early draft

1

Rosario architecture, a new generation

Early Draft

60 90 00

3 / Contents p.3–3

p. 4–5Project Intro / Introducción proyecto

p. 6–13Historic Intro. Modern Pioneers / Introducción histórica

p. 14–5260‘s Intro. The new schoolobra arquitecto Molinéobra arquitecto Pantarottoobra arquitecto Scrimaglio

p. 53–14590‘s intro. A generation anew obra arquitecto Iglesiaobra arquitecto Caballeroobra arquitecto Villafañe

p. 146–17000‘s intro / introducción ‘00sobra arquitecto Campodonicoobra arquitecto Arraigadaobra arquitecto Guardattiobra arquitecta Suarezobra arquitecto Spina

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Rosario architecture, a new generation

Contents

4Project intro

Despite the all-encompassing stereotypical images created for simplified and tourist consumption, Latin America is in fact a loose aggregation of cultures, territorially referenced and differentiated. It is the will of certain regions to preserve their cultural identity, that is, the relationship between society and its territory, what created a minimum of cultural resistance to the homogenizing forces of globalization. In societies like these, which for historical and political reasons are structured like cultures of borrowing, it is more important to evaluate the forms of appropriation of the external impulses and to discern in those forms a negative value of subjugation or alienation and a positive of fagocitation, than to just discuss the conditions of authenticity or propriety.

The interplay between global and local conforms the long history of the cultural formation of Latin America, a duality framed by an incomplete modernization. Hence, the duality modernization/modernity encompass other dichotomies that are fundamental for the understanding of the Latin American architecture: elite/popular, urban/rural and innovative/archaic. Architecture, as a disciplinary practice and legitimized production, has always presented itself as an explicit option for the progressive poles of those dualities: as an agent of modernization it required to be institutionally understood as elitist, urban and innovative. However, two main characteristics will give the Latin American production a sense of identity. First, the impossibility of exercising a full modernity (cultural) given the imperfections of modernization (social, political and economic) generated an adapted, conditioned, and transformed modern production. Second, strategies of aesthetically transform the apparently regressive poles of the dualities –the popular, the rural, and the archaic- from an institutionally hegemonic position, substantiated productions of bigger differentiation and identity that can now be positioned within the global market of contemporary architecture.

A pesar de las imágenes estereotipadas creadas para el consumo simplificado y turístico, Latinoamérica es en realidad un conjunto de culturas territorialmente diferenciadas. La voluntad de ciertas regiones en preservar la identidad cultural, es decir, la relación entre sociedad y territorio, es lo que ha creado una resistencia mínima a las fuerzas homogeneizantes de la globalización. En sociedades que por razones históricas y políticas se han estructurado como culturas de adopción, discutir las condiciones de autenticidad o propiedad es inconducente. Es mas interesante evaluar las formas de apropiación de los impulsos externos y discernir en esas formas valores negativos de subyugación o alineación y valores positivos de fagocitación.

La tensión entre lo global y lo local conforma la larga historia de la formación cultural latinoamericana, una tensión enmarcada por un proceso de modernización incompleto. La dualidad modernización/modernidad incluye otras dicotomías fundamentales para entender los temas trabajados por la arquitectura latinoamericana: elite/popular, urbano/rural e innovativo/arcaico. En Latinoamérica, la arquitectura, en su práctica disciplinar y producción legitimada, se ha presentado siempre como una opción explícita por los polos progresivos de estas dualidades. Como agente de modernización fue presentada institucionalmente como elitista, urbana e innovadora. Dos características principales definen la identidad de la producción arquitectónica contemporánea latinoamericana. Primero, la imposibilidad de ejercitar una modernidad cultural completa, dado las imperfecciones del proceso de modernización político, social y económico, que ha generado una producción moderna adaptada, condicionada y transformada. Segundo, estrategias estéticas que, desde una posición institucional hegemónica, transforman los polos aparentemente regresivos de las dualidades articuladas previamente (lo popular, lo rural, lo arcaico) en el material sobre el cual producir diferenciación e identidad para re-posicionarse en el mercado global de arquitectura contemporánea.

5 / Project intro p.4–5

Rosario architecture, a new generation 60 90 00

If the basic features of the contemporary architecture of Latin America are conformed in the collision of universalizing types and regional traditions, the aim of the following text is to locate the practice of a new generation of Rosarinian architects in a cultural and historical perspective. With a combination of a general outline of the growth of the modern tradition of the Rosarinian School together with analysis and interpretation of individual examples stressing on the formal and symbolic aspects of the architectural practice, this text will concentrate on buildings of high visual and intellectual quality.

The formation of a school is not a linear development of uniform intensity. A school is formed from a sequence of high points; some historical moments create conditions for innovation and others for mediocre repetitions. The text will alleviate the narration by skipping the late ones. The interest will reside in how, in those moments of innovation, past solutions were resolved with new intentions, and the global and the regional were integrated into embedded patterns of architectural thinking. A site-specific architectural school is the result of interplays between individual inventions, vernacular types, and technological norms: the result of an intellectual search for the moment in which form, function, structure, and meaning are bound with conviction and character of inevitability.In the case of Rosario, I believe that it is also a theoric and pragmatic hybridization that by solving local necessities it has contributed to the global development of the discipline of architecture.

El rasgo de identidad principal de la arquitectura latinoamericana deriva de la tensión entre los tipos universales propuestos por la modernidad y las tradiciones constructivas y tipológicas regionales. El objetivo de la colección de escritos que a continuación sigue es el de localizar el trabajo de una nueva generación de arquitectos Rosarinos en una perspectiva cultural e histórica. Los escritos combinarán una delineación general del desarrollo de la tradición moderna de la Escuela Rosarina, con interpretaciones críticas de obras individuales. Haciendo hincapié en los aspectos formales y simbólicos de la práctica arquitectónica, los textos se concentrarán en obras de gran valor visual y calidad intelectual.

La formación de una escuela no es un proceso lineal o de intensidad uniforme. Una escuela se forma en base a una secuencia de puntos altos, algunos momentos históricos crean condiciones para la innovación y otros para la repetición mediocre. La colección de escritos presentados a continuación aliviará la narración desestimando estos últimos. El interés se concentrará en cómo, en esos momentos de intensa innovación, soluciones pasadas son resueltas con nuevas intenciones, y lo global y lo regional es integrado en patrones de pensamiento arquitectónico.Una escuela particular es el resultado de la interacción entre invenciones individuales, el trabajo sobre tipologias vernáculas y las normas tecnológicas. Una escuela es el resultado de una búsqueda intelectual por el momento en que forma, estructura y significado se integran con convicción y carácter de inevitabilidad.En el caso de Rosario, creo que es además una hibridación pragmática y teórica que al resolver necesidades locales ha contribuido al desarrollo global de la disciplina arquitectónica.

8Historic intro

10Historic intro

12

Chapter 1 / p. 14–52 60´s Intro. The new school

Aníbal Moliné / Augusto Pantarotto / Jorge Scrimaglio

13 60 90 00/ 60´s Intro

The new school

The generation presented in this chapter participated, in the late 50’s, as students and later as professors, in the academic revolution of the new “School of Architecture and Planning” of Rosario. This complete academic transformation was the result of student-generated revolt, and a consequence of bigger political changes affecting Argentina at the end of the Peronist political regime (1). Beginning in 1956, the new architecture school, popularly referred as the “Porteños School”, under the direction of Jorge Ferrari Hardoy (2) and other professors emigrated from Buenos Aires, replaced the academic Beaux Arts typological curriculum with vertical design studios anchored on the formal and material experimentations of the “Ulm Model” applied by Tomas Maldonado at the “Neue Bauhaus”. This historical moment of the School allowed for an explicit debate on the legacy of the modern masters and its possible expansion and appropriation for the cultural and technological realities of the local medium. Concurrent with the late period of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, when modern architecture is reconstructing Europe and establishing the new direction of the North American City, the Rosarinian exploration was one for an authentic approximation to a local modern tectonic.

As result of the transformations of the local school, the architects presented here will execute their first architectures with a strong desire to impose new aesthetic imaginations to a disciplinary medium that reacted with cultural and technological inertias. This was an epic undertaking: incomplete and fragmentary processes of modernization frame the history of the Latin-American modernity. Forced by the resistance of the status quo, inventiveness, even perversions were imperative to develop their self-imposed architectural program. For this new generation, modern architecture was the vessel for modernization: the implicit program of modern architecture was to represent the promises of modernity. Their architecture was optimistic, unequivocally presented under the sign of progress with blind confidence in the industrialization of the region. Aesthetics arrived before technology.With all the intention of polemic, these young architects carried out a cultural program of conceptual re-elaboration of the modern precepts. This was done from the very center of the architectural discipline; they used their first professional commissions as experimental laboratories. In a process of mutual enrichment, they compensated their lack of technical expertise with that one of the artisans; contractors and engineers were forced to improve construction protocols and structure calculations by the challenging innovations proposed. White plastered walls were no longer the only plastic definition of modernity; these architects opened to the new textures, colors, and metallic reflections that the newly industrialized material pallet offered. In careful appropriations of the revered North American architecture, the impossible steel frame was transformed into reinforced concrete, gaining width, changing rhythms and modules in the process. They forced the traditional and artisan brick into tectonic dispositions that were closer to standardized and prefabricated constructions. This was a shared generational program of cultural transformation.

14 / Chapter 1 p.14–52

60´s Intro

In order for a SCHOOL to exist, there must be first a GENERATION; which is to say: the will of a generation is what generates a school. A generation is not homogeneous unity; it is the acceptance of dialogue within differences: varied ways to think about the same subject. These young architects, practicing their first architectures in the 60’s and maturing in the 70’s, in mutual enrichment, competed among themselves, carefully gauging each other’s techniques, protocols, and strategies. This is what people sharing the same practice do: this is what conforms a discipline.To generate a discourse for the architectural production is clearly an intellectual undertaking. More over, a practice is constantly measured against, in friction with, work produced by others. Practice operates by repetition, blockage, and transformation. When the shared exploration matures, a plateau is reached, a tenuous consensus is accepted: this is a moment when formal, spatial, and structural articulations are generalized to the point of canon. This is what we call a SCHOOL. (A school is not a style. A style only permits minor variations around the same theme. A school is not a tendency either. A tendency requires a strong ideological commitment. In both style and tendency, adherence excludes difference)The conformation of a school is not a linear development of uniform intensity. A school is built upon a sequence of high marks: some historical moments create the conditions for innovation and other moments for mediocre repetition. The interest of this chapter will reside in those moments of innovation when past solutions were resolved with new intentions and were integrated in new patterns of architectural thinking. Schools are the result of the shared influences among individual inventions, their work on local typologies and technological norms. Schools are the result of an intellectual search for a moment in which form, function, structure and meaning relate with conviction and character of inevitability. The following pages present the early work of three influential architects of this generation. Almost isolated from the international scene, these young architects would discover and study the post-war works of the modern masters mainly through foreign publications. Those publications arrived to Rosario sporadically and in small quantities, containing few small and low quality reproductions of the paradigmatic buildings of the period. To follow one or another modern master was to define a position from which to reinterpret the modern canon.The work of Aníbal Moline is an example of a studied appropriation of Alvar Aalto’s architecture, reinterpreted for the dense city grid and fabric of Rosario. The work of Augusto Pantarotto shows a strong influence of Corbusian themes that evolved towards a personal formal language based on the plastic possibilities of reinforced concrete. In the work of Enrique Scrimaglio, we recognize a careful reading of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with a profound appreciation of the local material culture. Eager to break with the modern monolithic tradition, these young architects will oscillate between a reaffirmed following of the great modern masters’ poetics and the need to create an originality based on their local tectonics experimentations. Not wanting to be regional nor critical, these young architects wanted to be modern on they own terms. This tension will mark the Rosarinian architectural production of the 60’s and the following decade.

19 / Aníbal Moliné/ Chapter 1 p.14–52

Aníbal Moliné ARICANA

20/ Aníbal Moliné/ Chapter 1 p.14–52




The Aricana School by H. Hernandez Larguía, Raul de la Torre, and Aníbal Moline represents the best example of a Rosarinian appropriation of Alvar Aalto’s architecture. This appropriation proposes an interesting double transposition of a typology: the Mediterranean central open courtyard Aalto transformed into central halls of interior public space full of Nordic light is here transposed into stepped terraces that cascade down bringing the urban articulation of the center of the Rosarinean block inside a carefully calibrated lobby space. In this lobby, the brick terraces perform now in cantilever; with white lines of thin concrete slabs reinforcing the horizontal tension in upward spiral motion to protect a space washed with the western low setting sun of the Argentinean pampas. There is a seamless spatial flow between the highly compressed horizontal circulation spaces, the triple height space of the lobby and the terraced terrain of the courtyard: public spaces carved out in the centre of the block.This is how architects investigate the influence of canonic examples in the construction of their sensibility: from the center of the discipline, with their design intelligence, they take apart the specific data from its sources and focus instead in the facts that call to memories and personal experiences. In this way, retaining brick walls on the hillside of a Nordic municipality reappear to form artificial urban topographies in a brick covered courtyard at the center of a block in a gridded city on the flat terrain of the Argentinean plains. Articulating continuous terraced levels over the roofs of the library, interior and exterior circulation paths are intertwined in a playful game of section and plan. This typological innovation proposes a newly imagined public space at the center of our otherwise privatized deep urban blocks. This open space is tensioned to the limit, with architecture formalizing the everyday Rosarinean urban landscape: the complex spatial articulations created by the volumes colliding at the center of the deep blocks of long and narrow urban lots.

The Aricana building is a re-interpretation of a modern diagram. The architects of this generation finished their studies in the School of Architecture of Rosario in the 50’s. This early generation will discover the works of the heroic moderns through foreign publications that arrived in small quantities, containing few, small, low quality reproductions of the paradigmatic buildings. A lot was left to their imagination. This generation will experiment their first architectures with a desire to impose new aesthetics to a medium that reacted with cultural resistances: modernity here preceded the technological modernization of the means of production. Their modern credo developed to conform a canon. These were shared beliefs:1/That the module is the conceptual framework of the design.The module is neither an order nor a law: it is a tool, a strategy. The module is not imposed but found in the interplay between program and site. The module is a bi-dimensional or tri-dimensional grid, found by repetition. A grid allows the construction of rhythmic spatial sequences.2/That the structure and the materials are the support of the expression.The grid is materialized to become structure. The materials work following their possibilities to shape the atmosphere of the building. Textures, colors, responses to the past of time are fundamental. Inventiveness and perversions are imperative.

When Aricana was built, in the 60’s, for Rosarinean architects modern architecture was not a style, but the only possible architecture. The modern project was not abandoned but continued and extended in a slow process of appropriation and reconfiguration into more local techniques and themes that constitute now the basic identity of our contemporary architecture. With only a minor interruption during the height of the postmodern years with Italian tendencies, the modern project was reinstalled at the beginning of the 90’, under the guise of contemporary architecture and another conceptual underpinnings, by the current generation represented in this book by Caballero, Iglesia and Villafañe.In this sense, the buildings of the 60’s published here are not examples of architecture of the past but a fundamental part of the urban landscape of the present. Abolishing historicist schemes, the architects of this city don’t treat these architectures as museum pieces, but as live artifacts of contemporary disciplinary problems. Some architects do this with a disciplined gaze that finds value in them, renovating the joy of seeing them for the first time. They return these objects its originality; and through their work, they extend its investigations well into our present time. This is also the ambition of this publication.



La escuela Aricana de H. Hernández Larguía, Raúl de la Torre y Aníbal Moliné representa el mejor ejemplo de apropiación Rosarina de la arquitectura de Alvar Aalto. Esta apropiación propone una interesante doble transposición de una tipologia: el patio central a cielo abierto mediterráneo, que en Aalto es transformado en halles centrales de espacio publico interior cubierto y bañado de luz nórdica, es aquí una vez mas transformado en patios aterrazados que descienden para traer la articulación urbana del centro de manzana rosarino hasta el calibrado espacio del hall de ingreso. Ya en el interior, las terrazas se convierten en balcones interiores, con la línea blanca de la losas de hormigón reforzando la tensión horizontal en espiral ascendiente para proteger un espacio interior recibiendo la luz del atardecer del sol de la pampa. Hay un juego espacial continuo desde los espacios en compresión horizontal de las circulaciones, la triple altura vertical del lobby y el terreno aterrazado del patio: son todos espacios públicos excavados al centro de manzana.Así es como los arquitectos investigan la influencia de los ejemplos canónicos en la construcción de s sensibilidad: desde el centro de la disciplina, en uso de su inteligencia de diseño, separan los datos específicos de sus fuentes para concentrarse en aquellos hechos que resuenan en sus memorias y experiencias personales. De esta manera es como muros de contención de ladrillo en la colina de una municipalidad nórdica reaparecen para conformar topografías artificiales en un patio recubierto de ladrillos en un centro de manzana de una ciudad de grilla ortogonal de vocación infinita en la planicie argentina. En este patio, a través de la articulación de los niveles continuos aterrazados de los techos de la biblioteca, la circulación interior y exterior se imbrican en un juego de planta y corte. Esta innovación tipológica propone imaginaciones de nuevos espacios públicos en el centro de las de otra manera excesivamente privados centro de manzana. Este espacio esta tensado al limite, con la arquitectura formalizando el paisaje rosarino cotidiano: las complejas articulaciones espaciales creadas por las colisiones de volúmenes al centro de estas manzanas de lotes profundos.

El edificio de Aricana es una reinterpretación de un diagrama moderno. Los arquitectos de esta generación terminaron sus estudios en la escuela de Arquitectura de Rosario en los 50’. Esta generación descubrió los edificios canónicos del periodo heroico de la modernidad a través de publicaciones extranjeras que llegaban en cuenta gotas, con pocas ilustraciones, pocas y de baja calidad. Mucho se dejaba abierto a la imaginación. Esta generación experimentará sus primeras arquitecturas con un deseo de imponer nuevas estéticas a un medio que reaccionaba con resistencias culturales: la modernidad llego aquí antes que los procesos de modernización tecnológica de los modos de producción. Esta actitud moderna conformó un canon:1/El módulo es el armazón conceptual del proyectoEl módulo no es ni un orden ni una ley: es una herramienta, una estrategia. El módulo no se impone, se encuentra en el juego entre programa y sitio. El modulo es una grilla tridimensional, estructurada en base a repetición. Una grilla permite la construcción de secuencias rítmicas espaciales.2/La estructura y los materiales sostienen la expresión del proyectoLa grilla se materializa y se convierte en estructura. Los materiales traban de acuerdo a sus posibilidades y definen las cualidades espaciales del edificio. Las texturas, los colores, la respuesta al paso del tiempo son factores fundamentales. Invención y perversión son necesarios.

En los 60, cuando Aricana fue construido, para los arquitectos rosarino lo moderno no era un estilo, sino la única arquitectura posible. En Rosario, el proyecto moderno no fue abandonado, sino extendido en un lento proceso de apropiación y reconfiguración en temas y técnicas locales que constituyen hoy la base de identidad de nuestra arquitectura contemporánea. Con solo una interrupción durante el apogeo de la posmodernidad de tendencia italiana, el proyecto moderno fue reinstalado con fuerza a principios de los 90’, desde la arquitectura contemporánea y conceptual, por la generación representada en este libro en los arquitectos Caballero, Iglesia y Villafañe.En este sentido, los ejemplos de los edificios de los 60’ incluidos en esta publicación no son ejemplos de una arquitectura del pasado, si no piezas fundamentales del paisaje urbano del presente. Aboliendo esquemas historicistas, los arquitectos de esta ciudad no tratan estas arquitecturas como piezas de museo, si no como artefactos problemáticos de contemporaneidad disciplinar. Algunos arquitectos hacen esto con una miradas disciplinada que encuentra valor en estas piezas, renovando la alegría de ver las cosas por primera vez. De esta forma retornan a estos objetos su originalidad, extienden sus investigaciones hasta el presente. Esta ambición es compartida por esta publicación.


Augusto Pantarotto Edificio Luy y FuerzaObra Casa en la barranca del río Paraná.Ubicación Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe. Argentina.Proyecto 1998/99. Construcción 1999.Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.


Augusto Pantarotto Edificio Luy y Fuerza



In Augusto Pantarotto’s buildings we found a purely architectural way of solving problems. While grounded in the tradition and language of his modern referents, Pantarotto goes beyond the rationalist paradigm with his phenomenological and plastic intuitions. He believes that the architect should first imagine the spaces; he should then feel and walk through them. Drawings will come only afterwards to translate what was previously imagined. His drawings of predilection are small and intense axonometric and perspectives studies that fill every available paper space around normative plan and sections. He has millions of them.With geometric precision and sensibility of place his buildings are volumes precisely located in the urban fabric that with an acute sense of scale appear in front of us as by effect of surprise, from unexpected angles. These buildings are unitary objects that while inaugurating and marking its position in the city give us clues, possibilities of imagined continuations, of transgressions. Pantarotto’s buildings are massive; they arrive to the ground with heaviness. There, the architect works as a sculptor. The spatial sequence of circulation will excavate the mass in order to propose an interior urbanism as natural extension of the streetscape. His buildings appear as gentle urban monsters that we discover full of space; their interior spatial choreographies articulating the myriad of volumetric games we perceive in our fully dense urban fabric. Precisely located openings will let light of every hour of the day activate these interiors. It is as if the city landscape had been interiorized and hollowed out, like a glove turned inside out. With knowledge and intuition to mold the materials with plastic richness, working with textures and shadows, Pantarotto will group and superimpose them relating colors and qualities. The spaces defined by Pantarotto interest us for their intensity, their density. Everything seems to be an opportunity for design for the architect. We can imagine him, working in his drawing table, rendering ceilings, floors, staircases, frames, handrails, etc. This “will of form” is guided by his design intelligence; Pantarotto can define the problems with precision and resolve them with proficiency. His intelligence is that of the urban scouter, founding the exact location, inaugurating new places that strangely fit despite their formal innovation.A few words about his references. He looked into iconic European buildings of high modernity the same way that he looked into his city of the southern hemisphere. He recollected images that amassed to a personal collection, a source material to be reworked. He was unprejudiced, but critical and attentive. It was his continuous re-working of this material, his conscientious obsession what shaped his position on the architectural discipline. (Almost as a joke, Pantarotto said that he lost Le Corbusier in the way, to slowly focus into his own obsessions).

29

En los edificios de Augusto Pantarotto encontramos una manera puramente arquitectónica de resolver los problemas. Posicionado en la tradición y el lenguaje de sus referentes modernos, Pantarotto va mas allá del paradigma racionalista basado en sus intuiciones fenomenológicas y plásticas. Pantarotto cree que el arquitecto debe primero imaginar espacios, debe sentirlos y caminarlos, los dibujos vendrán solo después para traducir lo ya imaginado. Sus dibujos preferidos son unos pequeños pero intensos estudios axonométricos y perspectívicos que ocupan cada espacio de papel disponible alrededor de plantas y cortes. Hay millones de ellos.Con precisión geométrica y sensibilidad de lugar sus edificios son volúmenes precisamente localizados en la trama urbana, que con un firme sentido de la escala se nos presentan por sorpresa, desde ángulos inesperados. Estos edificios son objetos unitarios que al mismo tiempo que marcan su posición en la ciudad, ofrecen pistas, inauguran posibilidades de continuidad, de imaginación, de transgresión. Son edificios macizos, que llegan al piso con peso. Aquí, el arquitecto trabaja como un escultor. La secuencia espacial de recorridos socavará la masa para proponer un urbanismo interior como continuidad natural del paisaje de la calle rosarina. Sus edificios son gentiles mounstros urbanos que descubrimos llenos de espacio, sus coreografias espaciales interiores articulando la miriada de juegos volumetricos que ercibimos dia a dia en nuesstra densa trama urbana. Aberturas precisamente localizadas dejarán entrar luz de cada hora del dia para activar estos interiores. Es como si el paisaje urbano haya sido interiorizado y ahuecado, dado vuelta como un guante. Con conocimiento e intuición para moldear con riqueza plástica los materiales respecto de sus texturas y sombras, para agruparlos y superponerlos respecto de colores y calidades, Pantarotto define espacios que nos interesan desde su densidad, desde su intensidad. Todo parece ser posibilidad de forma para el arquitecto, lo imaginamos en su tablero proponiendo cielorrasos, pisos, escaleras, carpinterías, barandas, manijas. Esta voluntad de forma siempre será guiada por su inteligencia y su sentido común, que lo hacen nombrar con claridad los problemas y le permiten resolverlos con rapidez.Unas pocas palabras acarca de sus referentes. Pantarotto ha mirado los edificios iconicos de la alta modernidad europea de la misma menra en la que ha mirado su cuidad del sur del continente. Ha recolectad las imágenes amasando una colección personal sobre la cuál trabajar. Ha sido desprejuiciado pero atento y crítico. En su retrabajo, en su obsesión consciente fue construyendo su lugar en la disciplina. (Casi como una broma ha dicho que fue ido perdiendo a L.C. en el camino para poder concentrarse en sus propias obsesiones).

/ Aníbal Moliné/ Chapter 1 p.14–52


30 / Jorge Scrimaglio/ Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge ScrimaglioLavalle house

Obra Casa Norberto AlordaUbicación Lavalle 880, Rosario. ArgentinaProyecto y construcción 1968/1973

31 / Jorge Scrimaglio/ Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge ScrimaglioLavalle house

32 / Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

33 60 90 00/ Jorge Scrimaglio

Lavalle house

The work of Jorge Scrimaglio expresses originality out of time; his work is anchored on the origin, the inaugural moment. If we position his work according to a system of pairs between archaic and innovative, popular and elitist; the architectural practice of Jorge Scrimaglio interest us by the inversion of the expectations: that which is define as apparently regressive, it is for him material to produce identity and difference.

The House of Lavalle Street, built in Rosario between 1968 and 1973, surprise us by its radicalism. This strange object is closer to things without name than to codified residential architecture: this is no domesticated architecture. This enigmatic object demands our attention and interpretative effort. We are confronted with a logical artifact, materialized architectural thought that incites us with its untamed gesture to reveal its tectonic reasons.

A first operation establishes the limits, the small infill lot is divided in two cubic spatial volumes: one for the house, one for the courtyard. The house at the back is a solid pile of brick from which space has been excavated. Solid exterior stairs articulate volumes and terraces and conform together with the interior stairs an intricate circuit that invites exploration. The integration of the interior and exterior circulation blurs the limits between plan and section. Notions of inside/outside are displaced: we only understand our position in space as: in between, over, or under bricks. The volumetric articulation of the house is compressed to the limit. With rigor and control of measurements and positions, the house seems to occupy a space too small for it; volumes look for vital space by overriding the limits up and out. Formalizing the chaotic frictions of every centre block, this house is a mechanism of precision that multiplies the possibilities of this small lot.From the street, the house defends the mystery of its interior with a porous brick wall. In Scrimaglio, a wall is a logic system, and bricks are arithmetic units. For Scrimaglio, a brick does not have intrinsic qualities, but situational ones: a brick can constitute floor, roof, staircase, and eventually a wall. The unit is not the brick itself, but its behavior in the system: its position. In the wall on Lavalle Street, Scrimaglio makes holes within the system: he makes them with absent bricks, with the space left behind when removed. In the tectonic possibilities of a brick wall, with its implicit diagonally bifurcated loadbearing logic, a calibrated absence of an element does not weaken the system. In this wall, the absent brick creates a void that re-signifies the remaining bricks. The wall has a hypnotic tectonic clarity and is in permanent tension, we feel the work of the brick. Thus, the paradox of this wall: in this airy light wall, the absent bricks duplicate the loadbearing work of the ones that stay in position, making weight more apparent. In this wall, void adds weight.

This being a box, the problem of the corner is encountered. It is solved, as this historic photograph of 1973 shows us, against every urban and building code. (This is no legal corner, but a party wall, that under regulations cannot be anything else than a solid 30cm thick loadbearing wall). Scrimaglio is working here from the very center of the architectural discipline, solving the tectonic problem expressed by the system in pedagogical and exemplary fashion. This is stronger for him than any legal requirement regarding party walls.

34 / Capítulo 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

Referencias bibliográficasRafael Iglesia, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrima-glio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.22.

Marcelo Villafañe, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrimaglio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.26.

Claudio Vekstein, “SCRMGL Observación sobre replicantes y suplicantes,” en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrima-glio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.18-19.

The work of Jorge Scrimaglio expresses originality out of time; his work is anchored on the origin, the inaugural moment. If we position his work according to a system of pairs between archaic and innovative, popular and elitist; the architectural practice of Jorge Scrimaglio interest us by the inversion of the expectations: that which is define as apparently regressive, it is for him material to produce identity and difference.

The House of Lavalle Street, built in Rosario between 1968 and 1973, surprise us by its radicalism. This strange object is closer to things without name than to codified residential architecture: this is no domesticated architecture. This enigmatic object demands our attention and interpretative effort. We are confronted with a logical artifact, materialized architectural thought that incites us with its untamed gesture to reveal its tectonic reasons.

A first operation establishes the limits, the small infill lot is divided in two cubic spatial volumes: one for the house, one for the courtyard. The house at the back is a solid pile of brick from which space has been excavated. Solid exterior stairs articulate volumes and terraces and conform together with the interior stairs an intricate circuit that invites exploration. The integration of the interior and exterior circulation blurs the limits between plan and section. Notions of inside/outside are displaced: we only understand our position in space as: in between, over, or under bricks. The volumetric articulation of the house is compressed to the limit. With rigor and control of measurements and positions, the house seems to occupy a space too small for it; volumes look for vital space by overriding the limits up and out. Formalizing the chaotic frictions of every centre block, this house is a mechanism of precision that multiplies the possibilities of this small lot.

From the street, the house defends the mystery of its interior with a porous brick wall. In Scrimaglio, a wall is a logic system, and bricks are arithmetic units. For Scrimaglio, a brick does not have intrinsic qualities, but situational ones: a brick can constitute floor, roof, staircase, and eventually a wall. The unit is not the brick itself, but its behavior in the system: its position. In the wall on Lavalle Street, Scrimaglio makes holes within the system: he makes them with absent bricks, with the space left behind when removed. In the tectonic possibilities of a brick wall, with its implicit diagonally bifurcated loadbearing logic, a calibrated absence of an element does not weaken the system. In this wall, the absent brick creates a void that re-signifies the remaining bricks. The wall has a hypnotic tectonic clarity and is in permanent tension, we feel the work of the brick. Thus, the paradox of this wall: in this airy light wall, the absent bricks duplicate the loadbearing work of the ones that stay in position, making weight more apparent. In this wall, void adds weight.

This being a box, the problem of the corner is encountered. It is solved, as this historic photograph of 1973 shows us, against every urban and building code. (This is no legal corner, but a party wall, that under regulations cannot be anything else than a solid 30cm thick loadbearing wall). Scrimaglio is working here from the very center of the architectural discipline, solving the tectonic problem expressed by the system in pedagogical and exemplary fashion. This is stronger for him than any legal requirement regarding party walls.

35 / Jorge Scrimaglio

Casa Lavalle

36 / Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

/ Jorge Scrimaglio

Casa Siri

Obra Casa SiriUbicación General Lagos. ArgentinaEn construcción 1990

37/ Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

/ Jorge Scrimaglio

Casa Siri

38 / Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

39Casa Siri

/ Jorge Scrimaglio

40

ReferenciasRoberto Fernández, “Teoría del proyecto americano. Notas para la discusión de lo Global/Local en América Latina” (Sin Publicar).

Bibiana Cicutti, “Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Nacional de Rosario: Su Formación y Desarrollo 1923-1980”, Publicación Departamento de Historia de la Arquitectura, facultad de Arquitectura U.N.R., 1980.

Rafael Iglesia, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrimaglio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.22.

Marcelo Villafañe, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrimaglio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.26.

Claudio Vekstein, “SCRMGL Observación sobre replicantes y suplicantes,” en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Nº 1 Jorge Scrimaglio, Obras y Proyectos, Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Distrito 2, Rosario. Octubre 1997, p.18-19.

Horacio Torrent, “La Ley del Meandro,” in Arquis 15: Desde el Margen, ed. Alejandro Lapunzina (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Palermo – Editorial CP67, 1998), p.4-13.

Horacio Gonzáles “Pino Solanas, un aguafuerte”, Pagina/12, Lunes 8 de Septiembre 2008.

Neil Levine: “La Ley del Meandro,” in Arquis 15: Desde el Margen, ed. Alejandro Lapunzina (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Palermo – Editorial CP67, 1998), p.4-13.

Scrimaglio does not work by composition. A designer working by composition arms himself with tools closer to form: proportions, symmetries, axes. To compose, a designer needs parts, elements: windows, doors, etc. This cannot be more alien for Scrimaglio. He establishes formal-logic systems that work by pure construction: architectural machines. Form will be the rigorous result of an exploration of a system carried to its limits.Scrimaglio develops his architectural themes in dialectical terms. A classic figure out of time, his design method proceeds by an unfolding of thesis and antithesis, always looking for that impossible synthesis that will place him closer to the truth. The mundane imagination discovers identity and difference among things, but not the transitional moments from one to another. To follow Scrimaglio, we have to discover his thinking in action, we have to find moments of dialectic inversion, when one thing becomes another. The transformations of the porous brick of the Lavalle Street House migrated from project to project over 20 years, until its final transmutation on the Siri House. Started in 1990 and still incomplete, here Scrimaglio takes advantage of the constructive hybridization permitted by reinforced concrete and makes the brick wall dissipate into pure spatial structure.

/ Chapter 1 p.14–52

Jorge Scrimaglio

/ Jorge Scrimaglio

Casa Siri 60 90 00

41

Scrimaglio does not work by composition. A designer working by composition arms himself with tools closer to form: proportions, symmetries, axes. To compose, a designer needs parts, elements: windows, doors, etc. This cannot be more alien for Scrimaglio. He establishes formal-logic systems that work by pure construction: architectural machines. Form will be the rigorous result of an exploration of a system carried to its limits.Scrimaglio develops his architectural themes in dialectical terms. A classic figure out of time, his design method proceeds by an unfolding of thesis and antithesis, always looking for that impossible synthesis that will place him closer to the truth. The mundane imagination discovers identity and difference among things, but not the transitional moments from one to another. To follow Scrimaglio, we have to discover his thinking in action, we have to find moments of dialectic inversion, when one thing becomes another. The transformations of the porous brick of the Lavalle Street House migrated from project to project over 20 years, until its final transmutation on the Siri House. Started in 1990 and still incomplete, here Scrimaglio takes advantage of the constructive hybridization permitted by reinforced concrete and makes the brick wall dissipate into pure spatial structure.The conceptual inversion that in Lavalle Street converted a brick in its absence is used here to transform the whole system. What in Lavalle was void will be mass here. A second operation is deployed, this time of rotation: the perpendicular void transmute into loadbearing axial mass: whether in horizontal or vertical planes. The brick conforms now, together with concrete and steel rebar, an open spatial frame system. The logic proliferation of the module constitutes a truly spatial frame, an abstract system. Volume has been suppressed, there is no contour; the work is pure space. The wall has disappeared, and it has taken the roof with it.

This is the paradox of this work: along the telluric sublime of the elemental brick wall of the South American vernacular, we see the contemporary radicalism of the formal system. On the Siri House, Scrimaglio systematic thinking advances and unfolds. The logic operation guides the architect, creating some hiper-articulated moments and some carefully fragmentary and inconclusive ones. The system at play extends beyond the logical limits of the material operation, with a procedural constructive abstraction that nullifies any possible interpretative effort. This is a pure expressive machine. Following the material system logic to the extremes, Scrimaglio produces a conceptual leap into the void. The rules that he follows at such obsessive degrees throw him into another world. This spatial and tectonic imagination is as conceptual as it is material. Scrimaglio demonstrates architectural thinking in action, with extreme disciplinary rigor and maximum creative freedom.

The conceptual inversion that in Lavalle Street converted a brick in its absence is used here to transform the whole system. What in Lavalle was void will be mass here. A second operation is deployed, this time of rotation: the perpendicular void transmute into loadbearing axial mass: whether in horizontal or vertical planes. The brick conforms now, together with concrete and steel rebar, an open spatial frame system. The logic proliferation of the module constitutes a truly spatial frame, an abstract system. Volume has been suppressed, there is no contour; the work is pure space. The wall has disappeared, and it has taken the roof with it.

This is the paradox of this work: along the telluric sublime of the elemental brick wall of the South American vernacular, we see the contemporary radicalism of the formal system. On the Siri House, Scrimaglio systematic thinking advances and unfolds. The logic operation guides the architect, creating some hiper-articulated moments and some carefully fragmentary and inconclusive ones. The system at play extends beyond the logical limits of the material operation, with a procedural constructive abstraction that nullifies any possible interpretative effort. This is a pure expressive machine. Following the material system logic to the extremes, Scrimaglio produces a conceptual leap into the void. The rules that he follows at such obsessive degrees throw him into another world. This spatial and tectonic imagination is as conceptual as it is material. Scrimaglio demonstrates architectural thinking in action, with extreme disciplinary rigor and maximum creative freedom.


Jorge Scrimaglio

/ Jorge Scrimaglio

Casa Siri 60 90 00

42

Chapter 2 / p. 54–145 90´s Intro. A generation a new

Rafael Iglesia / Gerardo Caballero / Marcelo Villafañe

After the return of the democracy in 1983, in the early 90’s Rosario experienced a resurgence of Architecture as a cultural discipline. It is the intention of the present publication to propose a genealogy that will re-connect this new generation of architects with those early epic cultural projects cut short, and to situate their shared relevance within the contemporary practice of Architecture at a global scale.

In 1992, a small group of architects founded the Group R. (R of Rosario? Of Resistance?) with the intention to create a milieu to discuss and promote a critical architecture discourse rooted in contemporary ideas. Founded among others by Gerardo Caballero, Rafael Iglesia, and Marcelo Villafañe, the group did not have any affiliation with any disciplinary of academic institution, but nevertheless managed to organize a set of unprecedented and highly successful lecture series involving a large number of local, national and international practicing architects. In a cultural milieu suffering the lack of debate and the inertia of slow institutions, the intense rhythm of events organized by the Group R soon activated the architectural debate. Inviting figures of the stature of Rafael Moneo, Enric Miralles, Alvaro Siza, among others, the groundbreaking lecture series renewed the interest in critical architectural discourse, and consolidated the strong relationship and influence that the contemporary Spanish and Portuguese architecture would have among the new generation of Rosarinian architects.

43 60 90 00/ 90´s Intro

A generation a new

This new generation collectively reacted against a disciplinary landscape signed by the institutionalization of a local version of the postmodern Italian Tendenza, into which the whole curriculum of the architecture school had been organized around in the last democratic academic reform of 1984. The analytic and scientific component of this pedagogical system was associated in Rosario with the architectural Argentinean academic tradition of the “parti” as the main organizational device for architectural propositions. The insistence in the self-sufficiency of Architecture as a discipline derived into a self-centered and professionalist discourse that limited the thinking of architecture into the consolidation of typologies and rigorous geometries controlled by axis and symmetries. This group of architects reacted against what they considered a new academicism.They shared a belief in the exhaustion of the formalist debates between the “isms” in vogue at the time, whether Post-modernism or Deconstrcutivism. And were more inclined to the discussion and architectural development of a baggage of ideas produced from Critical Theory exemplified in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari, Jean Baudrillard among others. The influence of this current of thought into Architectural discourse will arrive to Rosario via the journal Quaderns, the official publication of the Catalonian Architects Association. This publication was avidly consulted in Rosario, and we cannot minimize its impact in the propagation of ideas and works, mostly European, that established themselves as fundamental postulates of the contemporary architecture.They shared a willingness to re-assess the work of the masters of the modern movement, especially Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, whose work had been harshly criticized by the Post-modern critique. They did this with a parallel re-discovery of the appropriative and transformative work performed over that legacy by the previous Rosarinian generations and by the work of three Argentinean masters: Amancio Williams, Clorindo Testa and Mario Roberto Alvarez. They shared a reevaluation of the work of some forgotten representatives of the modern period such as Adolf Loos, Pierre Chareau, Jean Prouve, Giuseppe Terragni and they rediscovered the Latin-American legacy of modern architecture, represented by Luis Barragan, Eladio Dieste, Antonio Bonet, among others. They also share influences produced by the work of architects of the immediate previous generation, such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Alvaro Siza and Albert Viaplana in the international arena and Augusto Pantarotto and Enrique Scrimaglio at the local level. They developed their practices in constant admiration and discussion with each other, and bypassing the sterile cultural landscape at the country’s capital, Buenos Aires, they connected their local practices with the work of their contemporaries in Spain and Portugal: Enric Miralles, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Elias Torres Sur, etc. Furthermore, they established prolific intellectual relationships with liked-minded south-American colleagues, such as Solano Benitez from Paraguay, Angelo Bucci from Brazil and Alejandro Aravena from Chile.

An unprecedented appreciation of the local currency during the 90’s allowed for an influx of international publications, workshops and lectures series that permitted the local young architects to evaluate, confront and elaborate their ideas and concepts within the global landscape of architectural practice, yet imbedded in their local conditions of practice.

A closer study of the work of the most representative architects of this generation will allow us to establish converging and diverging directions.

44 / Capítulo 2 p.54–145

Introducción de la década del ‘90

After the return of the democracy in 1983, in the early 90’s Rosario experienced a resurgence of Architecture as a cultural discipline. It is the intention of the present publication to propose a genealogy that will re-connect this new generation of architects with those early epic cultural projects cut short, and to situate their shared relevance within the contemporary practice of Architecture at a global scale.

In 1992, a small group of architects founded the Group R. (R of Rosario? Of Resistance?) with the intention to create a milieu to discuss and promote a critical architecture discourse rooted in contemporary ideas. Founded among others by Gerardo Caballero, Rafael Iglesia, and Marcelo Villafañe, the group did not have any affiliation with any disciplinary of academic institution, but nevertheless managed to organize a set of unprecedented and highly successful lecture series involving a large number of local, national and international practicing architects. In a cultural milieu suffering the lack of debate and the inertia of slow institutions, the intense rhythm of events organized by the Group R soon activated the architectural debate. Inviting figures of the stature of Rafael Moneo, Enric Miralles, Alvaro Siza, among others, the groundbreaking lecture series renewed the interest in critical architectural discourse, and consolidated the strong relationship and influence that the contemporary Spanish and Portuguese architecture would have among the new generation of Rosarinian architects.

This new generation collectively reacted against a disciplinary landscape signed by the institutionalization of a local version of the postmodern Italian Tendenza, into which the whole curriculum of the architecture school had been organized around in the last democratic academic reform of 1984. The analytic and scientific component of this pedagogical system was associated in Rosario with the architectural Argentinean academic tradition of the “parti” as the main organizational device for architectural propositions. The insistence in the self-sufficiency of Architecture as a discipline derived into a self-centered and professionalist discourse that limited the thinking of architecture into the consolidation of typologies and rigorous geometries controlled by axis and symmetries. This group of architects reacted against what they considered a new academicism.They shared a belief in the exhaustion of the formalist debates between the “isms” in vogue at the time, whether Post-modernism or Deconstrcutivism. And were more inclined to the discussion and architectural development of a baggage of ideas produced from Critical Theory exemplified in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and

45 / 90´s Intro

Una nueva generación

Felix Guatari, Jean Baudrillard among others. The influence of this current of thought into Architectural discourse will arrive to Rosario via the journal Quaderns, the official publication of the Catalonian Architects Association. This publication was avidly consulted in Rosario, and we cannot minimize its impact in the propagation of ideas and works, mostly European, that established themselves as fundamental postulates of the contemporary architecture.They shared a willingness to re-assess the work of the masters of the modern movement, especially Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, whose work had been harshly criticized by the Post-modern critique. They did this with a parallel re-discovery of the appropriative and transformative work performed over that legacy by the previous Rosarinian generations and by the work of three Argentinean masters: Amancio Williams, Clorindo Testa and Mario Roberto Alvarez. They shared a reevaluation of the work of some forgotten representatives of the modern period such as Adolf Loos, Pierre Chareau, Jean Prouve, Giuseppe Terragni and they rediscovered the Latin-American legacy of modern architecture, represented by Luis Barragan, Eladio Dieste, Antonio Bonet, among others. They also share influences produced by the work of architects of the immediate previous generation, such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Alvaro Siza and Albert Viaplana in the international arena and Augusto Pantarotto and Enrique Scrimaglio at the local level. They developed their practices in constant admiration and discussion with each other, and bypassing the sterile cultural landscape at the country’s capital, Buenos Aires, they connected their local practices with the work of their contemporaries in Spain and Portugal: Enric Miralles, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Elias Torres Sur, etc. Furthermore, they established prolific intellectual relationships with liked-minded south-American colleagues, such as Solano Benitez from Paraguay, Angelo Bucci from Brazil and Alejandro Aravena from Chile.

An unprecedented appreciation of the local currency during the 90’s allowed for an influx of international publications, workshops and lectures series that permitted the local young architects to evaluate, confront and elaborate their ideas and concepts within the global landscape of architectural practice, yet imbedded in their local conditions of practice.

A closer study of the work of the most representative architects of this generation will allow us to establish converging and diverging directions.

46 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Rafael Iglesia

/ Rafael Iglesia

Clínica

Notas1 Cita en G. Deleuze y Félix Guattarí en el libro “¿Qué es la filosofía?”, Anagrama, 1993, Barcelona, págs. 204 y 205.2 Op. cit., pág. 205.


Texto por Rafael IglesiaLos hombres incesantemente, se fabrican un paraguas que los resguarda, en cuya parte interior trazan un firmamento y escriben sus convenciones, sus opiniones; pero el poeta, el artista, practica un corte en el paraguas, rasga el propio firmamento, para dar entrada a un poco de caos libre y ventoso y para enmarcar en una luz repentina una visión que surge a través de la rasgadura, primavera de Wordsworth o manzana de Cézanne, silueta de Macbeth o de Acab. Entonces aparece la multitud de imitadores que restaura el paraguas con un paño que vagamente se parece a la visión, y la multitud de glosadores, que remiendan la hendidura con opiniones: comunicación. D. H. Lawrence, “El caos en poesía”1

¿Cómo no ser un restaurador de paraguas?¿Cómo intervenir sin mimetizarse con su lenguaje, hoy que se ha roto la unidad del discurso, cómo lograr una arquitectura que sea susceptible de tantas interpretaciones y sentidos como la historia misma, que niegue el discurso narrativo como un todo cerrado, que pueda ser contada de mil maneras, donde pierda sentido el significado, la interpretación?Que no establezca ninguna verdad o falsedad.Que deseche lo hecho anteriormente, que se maneje con la parte, la reversión, la mentira.Una obra de equívocos y respuestas parciales.Una arquitectura que esté dispuesta a despojarse de sus certezas, que se mida con lo que no sabe, que se aventure a seguir pistas más difusas, incluso pistas falsas; que corra riesgos, que se anime a caminar fuera de su red conceptual.Una arquitectura que no sólo se angustie por el encuentro entre el plano horizontal y el parámetro vertical, sino que cuestione los fundamentos mismos. Una arquitectura infundada.La piedra no es capaz de rasgar el firmamento; tampoco de remendarlo con una imagen “que vagamente se parezca a la visión”.La piedra está allí, conviviendo con esa línea imaginaria que une las cosas con el suelo, quitándole razones de peso, atestiguando la gravedad de la situación.La piedra, a pesar de ser una objeción en el camino entre el racionalismo y sus fundamentos, no pertenece al mundo de los objetos, está del lado de las cosas. Los objetos son construcciones del hombre, tienen proyecto. La piedra, no tiene proyecto; en todo caso, es un proyecto lapidario. Atemporal, asemántica, asignificante, inútil, anarquitectónica. Es la materia, el principio, el fin.

“Siempre hará falta otros artistas para hacer otras rasgaduras, llevar a cabo las destrucciones necesarias, quizá cada vez mayores, y volver a dar así a sus antecesores, la incomunicable novedad que ya no se sabía ver.” 2

Obra Clínica. Ubicación Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto y construcción 1990

47/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Rafael Iglesia

/ Rafael Iglesia

Clínica


Texto por Rafael IglesiaLos hombres incesantemente, se fabrican un paraguas que los resguarda, en cuya parte interior trazan un firmamento y escriben sus convenciones, sus opiniones; pero el poeta, el artista, practica un corte en el paraguas, rasga el propio firmamento, para dar entrada a un poco de caos libre y ventoso y para enmarcar en una luz repentina una visión que surge a través de la rasgadura, primavera de Wordsworth o manzana de Cézanne, silueta de Macbeth o de Acab. Entonces aparece la multitud de imitadores que restaura el paraguas con un paño que vagamente se parece a la visión, y la multitud de glosadores, que remiendan la hendidura con opiniones: comunicación. D. H. Lawrence, “El caos en poesía”1

¿Cómo no ser un restaurador de paraguas?¿Cómo intervenir sin mimetizarse con su lenguaje, hoy que se ha roto la unidad del discurso, cómo lograr una arquitectura que sea susceptible de tantas interpretaciones y sentidos como la historia misma, que niegue el discurso narrativo como un todo cerrado, que pueda ser contada de mil maneras, donde pierda sentido el significado, la interpretación?Que no establezca ninguna verdad o falsedad.Que deseche lo hecho anteriormente, que se maneje con la parte, la reversión, la mentira.Una obra de equívocos y respuestas parciales.Una arquitectura que esté dispuesta a despojarse de sus certezas, que se mida con lo que no sabe, que se aventure a seguir pistas más difusas, incluso pistas falsas; que corra riesgos, que se anime a caminar fuera de su red conceptual.Una arquitectura que no sólo se angustie por el encuentro entre el plano horizontal y el parámetro vertical, sino que cuestione los fundamentos mismos. Una arquitectura infundada.La piedra no es capaz de rasgar el firmamento; tampoco de remendarlo con una imagen “que vagamente se parezca a la visión”.La piedra está allí, conviviendo con esa línea imaginaria que une las cosas con el suelo, quitándole razones de peso, atestiguando la gravedad de la situación.La piedra, a pesar de ser una objeción en el camino entre el racionalismo y sus fundamentos, no pertenece al mundo de los objetos, está del lado de las cosas. Los objetos son construcciones del hombre, tienen proyecto. La piedra, no tiene proyecto; en todo caso, es un proyecto lapidario. Atemporal, asemántica, asignificante, inútil, anarquitectónica. Es la materia, el principio, el fin.

“Siempre hará falta otros artistas para hacer otras rasgaduras, llevar a cabo las destrucciones necesarias, quizá cada vez mayores, y volver a dar así a sus antecesores, la incomunicable novedad que ya no se sabía ver.” 2

48 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Rafael Iglesia

/ Rafael Iglesia

Casa en la barrancaObra Casa en la barranca del río Paraná.Ubicación Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe. Argentina.Proyecto 1998/99. Construcción 1999.Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

49/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Rafael Iglesia

/ Rafael Iglesia

Casa en la barranca

Texto por Rafael Iglesia (Rois ed.)En la pampa, la historia es breve y el espacio inmenso, somos más geográficos que históricos. La vastedad es nuestro medio. El paisaje es lo que nos hace paisanos. Sobre el Paraná, el horizonte —que divide lo terrenal de lo divino— está delineado por un trazo grueso, a mano alzada…El proyecto se desarrolla en cuatro niveles: el ingreso en contacto con la calle; un espacio verde que no deja ver lo que sucede unos metros más abajo; la piscina y el techo de la casa conformando el mayor espacio de uso, por debajo de éste, la casa y el muelle sobre el nivel del río. El patio, entre la pared de la piscina y la casa, organiza el proyecto. Desde acá se sigue viendo el río a través de las paredes de vidrio, un ventanal con el espesor del espacio habitable que alberga. Este lugar es un reparo. En la cascada que define uno de sus lados, el agua desarrolla todo su potencial sobre los sentidos. No sólo se la puede ver: se escucha el sonido que provoca su caída, se huele el rocío sobre el césped y, fundamentalmente, se siente el cambio de temperatura.El edificio es la estructura y nada más que la estructura. Busco, como en mis últimos trabajos, hacer más compleja la descarga de fuerzas, trato de complicar el camino de la gravedad, esa línea imaginaria que une las cosas al suelo por el camino más corto. Las vigas se desplazan ya sea invirtiéndose para obtener un determinado encuadre del paisaje, haciéndose presentes para proteger el lugar del sol del oeste o interviniendo en la escala del ambiente. Las vigas desfasadas desde el interior complejizan la lectura de su estabilidad, y en el exterior se aparean al horizonte.La edificación no tiene más lenguaje que lo que la sustenta. Es como son nuestros pueblos en la inmensidad del territorio: un aerolito caído del cielo, una roca tirada en el campo.

Text by Rafael Iglesia (Rois ed.)In the pampas, history is short and space immense; we are more geographical than historical. Vastness is our medium. Landscape is what makes us countrymen. Over the Paraná River, a thick free hand line defines the horizon —dividing the earthly from the celestial—.

The house is built on four levels: the street-level entrance; a green zone that conceals what is happening a few meters below; the swimming pool that constitutes the largest usable space. A waterfall defines one of its sides and affects our senses with full potential. Water it is not only seen but also heard as it falls; its spray smelt on the lawn and, above all, one feels the change of temperature.Below this, the house and further down the riverside. The patio, between the swimming pool wall and the house, organizes the project. From here, the river can still be seen through the glass walls, windows as thick as the living space they constitute. The building is structure and nothing more than structure. As in other recent works of mine, I seek to make the transition of forces more complex, to complicate the path of gravity, the imaginary line that links things to earth by the shortest possible route. The beams are displaced: either inverted to frame the landscape in a particular way, or placed to protect the building from the western sun and modify scale. Displaced from the interior, the beams complicate our perception of its own stability, while on the outside they line up with the horizon. The building’s only language is the one that sustains it. It is like our towns and villages in the vastness of the territory of the pampas: a meteorite fallen from the sky, a rock thrown into a field.

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Casa en la barranca

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Edificio Altamira

Obra Edificio Altamira. Ubicación calle San Luis 470, Rosario. Argentina.Arquitectos colaboradores Andrés Lombardo, Mariano Fiorentini. Proyecto 1998/99.Construcción 2000/01. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

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Text by Rafael IglesiaGilles Deleuze introduced a description of two games of opposing functioning, Chess and Go, a description that may well illustrate two modes of work in Architecture. In a codified Architecture, all elements operate as chess pieces: they have intrinsic properties that make them what they are. Thus, a window is always a window, a door is a door, and a beam is a beam. Every component has determined roles and positions. Each component is a subject of enunciation with relative meaning; relative meanings are combined into a subject of enunciating.In this building, I aim the opposite. I put the beams into play. I treat them as simple units with anonymous collective function, as the Go pieces. Here, beams are not subjects with intrinsic properties, but derived from their situation: they may become a wall, a window, a door. Eventually, they will “play” their support roles, and these will depend on the place they occupy in space. The persistent beam will move around, constructing, destroying, going up, going down, lingering, and going away when least expected, without altering the unity. In the “Play” the beam may become the hero or the butler, appearing or disappearing only when required for destiny to be fulfilled.

Texto por Rafael IglesiaMe serviré de la descripción que Gilles Deleuze hace del Ajedrez y el Go para ilustrar dos maneras de hacer arquitectura. En una arquitectura codificada todos sus elementos funcionan como las piezas de ajedrez: tienen una naturaleza interna o propiedades intrínsecas que les hacen ser tales. Es decir, una ventana es siempre una ventana, una puerta es una puerta, una viga es una viga, y esto se cumple para todos los componentes. Tienen roles y movimientos definidos. Cada uno de ellos es un sujeto de enunciado dotado de un significado relativo; los significados relativos se combinan en un sujeto de enunciación. En mi edificio busco que suceda lo contrario. Lo que intento poner en juego son sólo las vigas tratadas como simples unidades cuya función es anónima, colectiva y de tercera persona –como las piezas del Go. Las vigas aquí son elementos no subjetivados que no tienen propiedades intrínsecas sino de situación: pueden ser muro, ventana, puerta. Eventualmente, “actuarán” trabajando como sostén y sus roles dependerán del lugar que ocupen en el espacio. La insistente viga se desplaza construyendo, destruyendo, bordeando, subiendo, bajando, soportando, deteniéndose, ausentándose y desapareciendo cuando menos se lo espera, sin alterar la unidad. En “la obra” la viga puede ser el héroe o el mayordomo, apareciendo y desapareciendo sólo cuando ello es necesario para que se cumpla el destino.


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Edificio Altamira

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Obra Quincha y piscina.Ubicación calle J. Newbery 9196, Rosario. Argentina. Colaboradores Silvio Vacca, Gustavo Farías. Proyecto 2001. Construcción 2001. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

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Text by Rafael IglesiaThe trunk, at first glance, may seem a figurative gesture, but it is not. While it is not normal, it is natural. This is, if you will, the first column, the most elemental, archaic one. In the most ancient meaning, matter and wood were the same. In the genealogy of the column, the origin is in the trunk.The table is the machine of its own construction. A system of forces acting by mass and friction, there are no tensors, no nails, no glue, only wood. This is like oriental wrestling; the aim is to take advantage of the enemies’ strength. The lever has taken the monotonous gravity line for a ride.Quincha: It is about recovering barbarism, in Benjamin’s sense: Where does poverty of experience leads the barbarian? It leads him to start from the beginning; to start once again; to get along with little, to construct from almost nothing and without looking aside. Here, there is no representation, what is constructed, is constructed without plans, empirically, freehand.In the afternoon, the place becomes sterile. It no longer gives shelter; the west sun pierces it and makes it useless with its skimming light. The object loses its reason. In this momentary uselessness, it finds its essence. In order to be, it abandons its servility. The liquid reflected in the underside of the slab becomes the rippling foliage of the cadaverous trunk, and is stirred with every little breeze. There is the ancient enigma of the mirror: Why does a mirror reverse the left/right relation and not the up/down one?

texto en español?

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Quincho Gallo

Texto por Rafael IglesiaQuincha: Sobre esta voz -quincha-, el diccionario establece, entre otras acepciones: “Chile. Pared hecha de cañas, varillas u otro material semejante, que suele recubrirse de barro y se emplea en cercas, chozas, corrales, etc.”. En Argentina, quincho es un lugar para comer un asado. Y, en este caso, esto es lo que es. Es esto, sin necesidad de recurrir al telúrico sombrero de paja: el rancho. Una pared hecha con durmientes de quebracho colorado y una losa de hormigón que les imprime compresión. Un piso hecho con varillas. En su interior una mesa. No existe aquí la tradicional parrilla: hay estacas y un horno de barro, firmado por su autor, Don Palacios, albañil y domador entre otras cosas. Mesa: Es una máquina simple: una palanca que está trabajando –literalmente- para sostener los cuatrocientos kilos de los durmientes. Esta máquina con su magia hace levitar la pesada mesa, quitándole razones de peso. Se trata simplemente de un sistema de fuerzas que actúan por roce y carga; no hay ni tensores, ni clavos, ni otro elemento más que la madera; completan el sistema unas cuantas cuñas, las claves. Es como la lucha oriental, donde de lo que se trata es de sacarle partido a la fuerza del adversario. La palanca ha sacado a pasear la rutinaria línea de la gravedad, complicándole su conocido y más corto camino al suelo. Suponemos que así podrá ver otras cosas.Tronco: Esto que a simple vista puede parecer un gesto figurativo, no es tal. No es una cariátide arbórea, es una columna dispuesta a empezar de nuevo. Si bien no es normal, es natural. Es la primer columna si se quiere, la más elemental, la más arcaica. Antes de la modernidad, el tronco era la columna. Los griegos arcaicos, en la maraña selvática hallaron la imagen de la materia sin forma, de lo indeterminado y por lo tanto inconocible. En el sentido más antiguo materia y madera son lo mismo. En el árbol genealógico de la columna, el tronco es el origen.

Obra Quincho Gallo. Ubicación pasaje Sol de Mayo 76. Rosario. Argentina. Colaboradores Silvio Vacca, Gustavo Farías. Proyecto 2002.Construcción 2002. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

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Quincho Gallo

El lugar en horas de la tarde, se vuelve estéril. Ya no protege, el oeste lo atraviesa y lo inutiliza. Sus formas y su color ya no sirven. El objeto pierde su sentido, su razón. En esta momentánea inutilidad encuentra su esencia. Deja la servidumbre para ser. La pared no ampara, la cubierta ya no cubre, ésta sólo recoge el reflejo del agua y su movimiento. El líquido, al reflejarse en la losa, se transforma en el ondeante follaje del cadavérico tronco, que se mueve cuando corre alguna gota de viento. El espejo opaco no duplica –para tranquilidad de Borges-, sino que sugiere una realidad ausente. Vespertinamente, el tronco recupera su memoria de árbol, hace memoria: produce a partir de un recuerdo un pasado. Si bien sabemos que este fantasmal follaje, como tal, no da sombra, y que éste desaparecerá el resto del día sin dejar huellas, el acontecimiento no deja de entroncarse con el origen.

El pasado y el futuro, hoy, ayer y mañanaLa luz es sitiada, enrejada. A salvo de la luz las sombras juegan, se hacen sombra, se invierten, se di-vierten. El suceso, aunque ilusorio, alcanza a concretar la intención de naturaleza que lo anima (¿acaso la realidad es algo más que una ficción?). Insistentemente, todos los días de sol –y durante las noches de luna llena-, el árbol volverá a presentarse casi “como un recuerdo que relampaguea en un instante de peligro”, para manifestar que el pasado no permanece igual a sí mismo, el pasado acontece una vez más todas las veces en el corazón del presente, comunicándose y construyendo el futuro que a su vez lo construye, atravesando el tiempo a contrapelo o saltando las agujas del reloj.alterar la unidad. En “la obra” la viga puede ser el héroe o el mayordomo, apareciendo y desapareciendo sólo cuando ello es necesario para que se cumpla el destino.

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PabellonesObra Parque de diversiones. Ubicación Parque Independencia, Rosario. Argentina. Arquitecto Colaborador J. J. Dapello. Colaboradores Arq. G. Castiglione por MR, Ing. Osela, André Barton, G. Farias, L. Villanueva. Proyecto 2002. Construcción 2003.Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

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Pabellones

Texto por Rafael IglesiaPublic Restrooms: As the faint glow of a lantern attempts to guide one through darkness, the restroom pavilion discretely illuminates the entrance of the park. In this way, we have assigned a new role to this otherwise usually hidden program. Structure is the only language of this reinforced concrete and U-glass building. The interior organization allows both privacy and a clear visibility of the circulation thanks to the use of the translucent glass, making it possible to distinguish interior silhouettes from the outside. The cast in place concrete is left without any finishing both outside and inside. The roughness of concrete and red Quebracho is in contrast with the smooth and shiny glass and stainless steel surfaces that acting as mirrors blend figure and background.

Baños públicosEl primer pabellón se ha emplazado al ingreso del parque. La ubicación de los baños es un tema aparte, ya que siempre se les asigna el lugar más oscuro, cuando no el más sórdido.Así las cosas, hemos hecho con ellos una operación que ya aparece en otros trabajos anteriores: sacar a la luz ámbitos que permanecen ocultos asignándoles nuevos lugares. Su localización al ingreso del parque expresa nuestra intención de que oficie de linterna en una zona que siempre ha presentado poco iluminación.Se trata de una estructura de hormigón armado cerrada con vidrio, cuyo lenguaje no es más que la propia estructura. Esta estructuración interna permite por un lado el grado de privacidad que requieren estos ámbitos y por otro, el vidrio translúcido hace visibles las siluetas a través de él y con ello la circulación interna, de manera que quien está afuera puede ver si hay alguien en el interior del local. Al mismo tiempo, la luz y el vidrio imprimen color a la fachada. Esta estructuración, además, hace posible la ubicación de los lucernarios en los pliegues de los tabiques que se expresan en la cubierta. El edificio se mantiene de hormigón visto en su exterior tanto como en su interior, buscando contrastar la rusticidad del hormigón y el quebracho colorado de las mesadas con las superficies pulidas y brillantes del vidrio y el acero inoxidable que ofician de espejos que confunden fondo y figura.

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Pabellones

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Pabellones

Text by Rafael Iglesia Party Pavilion The first impression of the site was the outstanding contrast between the luminosity of daylight visible sky and the darkness of the canopy shade that turned the area into an unreal night, in the way of René Magritte’s paintings. Under the dark shade, spades of light passed trough trees, creating a compartmentalized horizontal light that seemed to follow us through the long vertical lines of the trunks. In this rhythm of light and shadows this projects find itself. The posts supporting the roof slab are made of Quebracho tree trunks. The slab is simply resting on the trunks and anchored with a Loadbearing wall at one of its extremes. In this structure, partitions hang from the roof to increase weight and stability. Weight is no longer a problem, but the solution. In the interior, nothing touches the floor. The counters and the storage room’s floor are wedged against the hanging walls. We are in a truly “open plan”.The building disappears in the context; the trunks blend with those of the nearby grove. The horizontal line of the slab hanging between foliage and trunks is the only sign of human intervention.The tree does not obscure the forest. Nevertheless, the trunk has been sliced in tree strips to facilitate manipulation and interrupt its mimetic effect. What is intended is not to imitate nature, (or make nature imitate architecture) but simply to tell what is happening on the other side. Eventually, trunks will lose their bark; will show the red tannin interior, and will acquire the gray coloration that times gives: oldness.

While designing this party pavilion, I remembered the image of the pampas ranch decorated for birthdays. Against the plains, the otherwise brown spot in the horizon is transformed by the colors of garlands and balloons. Ignoring social classes and budgets, garlands and balloons are, wherever they are, the unequivocal sign of celebration

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Pabellones

El pabellón para fiestasCuando visité el lugar, la primera impresión que tuve fue el notable contraste de la luz del día –visible en el cielo- y la sombra cerrada bajo la arboleda que sumía al terreno en una noche imposible, a la manera de las pinturas de René Magritte. Por otro lado, bajo la masa oscura del follaje de la arboleda, la luz pasa recortada a través de los troncos a la altura humana. Una luz compartimentada, cuyo flujo está sujeto al ritmo que le imprimen los troncos, (tal como se la ve en las arboledas al costado de la ruta) una luz rasante que parece perseguirnos a través de las líneas verticales de los tallos. En esa alternancia de sombras y luces está el proyecto. El proyecto, entonces, plantea una losa que se sostiene sobre unos troncos de quebracho colorado, colocados en el perímetro. La losa simplemente está apoyada y anclada con un tabique en uno de sus extremos. En esta estructura los tabiques divisorios cuelgan del techo para otorgarle más peso y estabilidad. En el interior nada llega al piso. Las mesadas, barras y pisos del depósito están acuñados a estos cortinados rígidos de hormigón. Estamos en presencia de que comúnmente llamamos una “planta libre”.La imagen resultante responde a lo pretendido al comienzo: es decir, el edificio desaparece, los troncos se confunden con los de la arboleda y sólo se manifiesta la línea recta de la losa gravitando en la arboleda como única señal de la intervención del hombre. Es decir: el árbol no tapa el bosque.Sin embargo, los troncos han sido cortados en tres lonjas para favorecer su manipulación y con el fin de interrumpir el efecto mimético y mostrar en ellos la huella de la mano humana, porque lo que se pretende no es imitar a la naturaleza (o forzar a la naturaleza a que imite a la arquitectura), sino contar qué pasa del otro lado”. Con el tiempo los troncos irán perdiendo la corteza para dejar paso al color rojo que el tanino le da a la piel y, más tarde, adquirirán el color plateado que le da el tiempo: la vejez.

Mientras proyectaba este pabellón de fiestas tuve también muy presente la imagen de los ranchos arreglados para el festejo de un cumpleaños. Recortada sobre la llanura, la mancha marrón del rancho se transforma con los colores de los globos y las guirnaldas que hacen su trabajo aún en la casa más modesta. Soslayando clases sociales y presupuestos dispares, globos y guirnaldas son, donde quieran que estén, la señal inequívoca del festejo.

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Pabellones

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Casa Bv. Argentino

Obra Casa Bv. Argentino. Ubicación Bv. Argentino al 8000, Fisherton, Rosario. Argentina. Junto con Mariel Suárez. Proyecto 2003.Construcción 2003. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

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Casa Bv. Argentino

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Casa Bv. Argentino

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Plaza Santa CruzObra Plaza Santa Cruz. Ubicación Ayacucho esquina Pasaje Santa Cruz, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1990.Construcción 1991. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

Gerardo Caballero was born in Totoras, Argentina, and that makes him a Gaucho of the Pampas. He studied at the School of Architecture of the National University of Rosario.In Barcelona he worked with Mario Corea, participating and winning competitions. Later on, he received his Master in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. After teaching experiences at the University of Arkansas and Kansas University, he returned to Rosario to open his office. Gerardo (together with Marcelo Villafane and Rafael Iglesia) was part of a group that organized at the beginning of the 90’s, disconnected of any traditional centre of power, whether professional or academic, a series of conferences that where revolutionary and foundational for the architectural education of my generation. They brought Enric Miralles, Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Soto de Moura and many more. They showed to us, students in a very insular and self-centered school that architecture was out there in the world, on the making, and that it was an amazing cultural adventure to be part of it.That group of architects is for our generation a guiding force. We follow their work; we talk about it between us. We worked with them; we entered competitions against them. We measure our work against their work. We have long dinner conversations about architecture with them. There is a flow, and exchange of ideas between them and us. There is a generosity in that attitude that I find extinguished in this world. I was going to read something I wrote three years ago about Gerardo’s practice, for a book that never came out, but I managed to lost the file. I described in that text his office as a calm laboratory of architecture, tall white walls with drawings and models, in which big competitions and small commissions are pursuit with the same ambitions

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Plaza Santa CruzObra Plaza Santa Cruz. Ubicación Ayacucho esquina Pasaje Santa Cruz, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1990.Construcción 1991. Créditos fotográficos Gustavo Frittegotto.

and commitment. And I described his work as in relation with context understood as a broader cultural context, in search of architecture with a natural belonging. An architecture that is not forced upon us as “design objects”, that is not overproduced, and that on the contrary allows us space for breathing, for living. I, like others of my generation, have followed his trajectory, and it is a privilege to see him mature as an architect. It is a lesson for us.Josep Quetglas once wrote that there is a moment at the beginning of the career of those architects that matter in which every project is for them a pedagogical opportunity. The projects are for them a demonstration of how one should think about architecture. Those projects show a kind of urgency, a tense articulation of ideas that is bigger than the commission itself. That is the case of Wright in the Robbie House, of Le Corbusier in the Villa Saboye. Then, later on, those same architects master their language, they get comfortable with it, and they begin to apply it to the particularities of every site and program. The game gets pure opportunity, pure pleasure, for everybody involved. That is the Wright of the Kauffman House, the Le Corbusier of La Tourette.When Gerardo first came back to Rosario, he was eager to demonstrate, to teach, to show. Every project had that electrical charge. There was tension in the air. Tensions with the city, with programs, with materials, with constructors. I think that has changed. Gerardo has mastered his discipline. His architecture flows as easily as his sketches with the calm of a conversation between friends that know each other from long ago. I see Gerardo now enjoying every moment of the project, in control. A gaucho of the pampas looking at the horizon.

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Plaza Santa Cruz

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Plaza Santa Cruz

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Quincho PuricelliObra Quincho Puricelli. Ubicación Funes, Argentina. Proyecto 1992.Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Ariel Giménez.Colaboradores Diego Nakamatsu, Fabián Llonch. Constructor O. Cavagnero.Estructura Ing. Chillemi.

Quincho PuricelliThe word «quincho», refers to a secondary construction next to the main house that is used for barbecues and family reunions.The program askes in this case not only for the barbecue place but also for a covered outside galeria, a bathroom,a kitchen and for a bedroom.This small building of 70 m2 (700 sqft) is conceived as an isolated rural object that, developing an idea of landscaping and site, a more conceptual but not less phisical relationships, relates more to the inmensity of the argentinian pampas than to its specific location.In order to be built a steel metal frame has been used for its construction, with columns and H steel rolled beams in a parabolic shape as a re-interpretation of the agricultural barns found in the area.

Quincho PuricelliLa palabra Quincho define una construcción secundaria de la vivienda principal utilizada como lugar de recreación y reuniones familiares.El programa define en este caso no sólo la parrilla (barbacoa) para los asados, sino también una galería cubierta, un baño, una cocina y un pequeño dormitorio de servicio.Con un total de 70 m2, este pequeño edificio se concibe como un objeto rural aislado que se relaciona más con la inmensidad de la Pampa que con su emplazamiento concreto, elaborando una idea de paisaje y de lugar. Relaciones más conceptuales pero no por ello menos físicas.Para su construcción, se recurrió a una estructura de perfiles rolados y chapa aluminizada de forma parabólica, como una reelaboración de las estructuras agrícolas de la zona.

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Quincho PuricelliObra Quincho Puricelli. Ubicación Funes, Argentina. Proyecto 1992.Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Ariel Giménez.Colaboradores Diego Nakamatsu, Fabián Llonch. Constructor O. Cavagnero.Estructura Ing. Chillemi.

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Edificio Marcos PazObra Edificio Marcos Paz. Ubicación Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario.Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecución 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira.Colaboradores Maite Fernández, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro.Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Marcos PazObra Edificio Marcos Paz. Ubicación Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario.Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecución 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira.Colaboradores Maite Fernández, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro.Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

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Q. When Alvaro Siza writes in reference to Fernando Tavora’s architecture, he tells us that there is an architecture that is imposed upon us immediately. It can be large scale or small scale. It could be related to the context or not, it does not matter. A good photograph can capture that kind of architecture, and a second look will not tell us anything more than the first one. On the contrary, Siza relates Tavora with another kind of architecture, one that impresses less to less people. That architecture can be big or small, but it will always relate to its surroundings, evidently or not. Is an architecture that chooses to be modest when it does not find a reason to pose as different. I think that your architecture is within this realm.

R. To relate to things is an attitude that I find civilized, I would tell you, of curious people. Of people that realize that the work of architecture extends beyond its own limits, whether they are physical or abstract. There are architects or architectures or a way of thinking architecture that originates with the understanding of the kind of relationships the project will establish not only with its physical context, but also with is cultural environment, with the demands of the program, the available technology, philosophical issues, the topography, etc.To respond to these demands, which comes from all different contexts, is what gives the project its complexity, it’s what makes it consistent, and at the end, less vulnerable. The architects you mentioned are a good example of that way of thinking. I believe it was Siza who said that the project of architecture is like a hurdle race. I think that this is true and that we have to face the obstacles and overcome them. What you cannot do is ignore them, and perhaps you cannot invent them either.

Q. This image of the project as a hurdle race speaks to a very dynamic relationship with the act of designing. On the one hand, you need precision and determination, on the other you should have gracefulness, certain elegance with the movements. The great athletes make us believe it is almost natural. I think that your sketch’s lines have that elegance, without losing the precision. Could you talk a little about the space that your drawings have in your design process?


Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Marcos Paz

R. The drawings have been acquiring elegance, as you say, because through constant practice they have become an almost natural activity in me. I draw continuously and that has given me a capacity to transfer my observations with a natural flow. However, I am more interested in the drawings that I do when I travel, than the ones I do for projects.I like to draw, if I am bored, when I travel, for example, I draw a lot. I like to discover in the drawings what the architect was looking at. What kind of things he paid attention to and what things he ignored. But I don’t have a fetishism of the drawing. I take it as a kind of code and a way of working, of thinking in the moment. I also think the projects without drawing them, I draw it mentally.

Q. In your process of design there seems to be a fluid interaction between sketches and planimetric drawings. The sketches come to explain a series of visual moments and the plan then works structuring those moments. But there is no hierarchy, as they operate simultaneously. The project is somehow discover trough the act of drawing. From your architectural imagination and through drawing, pieces of it appear and the picture becomes clearer. It seems also, that the geometry of your projects works a register of visual possibilities. The conceptual structure of your designs seems to be the paths (even preexisting) and the crossing views from and to the project

R. One of the things I like about designing is precisely that, the way of moving trough things. How do you enter, how do you exit, how do you move, how do you distribute objects to create distances, etc. When I visit a work of architecture and I discover it has been made considering this things I appreciate that very much. The School of Architecture of Alvaro Siza or the Igualada Cemetery by Miralles are projects whose geometries are made to capture views, to make you see. When you walk trough them, everything make sense, everything fits. That has influenced my way of working tremendously. It is not only a concern of geometry. You first have to inhabit a project and then from the inside, work it trough.

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Marcos Paz

P. Cuando Alvaro Siza escribe respecto de la arquitectura de su maestro Fernando Tavora nos dice que hay una arquitectura que se impone inmediatamente en nosotros. Puede ser de gran escala o de pequeña escala. Puede estar relacionada con el contexto o no, no importa. Una buena foto puede capturar ese tipo de arquitectura, y una segunda visita por ahí no nos dice nada más que la primera. Siza relaciona a Tavora con otro tipo de arquitectura, aquella que causa menos impresión en menos gente. Puede ser grande o chica, pero se relaciona siempre con lo que la rodea, en forma evidente o no. Y elige ser modesta, cuando no encuentra ninguna razón para posar de diferente. Yo creo que tu arquitectura esta en este registro.

R. Relacionarse con las cosas es una actitud que yo encuentro civilizada, te diría de gente curiosa, que sabe que la obra trasciende sus propios límites, sean estos físicos o abstractos. Hay arquitectos o arquitecturas o una manera de hacer que se origina a partir de ver que tipo de relaciones el proyecto puede establecer no solo con su entorno físico sino también con su entorno cultural, con las demandas del programa, de la tecnología disponible, los presupuestos, cuestiones filosóficas, la topografía, etc. Atender estas demandas, que son de diferente índole, es lo que dota al proyecto de complejidad, es lo que lo hace consistente y en definitiva poco vulnerable. Los arquitectos que mencionas son un buen ejemplo de esa manera de obrar. Creo que fue Siza quien dijo que el proyecto es como una carrera de obstáculos, yo pienso que es verdad, y que a los obstáculos hay que confrontarlos y superarlos, pero lo que no se puede hacer es ignorarlos y quizás tampoco inventarlos.

P. Esta imagen del proyecto como carrera de obstáculos habla de una relación muy dinámica con el acto de proyectar. Por un lado debe haber precisión y determinación, pero por el otro debe haber una gracia, una cierta elegancia en los movimientos. Los grandes atletas nos hacen creer que es casi natural. Yo creo que las líneas de tus croquis tienen esa elegancia, sin perder la precisión. Podrías hablar un poco del espacio que ocupan tus dibujos en tu proceso de diseño?

R. Los dibujos han ido adquiriendo cierta elegancia, como decís, a partir de ser una actividad natural en mi. Dibujo constantemente y eso me ha dado una facilidad para poder trasladar mis observaciones. Pero me interesan mas los dibujos que hago fundamentalmente cuando viajo que los que hago para los proyectos.A mi me gusta dibujar. Si estoy aburrido, por ejemplo, cuando viajo, dibujo mucho. Me gusta ver en los dibujos que ha mirado el arquitecto, a que le presta atención y a que no, las cosas que le parecen mas importantes. No tengo un fetichismo por el dibujo. Me parece una especia de código y una manera de hacer, de pensar. También pienso los proyectos sin dibujar, dibujándolos mentalmente.

P. En tu proceso de diseño parece haber una relación muy fluida entre los croquis y los planos. Los croquis explican momentos visuales y la planta funciona estructurando esas posibilidades. Pero no hay una jerarquía, son simultáneos. El proyecto se descubre de alguna manera a través del acto de dibujar. Desde tu imaginación arquitectónica y por el dibujo, fragmentos del proyecto asoman poco a poco y la imagen se va aclarando.Parece también que la geometría de tus proyectos funciona como un registro de posibilidades visuales. La estructura conceptual de tus proyectos parece ser los recorridos (incluso preexistentes) y las visuales desde y hacia el proyecto.

R. Una de las cosas que más me gusta de proyectar es eso, la manera de recorrer las cosas. Como se entra, como se sale, como te mueves, como se distribuyen los objetos para crear distancias, etc. Cuando voy a una obra y me doy cuenta que estuvo hecha así, la aprecio mucho. La Facultad de Arquitectura de Siza o el Cementerio de Igualada de Miralles tienen geometrías que están hechas para captar, mirar, y cuando uno las recorre todo cobra sentido, todo encaja. Eso ha influido mucho en mi forma de hacer. No es solamente una geometría, hay que primero habitar el proyecto y luego, desde adentro, trabajarlo.

84 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

VestuariosObra Edificio Marcos Paz. Ubicación Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario.Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecución 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira.Colaboradores Maite Fernández, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro.Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

VestuariosObra Edificio Marcos Paz. Ubicación Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario.Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecución 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira.Colaboradores Maite Fernández, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro.Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

86

Q. In your process of design there seems to be a fluid interaction between sketches and planimetric drawings. The sketches come to explain a series of visual moments and the plan then works structuring those moments. But there is no hierarchy, as they operate simultaneously. The project is somehow discover trough the act of drawing. From your architectural imagination and through drawing, pieces of it appear and the picture becomes clearer. It seems also, that the geometry of your projects works a register of visual possibilities. The conceptual structure of your designs seems to be the paths (even preexisting) and the crossing views from and to the project

R. One of the things I like about designing is precisely that, the way of moving trough things. How do you enter, how do you exit, how do you move, how do you distribute objects to create distances, etc. When I visit a work of architecture and I discover it has been made considering this things I appreciate that very much. The School of Architecture of Alvaro Siza or the Igualada Cemetery by Miralles are projects whose geometries are made to capture views, to make you see. When you walk trough them, everything make sense, everything fits. That has influenced my way of working tremendously. It is not only a concern of geometry. You first have to inhabit a project and then from the inside, work it trough.

Q. Returning to image of the hurdle race, you say that one cannot ignore the obstacles but also one cannot invent them. This places the architectural project as a problem-solving mechanism, closer to common sense than to the obscurity of some intellectual over-determination. Your phrase regarding the difference between the complex and the complicated resonates strongly. Could you elaborate a little on this idea?

R. The practice of architecture requires an intellectual speculation and a certain common sense. I do not believe in the separation between practice and theory. The projects demands attention from the abstract as well as from the concrete; this is what in the end will provide them with complexity. I have said at another moment that complexity is different from complication. My interest resides in making architecture a complex thing, but not a complicated one.Early in my career, I was doing projects that were «nicer», now they are «uglier». I want to say with this that before they were more ideal projects; the ones I am doing now are more real. When you want to do something so nice, you turn away certain things that can «ruin» it. So you don’t confront things that have to be confronted. If you add things to the projects, the projects are contaminated, deformed, but at the same time they acquire its true form, its true value, depth. They become consistent projects, they are not vulnerable, in the sense that from every point you ask a question, you have an answer, the project is on guard. From the context, the construction, the technological, the perceptual, the programmatic, the structural, the philosophical… when the project trespasses all that is a great work. I try to do my projects like that.

87

P. En tu proceso de diseño parece haber una relación muy fluida entre los croquis y los planos. Los croquis explican momentos visuales y la planta funciona estructurando esas posibilidades. Pero no hay una jerarquía, son simultáneos. El proyecto se descubre de alguna manera a través del acto de dibujar. Desde tu imaginación arquitectónica y por el dibujo, fragmentos del proyecto asoman poco a poco y la imagen se va aclarando.Parece también que la geometría de tus proyectos funciona como un registro de posibilidades visuales. La estructura conceptual de tus proyectos parece ser los recorridos (incluso preexistentes) y las visuales desde y hacia el proyecto.

R. Una de las cosas que más me gusta de proyectar es eso, la manera de recorrer las cosas. Como se entra, como se sale, como te mueves, como se distribuyen los objetos para crear distancias, etc. Cuando voy a una obra y me doy cuenta que estuvo hecha así, la aprecio mucho. La Facultad de Arquitectura de Siza o el Cementerio de Igualada de Miralles tienen geometrías que están hechas para captar, mirar, y cuando uno las recorre todo cobra sentido, todo encaja. Eso ha influido mucho en mi forma de hacer. No es solamente una geometría, hay que primero habitar el proyecto y luego, desde adentro, trabajarlo.

P. Volviendo a la imagen de la carrera de obstáculos, decís que a los obstáculos no se los puede ignorar, pero tampoco inventar. Esto coloca al proyecto de arquitectura como resolución de problemas, mas cerca del sentido común que de la oscuridad de la sobre determinación intelectual. Tu frase sobre la diferencia entre lo realmente complejo y lo simplemente complicado resuena con fuerza. Podrías extenderte un poco sobre esta idea?

R. La práctica de la arquitectura requiere de una especulación intelectual y también de un cierto sentido común. Yo no creo en el divorcio entre práctica y teoría. Los proyectos demandan atención desde lo abstracto y también desde lo concreto, esto es lo que al final los dota de complejidad, que como he dicho en algún momento es diferente a complicación. Me interesa hacer una arquitectura compleja pero no complicada.Antes hacia proyectos que eran mas «lindos», ahora me salen mas «feos». Quiero decir que los de antes eran mas ideales, los de ahora son mas reales. Al querer hacerlos tan lindos se dejan de lado cosas que los pueden «arruinar». Entonces uno no confronta los problemas y los proyectos te quedan ideales. Al agregarle cosas, los proyectos se van contaminando y deformando, peor van adquiriendo su verdadera forma, su verdadero valor, su espesor. Entonces son proyectos consistentes, no son vulnerables, en el sentido que desde donde los ataques el proyecto esta atento. Desde el lado del contexto, constructivo, tecnológico, perceptivo, programático, estructural, filosófico. Cuando el proyecto logra traspasar todo eso y sale airoso es una gran obra. Yo intento hacer los proyectos así.

88 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Biblioteca Parque de EspañaObra Biblioteca Parque de España. Ubicación Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1995. Ejecución 1996. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández.Constructor Carpintería Ricardo Molinaroli. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

89/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Biblioteca Parque de EspañaObra Biblioteca Parque de España. Ubicación Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1995. Ejecución 1996. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández.Constructor Carpintería Ricardo Molinaroli. Fotografía Gustavo Fritegotto.

90

Q. Marcelo Villafañe always repeats that in order to define an architect, what matters is not a single, lonely work, but rather the trajectory, that is to say, the development of ideas, the pursuit of questions through multiple works in the course of time. It is almost a call for an ethics of resistance, which is of course more difficult if the everyday activities are about trying to sustain a design practice with very small-scale projects. Can you talk a little about this and the day-to-day work of the office?

R. Personally, I don’t find a difference between the small project and the big project. One should adapt to each project’s circumstances; to the programs, to the budgets, to the sites. In the end, I think it is always the same. When I studied architecture, they made us do a house in the first year, the second year two houses, the third year a school, the fourth year a neighborhood and so forth. But the complexity of the architecture does not lie in the size! I taught with Pablo Rosenwaser some exercises that were like these: in first year we gave the students a program; the second year the same program and a site; the third year the same program, the same site, and one material; and in the fourth year the same things plus some specific requirements of measurement. The complexity lies in surpassing the requirements to transcend them.

Q. Going back to the first question, Albert Viaplana said once that an architect should visit the site to discover the architecture already present there. The architect should have the sensitivity to make it visible. On the same line, Alvaro Siza says he uses his sketches as tools to discover his projects, to add the almost nothing that is already there. That is a marvelous image! In some sense your projects emerge, almost like a register or an intensification of pre-existing relationships and they give the impression of being the natural answer. They look like they were always there.

R. Many times the project of architecture appears as an extension of the sites where it has to be inserted. To discover the project in the place so that it becomes a part of it is one way to understand the work of the architect. To begin the development of a project without any preconceived idea leads to unforeseeable results, but this relationship with the site transcends the physical or material.

Q. There is an idea that comes to mind every time I think of your work. I believe it was Josep Quetglas who said: «That no one notices that an architect has been here, what better tribute to an architect!» I do not relate this idea with an anti-art or anti-intellectual stance, but on the contrary, with an extremely sophisticated sensitivity which aspires to weaken the presence of the imposture of disciplinary prejudices, in order to leave space to life, to the everyday, and in doing so it finds profound resonances. I would call this an attempt to find an epic of the everyday life.Your small-scale interventions with minimum budgets have that sensitivity. Your readings of the popular architectural have it also. Can you talk a little about that?

R. I look at what surrounds me. When Edward Hopper painted America he looked over banality, I don’t know if you saw the Eames’ film, The Uncommon Beauty of Common Things, it’s a little bit the same. Architecture is not only found in major projects. I try to learn from everything I observe. On the other hand, I have a very cosmopolitan vision of architecture I do not want to be considered a «regional» architect.

Q. I think that your validation of the everyday architecture it is not based in an intellectual reconsideration of popular values, but in an appreciation of the honesty of those constructions, of the way in which it finds sensible ways to solve problems, without impostures. They do not «force» the architecture with over-design solutions. They let the architecture breath. I think that you consciously work to find a relaxed way of thinking your projects. As if you are looking for a light touch that does not renounce precision.

R. I am not interested in the extreme abstraction. I do not like to think the work of architecture as a drawing. I like buildings when they lose that abstract quality and they are capable of assuming all the deformations of the real. I like architecture with defects. I don not renounce to the sublime aspect of architecture, but I think that sometimes we have to think it more as a quotidian fact. I try to practice architecture as something natural. I like discreet architectures that go inadvertently unnoticed.


Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Biblioteca Parque de España

91

P. Marcelo Villafañe siempre repite que para definir a un arquitecto lo que importa no es la obra solitaria sino la trayectoria. Es decir, el desarrollo de ideas, la persecución de preguntas a través de múltiples obras en el transcurso del tiempo. Es casi un llamado a una ética de resistencia, que es por supuesto mucho más difícil si el día a día se va en tratar de mantener vivo un estudio con una obra de pequeña en escala. Podes hablar un poco de esto y del día a día del estudio?

R. Personalmente no encuentro diferencia entre el trabajo pequeño y el trabajo grande. Uno se adapta a las circunstancias de cada proyecto, a los programas , a los presupuestos, a los terrenos. Pero al final creo es siempre lo mismo, cuando estudie arquitectura se daba al primer año una casa, en segundo año dos casa apareadas, en tercer año una escuela, en cuarto un conjunto de vivienda y así, pero la complejidad de la arquitectura no esta en el tamaño! Con Pablo Rosenwaser habíamos diseñado unos ejercicios que eran así: en primer año le dábamos a los alumnos un programa; en segundo año el mismo programa y un terreno; en tercero, el programa, el terreno y un material; en cuarto, lo mismo mas algunos requerimientos de medidas. La complejidad radica en traspasar estos requerimientos y trascenderlos.

P. Volviendo a la primera pregunta, Albert Viaplana dijo alguna vez que el arquitecto debe ir al lugar a descubrir la arquitectura que ya se encuentra ahí. El arquitecto debe tener la sensibilidad justa para hacerla visible. En la misma línea, Álvaro Siza dice que usa sus croquis como herramientas para descubrir sus proyectos como lo casi nada que ya casi esta ahí. Es una imagen maravillosa! En algún sentido, tus proyectos emergen, casi como registro o intensificación de relaciones pre-existentes y dan la impresión de ser la respuesta justa, de siempre haber estado ahí.

R. Muchas veces la arquitectura aparece como una extensión de los lugares donde se tiene que insertar. Descubrir el proyecto en el lugar para que pase a formar parte de el es una manera de entender el trabajo. Comenzar a desarrollar el proyecto sin una idea previa lleva a un resultado mas imprevisible, pero esta relación con los lugares trasciende los físico o lo material.

P. Hay una idea que resuena cada vez que pienso en tu obra, creo que fue Josep Quetglas el que dijo: «Que no se note que un arquitecto ha pasado por aquí, que mejor elogio para un arquitecto!» Yo no relaciono esta idea con una postura anti-arte o anti-intelectual, sino por el contrario, con una sensibilidad extremadamente sofisticada que aspira a diluir la presencia de la impostura de los prejuicios de la disciplina arquitectónica para dejar lugar a la vida, a la cotidianeidad, y al hacerlo encontrar resonancias profundas. Yo llamaría a esto un intento de encontrar una épica de lo cotidiano.Tus intervenciones de pequeña escala con presupuesto mínimos tienen esa sensibilidad, tu lectura de arquitecturas populares también. Podes hablar un poco de esto?

R. Yo miro lo que me rodea. Edward Hopper retrato América con una mirada sobre lo banal. No se si viste el film de los Eames «The uncommon beaty of common things», es un poco lo mismo. La arquitectura no esta solo en las grandes obras. Trato de aprender de todo lo que observo.Por otro lado tengo una visión cosmopolita de la arquitectura, no quiero que se me considere como un regionalista.

P. Creo que tu valoración por las arquitecturas cotidianas no se basa en una relectura intelectual de lo popular sino en una apreciación de la honestidad de esas construcciones. Una arquitectura que no se esfuerza en imposturas y que encuentra una manera sensible de resolver los problemas.Cero que conscientemente trabajas para encontrar una manera relajada de pensar los proyectos. Buscando un toque ligero que no renuncie a la precisión.

R. No me interesa la cuestión demasiado abstracta, no me interesa la obra pensada demasiado como un dibujo. Me gustan los edificios cuando pierden esa abstracción y son capaces de asumir todas las deformaciones, las verrugas. Me gusta la arquitectura con defectos. No reniego de la cuestión sublime de la arquitectura, pero creo que a veces hay que pensarla más como un hecho más cotidiano. Trato de ver y hacer arquitectura como un hecho natural. Me gusta la arquitectura que pase casi desapercibida, inadvertida.


Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Biblioteca Parque de España

92 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa ColmegnaObra Ampliación Casa Colmegna. Ubicación Zona Rural, Totoras, Santa Fe. Argentina. Año 2003.Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Constructor A. Golin, D. Imsand. Superficie existente 88 m2. Superficie ampliación 42 m2.

Text by Diego ArraigadaArchitect. National University of Rosario. MA in Architecture. University of California, Los Angeles

Gerardo Caballero’s Town Dwellings

1In the typical landscape of the countryside and provincial towns of Argentina, there are certain houses which have facades of absolute simplicity. Most of them are ancient and anonymous. Quite a few of them do not even have cladding. There are also certain utilitarian constructions whose wise and precise materialization is deeply enticing. They are scattered in the vastness of the geography. In these houses and in these constructions there is no single trace of pretentiousness nor exhibitionism. However, these houses and constructions transmit a moving beauty and pride, which consists of being exactly what they are.

2The three works belonging to Gerardo Caballero that are published in this issue have in common the fact that they are located in towns or rural areas of Argentina, and that they are dwellings. This classification is likely to be arbitrary, which is probably the case in any kind of classification. However, I believe that in this case, my classification might serve to shed some light onto the interpretation of Caballero’s work and the architecture of these landscapes. Among the works that share these characteristics, the following are to be mentioned (in chronological order): Casa Barbero (Barbero House), (1983), and Quincho Puricelli (Puricelli Shed) (1991), which were designed together with Ariel Giménez, and Casa Serra (Serra House) (1999), Casa Moriconi (Moriconi House) (2003), Casa Colmegna (Colmegna House) (2003) and Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) (2003), which were designed together with Maite Fernandez and Gerardo Bordi.Alejandro Lapunzina has considered Caballero’s work to be endowed with «poetic realism», which he defines as «the precise evaluation of conditions such as limits possibilities and conditioners in which the architectural work is going to be inserted» as well as «a poetry that evolves between the lines and out of the interstices of the design, lying and expressing itself in the concrete or abstract, real or imaginary, physical or mental relationships that certain things have among themselves.» (Alejandro Lapunzina. Gerardo Caballero’s Poetic Realism)Within this interpretative framework, Caballero’s architecture has gradually evolved by both incorporating, with more and more sensitivity and intelligence, accidental and contingent aspects of the specific reality into which it inserts, and by including, probably in a lower scale, references to idealized and abstract contexts. As a result, Caballero’s work has been slowly enriching itself with some poetry in which modest causes produce memorable architectural effects.

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa ColmegnaObra Ampliación Casa Colmegna. Ubicación Zona Rural, Totoras, Santa Fe. Argentina. Año 2003.Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Constructor A. Golin, D. Imsand. Superficie existente 88 m2. Superficie ampliación 42 m2.

94 / Chapter 2 p.54–145


/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa Colmegna

3Casa Barbero (Barbero House) is the first work of an architect who was at that time recently graduated. It has a flat roof, pure geometry and direct influences of the most well-known architectures of those years. Back then, the insertion of «reality» in Caballero’s work seemed to be mere compliance with his clients to use face-bricks instead of white-wash.Eight years later, Quincho Puricelli (Puricelli Shed), which was designed together with Ariel Giménez, reveals the great intellectual growth that Caballero underwent after having had work and academic experiences abroad. Paradoxically, and this is a fetaure of Caballero’s intelligence, his contact with foreign architectures does not show adherence to globalized issues, but rather emerges into an innovative synthesis of universal concepts that reinterpret conditions concerning culture, technology, and local landscapes. This small pavilion of pure volume, which is deep-rooted to the ground, uses a parabolic roof with veered sections, instead of a flat roof, which reminds us of agricultural structures that can be seen all along the Argentine prairies, and which —quoting Caballero— «relates better to the immensity of “the pampa” than to the actual setting of the work; thus creating an idea of landscape and place.” Far from being a constructive pre-conception, the choice of the roof meant a creative challenge in total accordance with the project, which was sorted out with elegance and precision.This work minimizes the sacredness of the stereotyped Miesian Pavilion. Its roof and its poetic relationship with the cultural landscape of our prairies turn it into something unique. Quincho Puricelli establishes rapport with the architectural tradition of re-inventing itself in small innovative buildings, and it goes beyond the limits of its immediate context to embrace the wider context of architectural history. Other eight years later, Casa Serra (Serra House) represents a new evolution in design. It shows the freedom and architectural findings implied in previous designs. In this case, the building is also a single volume, though a bit more formal and visually more complex, with surprising and subtle access situations and paths. Instead of reaching complexity through already known addition strategies, this design achieves its wealth of relationships with wall movements in plan. These movements are both free enough and tight enough to generate on a rectangular piece of land a diagonal built among the party walls and a visual diagonal that crosses over the house between the garden and the backyard. The parallel line is no longer used as a geometrical resource. The one-sided sloping roof meeting the oblique geometries in plan results into something totally unexpected. This project starts the search for new architectural possibilities of the oft-repeated sloping roof and face-brick walls.Closer in time, the enlargement of Casa Moriconi (Moriconi House) holds without excuses the particularities and contigencies of the project. Caballero makes a conscious effort to avoid the contrast between what’s old and what’s new. He revitalizes a house that lacked architectural value, and obtains a comprehensive result of surpassing characteristics. Just like a gold prospector or a goldsmith, first Caballero thoroughly reads the valuable potentiality of the existing building. He then changes it by laterally adding a new volume that reaches the party wall, and by placing, on the other side, a light wooden element that levitates over the house providing a veranda in the yard. The new volume is an appendix that grows with centrifugal force, reminding us of the physical notion of something that moves away from the center. The lines of the roof of the new volume are oblique both in plan and in section. This changes the perspective of the new volume, differentiating it from the original house. But Caballero’s true architectural subtlety lies in the amazing distortion of already known devices, such as the device he uses to light the pathway, which is not exactly a window, but rather a light tunnel that involves the whole volume and reaches the front of the house.In Casa Colmegna (Colmegna House), Caballero resorts to enlargement once more. There is evidence of the relationship betwen what’s preexisting and what’s added. In plan, the geometry of the house accompanies the «dwellers’ daily path from the storehouse to the house» ...and makes us think of a kind of architectural surrealism which might postulate one and only reality between the concrete and physical world and the intangible world of the memories and costumes of the dwellers.

95/ Chapter 2 p.54–145


/ Gerardo Caballero


96 / Chapter 2 p.54–145


/ Gerardo Caballero


Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) is not exactly an enlargement, but it looks like it. Because... isn’t it a new project an «enlargement» of an existing place, in which nothing starts from a tabula rasa? With the same esthetic sensitivity displayed in Casa Serra, the geometry in plan relates to, evolves from, and accomodates between mud walls, trees and existing neigboring houses with ease and maturity, producing a unique formal and functional result with lucid common sense. The project is a malleable material, literally informed by the context. It is just like a primitive volume affected by the multiple physical and perceptive conditions, which the architect has read to the letter and interpreted without prejudice. Reinforcing the idea of a unique volume, now the roof is one sloping plane, whose highest point overlooks the street, thus creating a high facade of face-bricks, which acquire their materiality from the neighboring houses. The lowest point of the roof is inclined over the indoor patio, turning it into a kind and agreeable place. The formal result is the ambiguiety of being something that emerges by itself but at the same time abides by the subtle external control, creating a tension that makes the site and the work resound between themselves.

4Caballero consciously weakens his presence of «architect that expresses himself through his works». In each of his works there is one implied notion, which is that the architectural project or design is not a vehicle for an architect to express himself, but rather a vehicle for the place and architecture to express themselves. To prove this, nothing more eloquent than his sketches, which are never preconceived formal images but rather the intimate expression of thought maps coming to life. Though in Caballero’s work there is no interest in exhibitionism, it is also true that its strangeness makes it impossible to overlook it.According to Walter Benjamin, architecture is experienced collectively in a state of «absent-mindedness», by its everyday use and sensory perception. Even though Caballero’s work seems to reflect Bejamin’s idea, an attentive and lengthy look at his work will find infinite meanings and discoveries. Caballero’s work is basically discrete and sensual, which, if analized, produces great intellectual happiness.

5Once, after a lecture in a teaching contest, I heard Caballero answer the redundant question of a jury about the influence of local techniques on his work and on his teaching of architecture: «I ... I believe in that idea of paint your town, and you’ll paint the world.» The meaning of Tolstoi’s quotation had been so evident in his previous lecture, that I noticed he answered with that feeling of slight anger that produces having to repeat the same thing one has said before in a different way. Why was he annoyed to talk about his work in such an obvious and direct way? Because what Caballero intuitively develops in his work is just the opposite. What’s poetic about his work is to say the simplest things always in a different, revealing way, so that they seem to be said for the first time.

6In the countryside and provincial towns (just like in any place) there are infinite shades awaiting for architectures capable of endowing them with new meanings. The most important merit of Caballero’s architecture is to have developed a completely new field of architectural sensitivity that nurtures itself from the most particular and specific reality of a place as well as from the universal and eternal concepts, in a never-ending and subtle esthetic evolution that develops in every level of his production.

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/ Gerardo Caballero


98

Gerardo Caballero’s Town Dwellings

1In the typical landscape of the countryside and provincial towns of Argentina, there are certain houses which have facades of absolute simplicity. Most of them are ancient and anonymous. Quite a few of them do not even have cladding. There are also certain utilitarian constructions whose wise and precise materialization is deeply enticing. They are scattered in the vastness of the geography. In these houses and in these constructions there is no single trace of pretentiousness nor exhibitionism. However, these houses and constructions transmit a moving beauty and pride, which consists of being exactly what they are.

2The three works belonging to Gerardo Caballero that are published in this issue have in common the fact that they are located in towns or rural areas of Argentina, and that they are dwellings. This classification is likely to be arbitrary, which is probably the case in any kind of classification. However, I believe that in this case, my classification might serve to shed some light onto the interpretation of Caballero’s work and the architecture of these landscapes. Among the works that share these characteristics, the following are to be mentioned (in chronological order): Casa Barbero (Barbero House), (1983), and Quincho Puricelli (Puricelli Shed) (1991), which were designed together with Ariel Giménez, and Casa Serra (Serra House) (1999), Casa Moriconi (Moriconi House) (2003), Casa Colmegna (Colmegna House) (2003) and Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) (2003), which were designed together with Maite Fernandez and Gerardo Bordi.Alejandro Lapunzina has considered Caballero’s work to be endowed with «poetic realism», which he defines as «the precise evaluation of conditions such as limits possibilities and conditioners in which the architectural work is going to be inserted» as well as «a poetry that evolves between the lines and out of the interstices of the design, lying and expressing itself in the concrete or abstract, real or imaginary, physical or mental relationships that certain things have among themselves.» (Alejandro Lapunzina. Gerardo Caballero’s Poetic Realism)Within this interpretative framework, Caballero’s architecture has gradually evolved by both incorporating, with more and more sensitivity and intelligence, accidental and contingent aspects of the specific reality into which it inserts, and by including, probably in a lower scale, references to idealized and abstract contexts. As a result, Caballero’s work has been slowly enriching itself with some poetry in which modest causes produce memorable architectural effects.



/ Gerardo Caballero

Casa FrittegottoObra Casa Frittegotto. Ubicación Arequito, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti.Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto.

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Casa FrittegottoObra Casa Frittegotto. Ubicación Arequito, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti.Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto.

100

3Casa Barbero (Barbero House) is the first work of an architect who was at that time recently graduated. It has a flat roof, pure geometry and direct influences of the most well-known architectures of those years. Back then, the insertion of «reality» in Caballero’s work seemed to be mere compliance with his clients to use face-bricks instead of white-wash.Eight years later, Quincho Puricelli (Puricelli Shed), which was designed together with Ariel Giménez, reveals the great intellectual growth that Caballero underwent after having had work and academic experiences abroad. Paradoxically, and this is a fetaure of Caballero’s intelligence, his contact with foreign architectures does not show adherence to globalized issues, but rather emerges into an innovative synthesis of universal concepts that reinterpret conditions concerning culture, technology, and local landscapes. This small pavilion of pure volume, which is deep-rooted to the ground, uses a parabolic roof with veered sections, instead of a flat roof, which reminds us of agricultural structures that can be seen all along the Argentine prairies, and which —quoting Caballero— «relates better to the immensity of “the pampa” than to the actual setting of the work; thus creating an idea of landscape and place.” Far from being a constructive pre-conception, the choice of the roof meant a creative challenge in total accordance with the project, which was sorted out with elegance and precision.This work minimizes the sacredness of the stereotyped Miesian Pavilion. Its roof and its poetic relationship with the cultural landscape of our prairies turn it into something unique. Quincho Puricelli establishes rapport with the architectural tradition of re-inventing itself in small innovative buildings, and it goes beyond the limits of its immediate context to embrace the wider context of architectural history. Other eight years later, Casa Serra (Serra House) represents a new evolution in design. It shows the freedom and architectural findings implied in previous designs. In this case, the building is also a single volume, though a bit more formal and visually more complex, with surprising and subtle access situations and paths. Instead of reaching complexity through already known addition strategies, this design achieves its wealth of relationships with wall movements in plan. These movements are both free enough and tight enough to generate on a rectangular piece of land a diagonal built among the party walls and a visual diagonal that crosses over the house between the garden and the backyard. The parallel line is no longer used as a geometrical resource. The one-sided sloping roof meeting the oblique geometries in plan results into something totally unexpected. This project starts the search for new architectural possibilities of the oft-repeated sloping roof and face-brick walls.Closer in time, the enlargement of Casa Moriconi (Moriconi House) holds without excuses the particularities and contigencies of the project. Caballero makes a conscious effort to avoid the contrast between what’s old and what’s new. He revitalizes a house that lacked architectural value, and obtains a comprehensive result of surpassing characteristics. Just like a gold prospector or a goldsmith, first Caballero thoroughly reads the valuable potentiality of the existing building. He then changes it by laterally adding a new volume that reaches the party wall, and by placing, on the other side, a light wooden element that levitates over the house providing a veranda in the yard. The new volume is an appendix that grows with centrifugal force, reminding us of the physical notion of something that moves away from the center. The lines of the roof of the new volume are oblique both in plan and in section. This changes the perspective of the new volume, differentiating it from the original house. But Caballero’s true architectural subtlety lies in the amazing distortion of already known devices, such as the device he uses to light the pathway, which is not exactly a window, but rather a light tunnel that involves the whole volume and reaches the front of the house.In Casa Colmegna (Colmegna House), Caballero resorts to enlargement once more. There is evidence of the relationship betwen what’s preexisting and what’s added. In plan, the geometry of the house accompanies the «dwellers’ daily path from the storehouse to the house» ...and makes us think of a kind of architectural surrealism which might postulate one and only reality between the concrete and physical world and the intangible world of the memories and costumes of the dwellers.



/ Gerardo Caballero

Casa Frittegotto

101/ Chapter 2 p.54–145


/ Gerardo Caballero

Casa Frittegotto

102

Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) is not exactly an enlargement, but it looks like it. Because... isn’t it a new project an «enlargement» of an existing place, in which nothing starts from a tabula rasa? With the same esthetic sensitivity displayed in Casa Serra, the geometry in plan relates to, evolves from, and accomodates between mud walls, trees and existing neigboring houses with ease and maturity, producing a unique formal and functional result with lucid common sense. The project is a malleable material, literally informed by the context. It is just like a primitive volume affected by the multiple physical and perceptive conditions, which the architect has read to the letter and interpreted without prejudice. Reinforcing the idea of a unique volume, now the roof is one sloping plane, whose highest point overlooks the street, thus creating a high facade of face-bricks, which acquire their materiality from the neighboring houses. The lowest point of the roof is inclined over the indoor patio, turning it into a kind and agreeable place. The formal result is the ambiguiety of being something that emerges by itself but at the same time abides by the subtle external control, creating a tension that makes the site and the work resound between themselves.

4Caballero consciously weakens his presence of «architect that expresses himself through his works». In each of his works there is one implied notion, which is that the architectural project or design is not a vehicle for an architect to express himself, but rather a vehicle for the place and architecture to express themselves. To prove this, nothing more eloquent than his sketches, which are never preconceived formal images but rather the intimate expression of thought maps coming to life. Though in Caballero’s work there is no interest in exhibitionism, it is also true that its strangeness makes it impossible to overlook it.According to Walter Benjamin, architecture is experienced collectively in a state of «absent-mindedness», by its everyday use and sensory perception. Even though Caballero’s work seems to reflect Bejamin’s idea, an attentive and lengthy look at his work will find infinite meanings and discoveries. Caballero’s work is basically discrete and sensual, which, if analized, produces great intellectual happiness.

5Once, after a lecture in a teaching contest, I heard Caballero answer the redundant question of a jury about the influence of local techniques on his work and on his teaching of architecture: «I ... I believe in that idea of paint your town, and you’ll paint the world.» The meaning of Tolstoi’s quotation had been so evident in his previous lecture, that I noticed he answered with that feeling of slight anger that produces having to repeat the same thing one has said before in a different way. Why was he annoyed to talk about his work in such an obvious and direct way? Because what Caballero intuitively develops in his work is just the opposite. What’s poetic about his work is to say the simplest things always in a different, revealing way, so that they seem to be said for the first time.

6In the countryside and provincial towns (just like in any place) there are infinite shades awaiting for architectures capable of endowing them with new meanings. The most important merit of Caballero’s architecture is to have developed a completely new field of architectural sensitivity that nurtures itself from the most particular and specific reality of a place as well as from the universal and eternal concepts, in a never-ending and subtle esthetic evolution that develops in every level of his production.



/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa MoriconiObra Ampliación Casa Frittegotto. Ubicación Totoras, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti.Constructor A. Peruzzo, D. Imsand.Superficie existente 118 m2. Superficie ampliación 81 m2.Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto.

103/ Chapter 2 p.54–145


/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa MoriconiObra Ampliación Casa Frittegotto. Ubicación Totoras, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernández, Gerardo Bordi.Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti.Constructor A. Peruzzo, D. Imsand.Superficie existente 118 m2. Superficie ampliación 81 m2.Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto.

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa Moriconi

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/ Gerardo Caballero

Ampliación Casa Moriconi

CORTE 1-1

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio BrownObra Edificio Brown. Ubicación Brown 2909, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año de proyecto 2005. Final de obra 2007.Arquitecto Gerardo Caballero. Equipo de proyecto Maite Fernández, Orlando Alloatti, Gonzalo Carbajo. Colaboradores Gerardo Bordi, Maria Eva Contesti;Juan Fonseca, Mariana Suso. Ingeniero José Ramón Orengo.Promotor HORGEN Construcciones. Empresa Constructora PROAS S.R.L.Superficie construida 1400 m². Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto / Walter Salcedo.

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Brown

108 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Brown

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Brown

110 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Brown

EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que últimamente ha adquirido interés debido a una serie de intervenciones públicas y privadas que lo dotaron de nuevos espacios de esparcimiento y de servicios.El lote de 14m x 19 m se encuentra en la esquina noreste de una típica manzana del tejido urbano de la ciudad. A simple vista el lugar no ofrece muchos atractivos pero el proyecto se ha visto estimulado por la posibilidad de establecer vínculos visuales con el paisaje del río y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alentó la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que ésta relación fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje. Se trata de un edificio de viviendas de 18 unidades de 50 y 70 m2, ubicadas 9 en cada una de las 2 torres. En la parte superior alojan una piscina y un pequeño gimnasioLa estructura de hormigón se resuelve con losas sin vigas y una serie de tabiques perimetrales que son forrados por dos paredes de ladrillos comunes a ambos lados. Esto da como resultado un muro de fábrica vista de 36 cm de espesor, que es el elemento más significativo del proyecto.Estas dos paredes plegadas a la manera de biombos organizan todo el edificio.

EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que últimamente ha adquirido interés debido a una serie de intervenciones públicas y privadas que lo dotaron de nuevos espacios de esparcimiento y de servicios.El lote de 14m x 19 m se encuentra en la esquina noreste de una típica manzana del tejido urbano de la ciudad. A simple vista el lugar no ofrece muchos atractivos pero el proyecto se ha visto estimulado por la posibilidad de establecer vínculos visuales con el paisaje del río y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alentó la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que ésta relación fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje. Se trata de un edificio de viviendas de 18 unidades de 50 y 70 m2, ubicadas 9 en cada una de las 2 torres. En la parte superior alojan una piscina y un pequeño gimnasioLa estructura de hormigón se resuelve con losas sin vigas y una serie de tabiques perimetrales que son forrados por dos paredes de ladrillos comunes a ambos lados. Esto da como resultado un muro de fábrica vista de 36 cm de espesor, que es el elemento más significativo del proyecto.Estas dos paredes plegadas a la manera de biombos organizan todo el edificio.

111/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Edificio Brown

geometrales Edificio Brown?

112 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Puerto Roldán House

Obra Edificio Brown. Ubicación Brown 2909, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año de proyecto 2005. Final de obra 2007.Arquitecto Gerardo Caballero. Equipo de proyecto Maite Fernández, Orlando Alloatti, Gonzalo Carbajo. Colaboradores Gerardo Bordi, Maria Eva Contesti;Juan Fonseca, Mariana Suso. Ingeniero José Ramón Orengo.Promotor HORGEN Construcciones. Empresa Constructora PROAS S.R.L.Superficie construida 1400 m². Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto / Walter Salcedo.

113/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero


114 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero


EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que últimamente ha adquirido interés debido a una serie de intervenciones públicas y privadas que lo dotaron de nuevos espacios de esparcimiento y de servicios.El lote de 14m x 19 m se encuentra en la esquina noreste de una típica manzana del tejido urbano de la ciudad. A simple vista el lugar no ofrece muchos atractivos pero el proyecto se ha visto estimulado por la posibilidad de establecer vínculos visuales con el paisaje del río y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alentó la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que ésta relación fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje. EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que últimamente ha adquirido interés debido a una serie de intervenciones públicas y privadas que lo dotaron de nuevos espacios de esparcimiento y de servicios.El lote de 14m x 19 m se encuentra en la esquina noreste de una típica manzana del tejido urbano de la ciudad. A simple vista el lugar no ofrece muchos atractivos pero el proyecto se ha visto estimulado por la posibilidad de establecer vínculos visuales con el paisaje del río y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alentó la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que ésta relación fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje.

115/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero


geometrales?

116 / Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Showroom MatassaObra Edificio Brown. Ubicación Brown 2909, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.Año de proyecto 2005. Final de obra 2007.Arquitecto Gerardo Caballero. Equipo de proyecto Maite Fernández, Orlando Alloatti, Gonzalo Carbajo. Colaboradores Gerardo Bordi, Maria Eva Contesti;Juan Fonseca, Mariana Suso. Ingeniero José Ramón Orengo.Promotor HORGEN Construcciones. Empresa Constructora PROAS S.R.L.Superficie construida 1400 m². Fotografía Gustavo Frittegotto / Walter Salcedo.

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Showroom Matassa

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Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Showroom Matassa

119/ Chapter 2 p.54–145

Gerardo Caballero

/ Gerardo Caballero

Showroom Matassa

early draft

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