 41
architectural models:
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NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC Testa, Bullrich, Cazzaniga Buenos Aires 1900
ANESE STELLA, ASCENZI EMMA, DZUNDRA IRYNA, KORZHAVINA OLEKSANDRA, SCARDUELLI MATTEO 43
BANCO DE LONDRES Clorindo Testa Buenos Aires, Argentina 1959 - ’66
ROXANA BONCA, MARTINA DEGRATI, MARTA GUZZON, ANGELICA MION, SOUFIAN NAZARIN 44
ATC BUILDING MSGSSVST Buenos Aires 1978
SYRIA BUSO, ALBERTO FLAMINIO, GIORGIA DI NATALE, MASSIMILIANO PASQUALI, MATTEO RIGATO 45
PALACIO BAROLO Mario Palanti Argentina 1923
CATERINA BORTOLETTO, FRANCESCA BRIGATO, SORANA MATEI, LUDOVICA RIGO 46
CONJUNTO LOS ANDES Fermín Bereterbide Chacarita, Buenos Aires 1925 - 1928
MATTEO ABATE, THOMAS AMADIO, SIMONE BATTISTEL, CHIARA CATALDO, VINCENZO FERRI 47
TEATRO S.MARTIN Y CENTRO CULTURAL M. R. Alvarez, M. Ruiz Buenos Aires 1953-1960
BEATRICE CAVALCANTE, CHIARA CHIERICO, VERONICA DI ODOARDO, THOMAS DI GIOVANNI, GIACOMO FARALLI 48
VIVIENDAS GUEMES Fermin Bereterbide Palermo, Buenos Aires 1948
PAOLO DI MICCO, FRANCESCA DOTTI, ALBERTO OTTAVIANI, ILARIA SIGNORINI, LAURA SOARDO 49
ESTADIO ALBERTO JOSÉ ARMANDO Viktor Sulči Buenos Aires 1940
ELEONORA CURCIO, LODOVICO FALOMO, MARIA PIA IMBESI, EDOARDO MATTIUZZI 50
KAVANAGH BUILDING G. Sanchez, E. Lagos, L. M. de la Torre Buenos Aires 1934
CAMILLA CAMPACI, CAMILLA D’ALO’, GABRIEL CROCE, EVA GANZITTI, SILA NAZ BOLU 51
BANCO CIUDAD- CASA MATRIZ Solo Solson Bueno Aires, Argentina 1968
ALESSANDRO BOLOGNA, EDOARDO CANTON, ALESSIO FREGONESE, EDOARDO VALVASORI 52
FADU UBA Catalano, Caminos, Sacriste, Picarel Buenos Aires 1958
GAIA BELLOTTO, AYOUB BENLOUALI, ARIANNA SPIRONELLO, ADELE ZAMARIAN 53
EDIFICIO LOS EUCALIPTOS Jorge Ferrari Hardoy + Juan Kurchan Buenos Aires 1941
ALICE BASSI, VITTORIA GAMBATO, TOMMASO SCALABRIN, GIUSEPPE BAGNI 54
GALERIA JARDIN Mario Roberto Álvarez Buenos Aires 1974
MARTINA BIANCATO, FRANCESCO PIEROPAN, MARTA PUPELLA, MARTINA QUAGGIOTTO, DIEGO SPIRANDELLI 55
AEREOPUERTO DE BUENOS AIRES Amancio Williams Buenos Aires 1945
IDA DI LEO, RICCARDO FACCO, GIORGIA FERRUCCI, LEONARDO GRIGGIO, ALESSIA VAROTTO, NICHOLAS ZAMBON 56
CEMENTERIO DE LA CHACARITA Itala Fulvia Villa Buenos Aires 1950-1958
FRANCESCA ALFANO, ENRICO BACCICHETTO, FILIPPO BARBIERO, FRANCESCO DE LUCA, LEONARDO SILVERA 57
SOMISA BUILIDING Mario Roberto Alvarez Buenos Aires 1966-1977
NICOLÒ BRAGA, GIADA BRAGGION, MASSIMILIANO COPPO, MATTIA PELLIZZER 58
SALA PARA EL ESPECTACULO Amanacio Williams Buenos Aires 1942
GRETA DECARLI, MARCO GENTILINI, RACHELE LANCINI, ALICE MARTA, PAOLO NICOSIA 59
architectural glossary: mosquito building 1 meteorite 2 landscape roofs 3 urban passage 4 private\common space 5 triggering walls 6 open fabric 7 building in the air 8 warped skylines 9 matrioska building 10 meeting void 11 filter space 12
1 mosquito building : or the perks of lifting a building on their own legs. 2 meteorite : or the project as an out-of-space object. 3 landscape roofs : or the idea of taking the ground floor to another level. 4 urban passage : or where the urban flâneur comes alive. 5 private\common space : or what happens when you share the private space. 6 triggering walls : or how to deal positively with the context you are in. 7 open fabric : or profiting from the empty spaces. 8 building in the air : or barely touching the ground. 9 warped skylines : or playing with the outlines. 10 matrioska building : or the box within the box. 11 meeting void : or enjoying life in the gaps. 12 filter space : or the urge of taking distances to outstand from the others. 60
diagonal flows 13 floating cantilever 14 hypogeous courtyards 15 exoskeleton 16 floating U.F.O. 17
13 diagonal flows : or a million ways to get to one place, or maybe two. 14 floating cantilever : or creating space where there is not. 15 hypogeous courtyards : or a very well-hidden patio. 16 exoskeleton : or what happens when you let everything out. 17 floating U.F.O. : or the project as an object landed from elsewhere. 61
student list : group 1 Stella Anese, Emma Ascenzi, Iryna Dzundra, Oleksandra Korzhavina, Matteo Scarduelli
group 14 Ida Di Leo, Riccardo Facco, Giorgia Ferrucci, Leonardo Griggio, Alessia Varotto, Nicholas Zambon
group 2 Roxana Bonca, Martina Degrati, Marta Guzzon, Angelica Mion, Soufian Nazarin
group 15 Francesca Alfano, Enrico Baccichetto, Filippo Barbiero, Francesco De Luca, Leonardo Silvera
group 3 Syria Buso, Alberto Flaminio, Giorgia Di Natale, Massimiliano Pasquali, Matteo Rigato
group 16 Nicolò Braga, Giada Braggion, Massimiliano Coppo, Mattia Pellizzer
group 4 Caterina Bortoletto, Francesca Brigato, Sorana Matei, Ludovica Rigo
group 17 Greta Decarli, Marco Gentilini, Rachele Lancini, Alice Marta, Paolo Nicosia
group 5 Matteo Abate, Thomas Amadio, Simone Battistel, Chiara Cataldo, Vincenzo Ferri group 6 Beatrice Cavalcante, Chiara Chierico, Veronica Di Odoardo, Thomas Di Giovanni, Giacomo Faralli group 7 Paolo Di Micco, Francesca Dotti, Alberto Ottaviani, Ilaria Signorini, Laura Soardo group 8 Eleonora Curcio, Lodovico Falomo, Maria Pia Imbesi, Edoardo Mattiuzzi group 9 Camilla Campaci, Camilla D’Alò, Gabriel Croce, Eva Ganzitti, Sila Naz Bolu group 10 Alessandro Bologna, Edoardo Canton, Alessio Fregonese, Edoardo Valvasori group 11 Gaia Bellotto, Ayoub Benlouali, Arianna Spironello, Adele Zamarian group 12 Alice Bassi, Vittoria Gambato, Tommaso Scalabrin, Giuseppe Bagni group 13 Martina Biancato, Francesco Pieropan, Marta Pupella, Martina Quaggiotto, Diego Spirandelli 62
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