EN TRE EL PLAN VO ISIN Y LA CIU DAD G EN RICA Un estudio comparativo de Buenos Aires como modelo urbano

dr.arch. Peter Bjerrum Profesor, Arquitecto Instituto de Teora y Historia La Academia Real Dans de Artes, La Escuela de Arquitectura Copenhague

PRIMERO RESUMEN DE LA INVESTIGACIN, 2005: Entre el Plan Voisin y la Ciudad Genrica Un estudio comparativo de Buenos Aires como modelo urbano. Hablando ambivalentemente hay una similitud peculiar entre la descripcin de Buenos Aires por Le Corbusier1 y la nocin crtica de la Ciudad Genrica por Rem Koolhaas2.. Los dos estn igualmente fascinados por la dinmica delirante y la ignorante brutalidad de la urbanizacin contempornea. La semejanza, sin embargo, acaba aqu. Mientras que el criticismo de Le Corbusier sirve como punto de partida para una utopa urbana futura, la correspondiente aproximacin crtica de Rem Koolhaas es ms bien un punto sin retorno. M odernidad y M etrpoli Entre el Plan Voisin y la Ciudad Genrica hay una gran brecha iniciada por la tabula rasa del movimiento moderno. Es esta brecha la que literalmente ha desmantelado el vnculo entre la metrpoli y la megaciudad y, subsiguientemente, ha desmantelado la coherencia de modernidad, considerando el modernismo del siglo XX como enteramente innovador. En trminos urbansticos la modernidad podra dividirse en una primera modernidad correspondiendo a la poca del Historicismo, de aprox. 1840 a aprox.1920, que es tambin la poca de la Metrpoli, y una segunda modernidad, que es la poca del modernismo, de aprox. 1920 a aprox. 1990. Esta segunda modernidad es tambin la poca del suburbio, convirtiendo la urbanizacin del siglo XIX en una suburbanizacin local y preparando el terreno para la megaciudad. En cuanto a la brecha mencionada anteriormente, la Metrpoli sera el punto de partida de la heroica visin urbanstica: La ciudad mundial3; la realidad de la megaciudad sera el callejn sin salida de la urbanizacin genrica. Buenos Aires Los objetivos de un estudio comparativo de Buenos Aires tienen que llenar la brecha entre el Plan Voisin y la Ciudad Genrica, trazando las caractersticas de un modelo urbano contemporneo entre la metrpoli y la megaciudad. Buenos Aires puede ser considerada como un modelo urbano con origen en la poca de la metrpoli avanzando hacia la megaciudad; de ah la idoneidad de un estudio que intente reconstruir la coherencia de la modernidad, mientras todava comparta la fascinacin hacia una amplia urbanizacin, como se ha indicado ms arriba. La M egaciudad Siendo social y arquitectnicamente una pluralidad de rdenes sobreimpuestos, la megaciudad no es ni la racional visin arquitectnica de la Ville Radieuse4, ni The Metropolis of Tomorrow5. La megaciudad es, por un lado, la contemporaneidad de la imposicin de modelos urbanos clsicos y modernos y, por otro lado, el entrelazamiento de los elementos locales y globales de la urbanizacin presente.
Cf. Le Corbusier, Precisions, Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991, pp.169-214. Cf. Rem Koolhass, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann, S. M. L. XL, New York: Monacelli, 1998, pp. 1239-1264. Le Corbusier op.cit. pp. 215-231. Cf. Le Corbusier, The radiant City: Elements of a doctrine of urbanism to be used as the basis of our machine age civilization, New York: Orion, 1967. Cf. Hugh Ferris, The metropolis of tomorrow, London: Architectural Press, 1986.
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PRIMARY ABSTRACT OF THE RESEARCH, 2005

Between the Plan Voisin and the generic City,

- a comparative study of Buenos Aires as an urban model. Ambivalently speaking there is a peculiar similarity between Le Corbusiers portrayal of Buenos Aires6 and Rem Koolhaass critical notion of the generic City7. Both are equally fascinated by the delirious dynamic and the ignorant brutality of contemporary urbanization. However, here the similarity rests. While Le Corbusiers criticism serves as the point of departure for an upcoming urban utopia, the corresponding critical approach of Rem Koolhaas is rather a point of no return. M odernity and the M etropolis Between the Plan Voisin and the generic City is a huge gap, initiated by the tabula rasa of the modern movement. It is this gap that literally has dismantled the bond between the Metropolis and the Mega City, and subsequently dismantled the coherence of modernity, dating the 20th century modernism as entirely seminal. In urbanistic terms modernity could roughly be chronologized as a first modernity, the epoch of historicism c. 1840 c. 1920, which is also the epoch of the Metropolis, and a second modernity, the epoch of modernism c. 1920 c. 1990. This second modernity is also the epoch of the suburb, dissolving the 19th century urbanization into local suburbanization and preparing the ground for the Mega City. With reference to the gap, mentioned above, the Metropolis would be the point of departure of the heroic urbanistic vision: The World City8; the reality of the Mega City would be the dead end of generic urbanization. Buenos Aires The objectives of a comparative study of Buenos Aires are to fill the gap between the Plan Voisin and the generic City, laying out the features of a contemporary urban model between the Metropolis and the Mega City. Buenos Aires may be considered as an urban model originating in the epoch of the Metropolis and heading towards the Mega City; hence its suitability for a study trying to reconstruct the coherence of modernity, while still sharing the fascination towards intractable urbanization, as initially stated above. The M ega City Being socially and architecturally a plurality of superimposed orders, the Mega City is neither the rational architectural vision of Ville Radieuse9, nor is it The Metropolis of Tomorrow10. The Mega City is on the one hand the contemporaneity of laid down classical and modern urban models, on the other hand the intertwined local and global elements of present urbanization.

Cf. Le Corbusier, Precisions, Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991, pp.169-214. Cf. Rem Koolhass, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann, S. M. L. XL, New York: Monacelli, 1998, pp. 1239-1264. Le Corbusier op.cit. pp. 215-231. Cf. Le Corbusier, The radiant City: Elements of a doctrine of urbanism to be used as the basis of our machine age civilization, New York: Orion, 1967. Cf. Hugh Ferris, The metropolis of tomorrow, London: Architectural Press, 1986.
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BASIC ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK, 2006: Space and Sociality II - notes on the role of social institutions in urban development. 0, time-spaces: More often the concept of sociality may be considered in terms dealing with time, rather than space, such as evolution, change, transformation, mobility etc., meaning that sociality is an ongoing series of events in time, which it truly is. Nevertheless, this is far from any thorough conclusion of an ontological primacy of time opposed to space. As pointed out by Marx the capitalist market is constantly struggling to overcome all territorial i.e. spatial obstacles, while at the same time denying the space through the time11; hence capitalisms schizophrenia to the necessary assemblage of events and things in time and space12. 0.1, accessibilitylimitations: Getting closer to the present subject, this schizophrenia tends to reject the conflicting forces of the market to attain unlimited accessibility i.e. to strive towards a smooth space, though still depending on inaccessible limitations to increase surplus i.e. to strive towards a striated space. Its not simply a question about the state apparatus versus the market. Even if the further is more likely to give raise to institutional limitations, it may just as well be the executioner of those sets up by the latter. The market is just as likely as the state apparatus to manage the diversity of smooth and striated spaces13, whether its about the nation state, the city or the selfsame institutions that are in the business of regulating the flow of goods, money and people, i.e. constantly reshaping the entities of sociality. So the question is not just about the marginal value, its increasingly about reshaping the assemblage of all of the above mentioned entities right down to the level of buildings, embodying all sorts of institutions and theirs topical accessibility and limitations. 1.0, sociality: Being a sort of meta-concept - like time and space - sociality is a priori to any human experience in the sense that there can be no dealing with human behaviour beyond sociality, including the present subject of the ongoing transformation of cities as essentially self-organizing processes. These are the processes of matter-energy shaping the endoskeleton of sociality, while in the same time forming the exoskeleton of all sort of social entities: cities, institutions and, still more crucial, systems of transportation. Altogether flowing like lavas and magmas14 into a mineralization of a different nature, which is the immediate material conditions of social human behaviour and in the same time, being the subject to change, make up the accessibility and limitations of human interventions. Needless to say, considering the term matter-energy, human social interventions cannot be conducted as a straightforward process of means and goals. The accessible rationality is not necessarily doable. Not only the handed over material condition puts up constrains, the preferences and expectations dominating human social behaviour does too; hence the well-known unintended collective consequences of planned
"Whrend das Kapital also einerseits dahin streben muss, jede rtliche Schranke des Verkehrs, i. e. des Austauschs niederzureien, die ganze Erde als seinen Markt zu erobern, strebt es andrerseits danach den Raum zu vernichten durch die Zeit. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen konomie, Dietz Verlag, 1953, p..438 The argentine writer J. L. Borges gives without any comparison to Marxs analysis in his story, Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, a highly ironical description of the linguistic difficulties at the planet Tln, where the intuition of space is denied through time. The language of Tln does not recognize substantives or transitive verbs, so all actions are independent and unconnected. Cf. Ficciones, Buenos Aires: Emec Editores S.A., 1996, pp 17-45. Cf. Giles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A thousand plateaus, Mineapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, pp. 474-500. Cf. Manuel de Landa, A thousand years of nonlinear history, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 25-99.
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interventions15. 1.01, projects of sociality: As will be stated below, there may be projects within sociality, but sociality as such is not anybodys project. Likewise, society is not an entity its possible to grasp. What can be grasped are entities such as the nation state, the city or the institutions. Embedded within sociality and embodied in cities the latter is being historically and theoretically ever more crucial to urbanity and urbanistics. 1.02, projects of architecture: The assemblage within sociality of cities and institutions - both in the sense of urban social behaviour and in the sense of concrete entities such as buildings - tends to constrain the synergetic as well as the generic wide ranging effects of any project of architecture. The planned result is turned over to a different nature that does not - even if it may be considered of our own making - respond to applicable teleology; hence the widespread disillusionment with urban reality among modern architects. Albeit the architectural project of the 20th century constituted a breakthrough in spatial and social understanding, it is only just approaching the above-mentioned assemblage as a material collectiveness16. It has been realizing the relation between building and body, the conjunction of agent and medium in dealing with space, but not necessarily in a sociality always already given. As recognized by Mies in 1930: The important question to ask is not what but how.17, which can be seen as the end of the tabula rasa of the modern movement, accepting a more limited social responsibility than his opposite outcry: Every how is based on a what.18, which echoed the heroic utopia that was the order of the day. To some extend it may still be the case that modern architecture is not capable to dissolve such initial opposites as figure/ground, body/building, landscape/city or nature/sociality and grasp the synthetic complexity of cities. Its not another outcry over unplanned urbanization needed initiating a new overall vision. Whats needed is a strategy of dispersed interventions reintegrating institutions and cities, and this may not necessarily be embodying institutions as buildings. 2.0, urbanity: The modern city is neither an organic unity like the medieval city, nor does it make up cohesive compositional entities like the renaissance-baroque schemes. It is social and architectural a plurality of superimposed orders. On the one hand the historical contemporaneity of laid down medieval, classical and modern urban structures, on the other hand the interwoven topicality of local and global entities i.e. the presence of national and international laws and institutions. Compared by the consistent magnitude of the architectural projects of 19th century, the projects of modernism are far more dispersed and far less cohesive, whether its due to the above-mentioned disabilities or to the immensity of previous accumulated material. So, in the frame of reference on hand, it would seem valid to distinguish between the alleged historical city and the modern city in dealing with planned interventions, provided that its not accompanied by the endeavour of restoration. The modern city may roughly be distinguishable by a first and a second modernity, modifying any harsh gap between modernism and previous urban history. In urban terms it could be chronologized as a first modernity, the epoch of historicism c. 1840 c. 1920, which is also the epoch of the Metropolis, and a second modernity, the epoch of modernism c. 1920 c. 1990. This second modernity is also the epoch of the suburb, dissolving the 19th century urbanization into local suburbanization and preparing the ground for the Mega City. 2.01, globalization: In a globalized world, like that of the 21st century, the given sociality unfolds through a multitude of superimposing webs, causing disruptions between the former balance between its concrete entities: the nation state, the city and the institutions. The importance of the nation state
Ibid. pp 11-22. This could from a material point of view be seen as another conceptualization of Aldo Rossis notion of the collective unconsciousness. Cf. The architecture of the city, Cambridge, Mass.: Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies, 1982 The new era, Speech delivered at a Werkbund meeting in Vienna, 1930. A letter on form in architecture to Dr Riezler, 1927.
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tends to diminish, while that of the city and the institutions tend to increase, i.e. tend to replace the nation state as the frontier of economics and subsequently of urbanistics. It may still not be clear, what will be the impact on the level of planned and build entities, except that their bigness19 tends to dissolve the programmatic identity of institution building into multifunctional conglomerates, -scapes of a different nature. This may be the challenge to modern architectures theoretical and practical dealing with space, despite the opposing trends towards architectural haute couture that haunt each one city on the globe. Restoring modernisms monstrous capacity might not be the adequate response to the apparently lack of architectural identity. It may turn out that the above-mentioned capacities of social-spatial understanding were extended to grasp not just solitary buildings, but also the assemblage of more complex institutional entities and their urban integration. On one hand globalized sociality is an infinite field of possibilities, on the other hand it has, in each programmatic case, to be constrained to a certain institutional field, where architecture is confronted by the task of initiating temporal form to a finite social entity in the shape of something build. 1.1, investigation: The analysis briefly stated above, may well be investigated in the realm of past century architectural history, dealing with the correlation: program, institution and building. The following is the headlines of such an investigation, which has partly been carried out at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The school of Architecture in Copenhagen. This investigation consists of 3 preliminary studies of historical, critical and virtual nature conceived from the point of view of architecture dealing with space as the medium and sociality as its programme.20 1.1.2, institutions: A study of the 19th century development of programmes for a substantial part of urban institutions: the theatre, the museum, the library, the department store etc., and their corresponding building types. - This constitutes the historical dimension of the project. 1.1.3, modernizations: A study of the 20th century modernizations and, in certain cases, new development of social programmes for housing, schools, hospitals, sport stadiums etc., and the corresponding reshaping of 19th century building types. - This constitutes the critical dimension of the project. 1.1.4, conglomerates: A study of the capacity of the globalized societies of the 21st century to renew social programmes for institutions and buildings, and the equivalent revision of classical and modern building typology, absorbing those into new conglomerates of the urban spatial construction of sociality. - This study constitutes the virtual dimension of the project. 1.2, studies: The studies are carried out partly as historic studies on the European city model, partly as a case study on Buenos Aires and Brasilia, mapping a record of the medieval city, the renaissance-baroque scheme and the metropolis, primarily the cities of London, Paris, Vienna, and for the sake of provincialism Copenhagen. Buenos Aires and Brasilia are picked as ideal representations of urban models of the first and second modernity respectively. They may in turn be seen as representations of an ideal European city model originating from the epoch of the metropolis and of the above mentioned suburb; hence their suitability as case studies of a heuristic assignment on the urban spatial notion at stake in modernity. The overall assumption is that the founding and urban integration of social institutions21 are the main generator, the synergetic feature, of urban development rather than the simple growth of population. 0.2, space and sociality: Space like Time is a general form of intuition, Anschauungsform22, by means of which we - as biological and social beings - orient in the world. Space may not
Cf. Rem Koolhaas, Mau, Hans Werlemann, S. M. L. XL, New York: Monacelli, 1998, pp. 1239-1264. Cf. Own article Concept Medium Programme in Villner, Lena & Abarkan, Abdellah (eds.), The four faces of architecture: On the dynamics of architectural knowledge, Stockholm: School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology 2005, pp. 97-116. The term, social, is to be understood in its broadest sense, meaning all kinds of institutionalized social activities whether it is private or public. Cf. Emmanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968, pp. 74-86.
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be seen as such, but it certainly may be measured. It may be constructed, and as such space is always already real - present and presenting. Indeed, it is this always already presenting presence of Space that defines the necessarily spatial construction of the above-mentioned endoskeleton of sociality and subsequently the exoskeleton of institutions. Space, as it were, is already present in the programme of architecture as a social construction before its presented in space as an architectural construction i.e. as a build entity. Space is at all level of the process staging the correlation: program, institution and building.23 0.2.1, construction of space: The social construction of space not only theoretically, but historically as well, precedes the architectural construction. Not that the architectural and the social construction of a given poque be identical, but in the sense that the social construction of space as programme being a corrective to its architectural construction as building. - This corrective is the ethical dimension of architecture.

23

Own article, op.cit.

MARCO ANALTICO BSICO, 2006 Espacio y Socialidad II - notas sobre el rol de las instituciones sociales en el desarrollo urbano. 0.0 tiem po-espacio : Con frecuencia, el concepto de socialidad puede considerarse en trminos relativos al tiempo ms bien que al espacio, tales como evolucin, cambio, transformacin, movilidad, etc., entiendo que la socialidad es una serie de acontecimientos continuos en el tiempo, lo que es cierto. Sin embargo no es, ni mucho menos, una conclusin completa del primado ontolgico del tiempo sobre el espacio. Como lo observaba Marx, el mercado capitalista tiende constantemente a superar todo obstculo territorial, es decir espacial, mientras que al mismo tiempo niega el espacio a travs del tiempo; de ah la esquizofrenia del capitalismo frente al ensamblaje necesario de acontecimientos y cosas en el tiempo y en el espacio. 0.1 accesibilidadeslimitaciones: Al acercarse al presente tema, esa esquizofrenia tiende a rechazar las fuerzas conflictivas del mercado para lograr la accesibilidad ilimitada, es decir aspirar a un espacio liso, aunque todava dependiente de limitaciones inaccesibles, con el fin de aumentar el supervit, es decir aspirar a un espacio estriado. No es simplemente la cuestin del aparato del estado frente al mercado. Aunque sea ms probable que el primero sostenga las limitaciones institucionales, puede tambin ser el ejecutor de las reglas impuestas por el segundo. El mercado es tan creble como el aparato estatal para manejar la diversidad de espacios lisos y estriados, as sean el Estado Nacin, la ciudad o las instituciones propias encargadas de la regulacin del flujo de bienes, dinero y personas, es decir quienes reformen las entidades de la socialidad. Entonces la cuestin no es solamente la del valor marginal, es cada vez ms la de reformar los ensamblajes de todas las entidades ms arriba mencionadas, hasta el nivel de los edificios, encarnando cualquier clases de instituciones y de sus tpicas accesibilidades y limitaciones. 1.0, socialidad: De ser un tipo de meta-concepto - como el tiempo y el espacio - la socialidad es a priori cualquier experiencia humana en el sentido de que no se puede tratar con el comportamiento humano ms all de la socialidad, incluso del tema presente de la transformacin en curso de ciudades como realmente procesos de autoorganizacin. Estos son los procesos de materia-energa que forman del endoesqueleto de la socialidad, y que en el mismo tiempo forman el esqueleto de todos tipos de entidades sociales: ciudades, instituciones y, an ms importante, sistemas de transporte. Todos fluyen como lava y magma hacia una mineralizacin de distinta naturaleza, que es las condiciones materiales inmediatas de la conducta humana social y, al mismo tiempo, sindose el objeto de cambiar, constituir la accesibilidad y las limitaciones de las intervenciones humanas. Huelga decir, considerndonos el trmino materiaenerga, intervenciones humanas sociales no pueden llevarse a cabo como un proceso directo de los medios y objetivos. La racionalidad accesible no es necesariamente factible. No slo la entrega de las condiciones materiales ponen limitaciones, las preferencias y expectativas, que dominan el ser humano social, lo hace tambin, de ah la conocida consecuencias colectivas non-intentadas de las intervenciones planeadas. 1.01, proyectos de socialidad: Como ser establecido ms adelante, pueden existir proyectos dentro de la socialidad pero la socialidad como tal no es el proyecto de nadie. Asimismo, la sociedad no es una entidad que se pueda captar. Lo que se puede captar son entidades como el Estado Nacin, la ciudad o las instituciones. Encastrado al interior de la socialidad y encarnado por las ciudades, este ltimo est volvindose, histrica y tericamente cada vez ms crucial para el urbanismo y la urbanstica. 1.02, proyectos de arquitectura: El ensamblaje de las ciudades y de las instituciones dentro de la socialidad, tanto en el sentido de trato social urbano como en el de entidad

concreta, como ser construcciones, tiende a limitar no solamente la sinergia sino tambin los efectos genricos de largo alcance de cualquier proyecto de arquitectura. El resultado planeado se transforma en otra naturaleza que a pesar de que pueda considerarse de nuestra propia creacin no corresponde a la teleologa aplicable; de ah la desilusin frecuente frente a la realidad urbana entre los arquitectos modernos. Aunque el proyecto arquitectnico del siglo XX haya marcado un hito en el entendimiento espacial y social, ni siquiera se acerca al ensamblaje arriba mencionado como una colectividad material. Ha realizado la relacin entre construccin y cuerpo, la conjuncin de agente y medio, acerca del tratamiento del espacio, pero no necesariamente en una socialidad siempre ya dada. Como lo reconoce Mies en 1930, La pregunta importante no es qu? sino cmo?., lo que se puede considerar como el fin de la tabula rasa del movimiento moderno, aceptando as una responsabilidad social ms limitada que la de su proclamacin opuesta: Cada cmo? se basa en un qu?., hacindole eco a la heroica utopa que estaba entonces a la orden del da. En una cierta medida puede todava ser que la arquitectura moderna no sea capaz de deshacer tales oposiciones iniciales como figura/base, cuerpo/construccin, paisaje/ciudad o naturaleza/socialidad y captar la complejidad sinttica de las ciudades. No se necesita de una nueva queja sobre la urbanizacin sin plan que inicie una nueva visin total. Lo que se necesita es una estrategia de intervenciones dispersas, que reintegre instituciones y ciudades sin que necesariamente encarne a instituciones como edificios. 2.0, urbanismo: La ciudad moderna no es ni una unidad orgnica, como lo era la ciudad medieval, ni tampoco forma entidades de composiciones cohesivas, como los esquemas del Renacimiento y del Barroco. Es una pluralidad de rdenes sociales y arquitectnicos. Por una parte, la contemporaneidad histrica de las estructuras urbanas medievales, clsicas y modernas desmanteladas y, por otra parte, la topicalidad entrelazada de entidades locales y globales, es decir la presencia de leyes e instituciones nacionales e internacionales. Comparados con la consistente magnitud de los proyectos arquitectnicos del siglo XVIIII, los del modernismo son mucho ms dispersos y mucho menos cohesivos, que sea debido a la incapacidad mencionada ms arriba o a la inmensidad de los materiales previamente acumulados. Entonces, con las referencias de que disponemos parecera valido distinguir entre la as llamada ciudad histrica y la ciudad moderna, tratndose de intervenciones planeadas, siempre que no vayan acompaadas por cualquier nimo de restauracin. La ciudad moderna puede aproximadamente distinguirse entre una primera y una segunda Modernidad, modificando as cualquier brecha rigorista entre el Modernismo y la historia urbana anterior. En trminos urbansticos se podra datar la primera Modernidad de la poca del Historicismo, de 1840 a 1920 aproximadamente, que es tambin la poca de la Metrpolis, y una segunda Modernidad, la poca del Modernismo, de 1920 a 1990 aproximadamente. La cual segunda modernidad es tambin la poca de los suburbios, que disuelve la urbanizacin del siglo XIX en la suburbanizacin local y que prepara el terreno a la Megaciudad. 2.01, globalizacin: En un mundo globalizado como el del siglo XXI, la actual socialidad se extiende a travs de una multitud de redes superpuestas, provocando interrupciones en el anterior equilibrio entre sus entidades concretas, el Estado Nacin, la ciudad y las instituciones. La importancia del Estado Nacin tiende a disminuir, mientras que la de la ciudad y la de las instituciones tienden a aumentar, es decir que tienden a reemplazar el Estado Nacin como frontera de la economa y, por consiguiente, de la urbanstica. Todava no queda muy claro lo que ser su impacto sobre el nivel de las entidades planeadas y construidas, si no es que su grandeza tiende a deshacer la identidad programtica del edificio-institucin en conglomerados multifuncionales, -sajes de otra naturaleza. Esto puede ser el desafo del trato prctico de la arquitectura moderna con el espacio, a pesar de las diferentes

tendencias hacia la haute-couture arquitectnica que atormenta todas las ciudades del mondo. Puede ser que la restauracin de la capacidad monumental del Modernismo no sea la respuesta adecuada a la ausencia aparente de identidad arquitectnica. Y puede ser que la capacidad de comprensin del espacio social anteriormente mencionada se extienda hasta alcanzar no solamente los edificios solitarios, ms que tambin el ensamblaje de entidades institucionales ms complejas y su integracin urbana. Por una parte, la socialidad globalizada es un campo infinito de posibilidades; por otra, tiene, en cada caso programtico, que limitarse a un cierto campo institucional donde la arquitectura se enfrenta a la tarea de iniciar la forma temporal de una entidad social finita, bajo la forma de algo construido. 1.1, investigacin: El anlisis brevemente expuesto ms arriba puede perfectamente ser estudiado en el campo de la historia de los siglos pasados, al tratarse con la correlacin: programa, institucin y construccin. Lo que sigue son los rasgos generales de tal investigacin, que en parte ya ha sido realizada en la Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Escuela de Arquitectura de Copenhague. Esta investigacin consiste en 3 estudios de carcter histrico, crtico y virtual concebidos desde el punto de vista de la arquitectura, en relacin con el espacio como medio y la socialidad como su programa. 1.1.2, instituciones: Un estudio de los programas de desarrollo del siglo XIX, principalmente de instituciones urbanas: el teatro, el museo, la biblioteca, el gran almacn, etc., y sus diferentes tipos de edificios. Esto constituye la dimensin histrica del proyecto. 1.1.3, modernizaciones: Un estudio de las modernizaciones del siglo XX y, en ciertos casos, los nuevos desarrollos de los programas sociales de viviendas colectivas, escuelas, hospitales, estadios de deporte, etc., y la reorganizacin de los tipos de edificios del siglo XIX. Esto constituye la dimensin crtica del proyecto. 1.1.4, conglomerados: Un estudio de la capacidad por parte de la socialidad globalizada del siglo XXI de renovar los programas sociales de las instituciones y de los edificios, as como la revisin equivalente de la tipologa de la construccin clsica y moderna, absorbindolas en nuevos conglomerados de la construccin espacial de la socialidad. Este estudio constituye la dimensin virtual del proyecto. 1.2, estudios: Los estudios son llevados a cabo en parte como estudios histricos del modelo de la ciudad europea, y en parte en forma de estudio de las ciudades de Buenos Aires y de Brasilia, cartografiando la ciudad medieval, el esquema del Renacimiento barroco y de la Metrpolis, principalmente las ciudades de Londres, Pars, Viena y Copenhague. Hemos elegido Buenos Aires y Brasilia como representaciones ideales de modelos urbanos de la primera y de la segunda modernidad, respectivamente. A su vez, pueden considerarse como las representaciones de una ciudad europea ideal, originaria de la poca de la Metrpolis y del suburbio arriba mencionado; de ah su pertinencia como estudios de una funcin heurstica de la nocin espacial en juego en la modernidad. El supuesto de conjunto es que la base y la integracin urbana de las instituciones es el principal generador, el rasgo sinrgico, del desarrollo urbano ms bien que el mero crecimiento de la poblacin. 0.2, espacio y socialidad: el espacio como el tiempo es una forma general de intuicin, una anschauungsform, que nos permite orientarnos en el mundo, como seres biolgicos y sociales. El espacio puede no ser visto como tal, pero con certeza puede sin duda alguna ser medido. Puede ser construido y, como tal espacio siempre es real presente y presentando. De hecho, es esa presencia siempre ya presentando del espacio la que define la necesariamente construccin espacial del ms arriba expuesto endoesqueleto de la socialidad y, por consiguiente del exoesqueleto de las instituciones. El espacio, por as decir, ya est presente en el programa de la arquitectura, como construccin social antes de ser presentado en el espacio como construccin arquitectnica, o sea, como una entidad construida. El espacio siempre es de antemano real, presente y presentando, a todos los niveles del proceso, escenificando la correlacin: programa, institucin y construccin. 0.2.1, construccin

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del espacio: La construccin social del espacio no solamente precede tericamente la construccin arquitectnica, pero histricamente tambin. No es que la construccin arquitectnica y social de cierta poca sea idntica, pero en el sentido de que la construccin social del espacio como programa es un correctivo de su construccin arquitectnica como edificio. Ese correctivo es la dimensin tica de la arquitectura.

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SOME RELATED ABSTRACTS, FADU 2005: 1.0, sociality: A041: THE HABITAT OF URBAN HOUSING IN ARGENTINE Director: Arnoldo Gaite Research on architecture of housing, embracing appearance of technology, production and design, since one vision humanistic and social, attending especially the conditions socio cultural that regulating the task control contemporary. It pretend to have obtain results that to be permitted to put in order knowledge required for de future of the project activity that to digress in subject. The deficiency that it observe in actions of planning and production in the structure of the essential space that grants human housing, drawn almost with exclusiveness in the play supply and demand of meagre consumer market. Its only right to add that the purpose in detail of this job is found to link oneself with the research about architecture and town considered as a biological instrument, made five years ago. This evaluation submits a typological classification of architecture products in housing, studying the relationship between technology-product and nature of designs; and its productions with the ways of living of its users, their habits and customs as well as their individual an social behaving. Its work to intent to advance mean to know about discipline in architecture to think that to make up of actions design and construction with the knowledge according to the necessities and the culture of the habitat of populations town. 0.1, accessibility-limitations: A008: INTEGRAL ACCESSIBILITY IN URBAN SPACES - factors of conflict and alternatives of intervention. Director: arq. Horacio Jorge Pando- Codirector: arq. Adriana Apollonio, Research Centre on Architecture, Urbanism and Transportation Barriers. This Project is enrolled in a general theoretical conceptual frame referred on the relationship between people and his physical environment, and within this global problematic it considers the particular subject of the accessibility as the first condition for people appropriation of this physical environment. The front basic of the accessibility resides on, conciliate in a same proposal, the requirements of the larger number possible of people by eliminating all those barriers or obstacles that difficult or impede a full social integration, it questions the generic, ideal referent of humankind, that is not always representative of the extensive universe of humankind, integrated through individuals with different characteristics and capacities. The propose of this project is to detect, evaluate and diagnose conflict situations that appear in the urban spaces on matter of physical accessibility, through a specially designed instrument, and formulate recommendations to be implemented as intervention proposals in the urban typologies to be delimited

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The output of results will compliment the theoretical conceptual point of view with the application on an experimental case delimited to a metropolis range (Buenos Aires Gran Buenos Aires) with data collection in sample areas which analysis will contribute with new information on subject. 1.02, projects of architecture: A013: ARCHIVIST, HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE, Archives of Argentinean architecture history: its organization, conservancy, and interpretation. The case of the Modern Movement and the work of Argentinean architects: Antonio Vilar, Hctor Morixe y Jorge Sabat. Director: Architect Alberto S. J de Paula, Seccin Archivo Documental, Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estticas Mario J. Buschiazzo. Its undeniable the importance that has assumed the Modern Movement in the evolution of the Argentinean architecture during the 20th century, especially between 19291960.The architects Vilar, Morixe and Sabat can be considered representatives of a professional work during this period, especially in the design of houses, hotels, and buildings industries in between other lines. This period that embraces their works contains the changes given by the successive Normative Codes of the City of Buenos Aires, the evolution of the constructive techniques, new materials, and changes in the representation system. The archives of their professional production completed with the comparison of other sources allow us to archive a comprehension of the processes of designing and construction of the building of the time. The comparative analysis enables us to recognize the differences scales of the designs between objects, buildings and metropolitan areas. So the importance of the comparison of the unpublished primary sources and in consequence the necessity to tend to the conservation, organization and easy handling to configure as open resources for the consultation as to achieve not only a more open acknowledgement of Argentinean Architecture trajectory during the 20th century, but also to reach the interpretative clues and original criticism and successive of being transferred to the fields of teaching, heritage and general knowledge. 2.0, urbanity: A022: URBAN ARTICULATIONS, Configurations, Techniques and Mobility for Projecting the Latin American City Director: Javier Fernndez Castro, Laboratory of Morphology. The socio-spatial processes developed in the area during the last decades necessarily require reformulating the reading categories, the project tools and the instruments for the management of the urban entity. Starting with the proposal of new approaches and guidelines, this work will aim at setting the basis of a SITUATED AND OPERATIVE THEORY, capable of working as a conceptual scaffolding for the project and the urban management in the Latin American context.

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The pieces of work will be based on the notion of URBAN ARTICULATION as a strategy of projectable approach, paying attention to its diverse levels: articulation between diverse logics, between the formal and the informal, between territorial sections, between urban models, etc., taking into account the interdependencies between the spatial, the social, the economic, and the cultural features. The operationalism of these developments will try to be proved through the project and management of exemplary cases in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (with concrete antecedents in the UBACyT project A401 belonging to the 2002 programme), and in other cities of the region by means of already established research agreements. The starting point will be a notion of URBAN PROJECT, conscious of the circuits of production and occupation that determine it. The notion of CONFIGURATION will allude to a concept of space as an ambit practised in its social and signifying dimensions. The idea of TECHNIQUE adopted will try to define operators of materialisation and construction. The MOBILITY will be taken as condition for the relation, interchange and continuity, in strategies of accessibility tending to the inclusion. A023: THE PRODUCTION OF RESIDENTIAL SPACE IN BUENOS AIRES CITY, - analyses from the view of the city planning policies and the real estate dynamics Director: Arch. Daniela Szajnberg, Institution: Urbanism and City Program, Research Unit on Urban and Regional Planning. This project concentrates on the process of production of the residential space in Buenos Aires city, trying to improve isolated views from partial public policies, analyses of the real estate market, or sociological and anthropological studies, which start from the identification of the subjects and precarious and informal habitat, in order to set the dialectical contradiction between these three logics. After the retreat of the construction industry since 1998, later than the real estate boom facilitated by the economical and institutional restructuring of the nineties, and considering the polarization and socialterritorial segregation and the differential valuation resulting from the processes of production, use and appropriation of the residential space in that period, this project will analyse and evaluate the links between the public policies which fulfil the residential real estate production of the private sector, and those directed to the residential space of the marginal and poor population. Spreading a trans-disciplinary approach, conceptual elements coming from the Urbanism, the City Planning, the Urban Geography, the Urban Economics, and the State Theory will be brought, in order to contribute with theoretical and methodological issues and forming opinions for the design of urban planning tools and territorial, housing and land policies, that link the production logic to the housing demand in the new economical, institutional and social-cultural context. A036: MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN THE RO DE LA PLATA 1880 1970, - meanings, allegories and symbols Dir.: Carlos Alberto Hilger, Historia III, Professor: Roberto Fernndez The aim of the project consists of the study of the modern architecture of the Rio de la Plata starting from the analysis of its works, methodologies, models and discourses be-

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tween 1880 and 1970 with the purpose of arriving to its specificities, meanings, allegories and symbols in each historical scenes. Two historical scenarios will be approached: one from ends of century nineteen until the beginnings of the decade of the twenty and another during the decades of sixty and seventy. These scenes constitute two key moments in the construction of differentiated concepts of modernity. In the first scene it will be studied the production of the most important architects of the Rio de la Plata in its institutional, academic and intellectual context. In the second scene it will be studied the architecture and the modern art and their interrelation with the State starting from the boarding of three thematic axes: the denominated artistic movements concrete and their influences in the modern architecture; the state architectural production (competitions, projects and realizations) and the experimentations about housing of social interest (theories and practical) that environment in the University. 2.01, globalization: A046: STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS, PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT OF THE BUENOS AIRES METROPOLITAN AGGLOMERATE, - an Inter-actoral, Inter-institutional and Inter-jurisdictional Perspective Director: Luis Ainstein, Graduate Institute of Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. Buenos Aires University The present research Project is directed at addressing two well different, although interconnected, kinds of knowledge: on one side, developing analytical procedures aimed at achieving a diagnosis and explanation of a critical character related with the present metropolitan global structure of relations of an inter-actoral, inter-institutional - in an extensive sense, considering particularly the existing inter-jurisdictional gaps, or hiatuses - as they operate in a sectorial and self-gratifying manner, and become globally ineffective, inefficient, lacking in sustainability, and above all, increasingly unfair, although functional towards central, or privileged, individual and/or institutional actors. On the other, the inception of proposals dealing with alternative patterns in which the relationships between the mentioned types of entities -actors, institutions and jurisdictions- become re-articulated in terms of being directed at more appropriate levels of global effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and equity. The Project is aimed at setting up two Qualitative Models referred to one and the other of the mentioned issues. From a theoretical perspective, the present Project is set within the framework of General Systems Theory and Chaos Theory. From an epistemological point of view, it is set within the Hypothetical/Deductive lineage. 1.2, studies:

A0058: CONTRIBUTING TOWARDS A URBAN HISTORY FROM AN ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE.

Urban and territorial representations: knowledge, practice and institutions. Buenos Aires metropolitan area

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Director: Alicia Novick, Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estticas, Centro de Investigaciones en Habitat y Municipios (CIHaM) The aim of this project is to provide the materials for the construction of a Buenos Aires urban history from an environmental perspective. The research project will be based on a series of previous studies about urban plans and schemes for Buenos Aires and will address new challenges derived from the necessity of providing a historical background to the Environmental Atlas for Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, a larger research and editorial initiative where this project is included as a first step. The project is not intended to construct a unified and totalising history. Rather it is based on three different nuclei, which are eloquent about the relationship between nature, society and building environment in different historical periods. Firstly, it deals with the territorial strategies of the colonial period, which can be considered as a template for the future formation of the Metropolitan Area urban structure. Secondly, it examines the imagery of spatial regularity, which guided the process of territorial construction during the 19th century. Thirdly, it studies the different city planning ideas during the 20th century, which helped transforming the urban space. These three nuclei based approach serves to deal with the different representations from knowledge and practice and institutions. In turn, this approach attempts to study a series of problems, which today are thought of as environmental without being anachronistic. A052: TERRITORIAL ADMINISTRATION STRATEGIES IN AREAS OF URBAN OPPORTUNITIES. The case of Buenos Aires City and its Metropolitan Space Director: Guillermo C. Tella, Instituto Superior de Urbanismo. The growing processes of dispersion and territorial fragmentation that currently are attending the metropolises, in the face of a progressive dissipation of the traditional compact city constitutes the general frame of the present work. Where it is analyzed how the emptying of the consolidated area and the decentralization of the tertiary area bring the arise of new urban pieces juxtaposed in a conflictive coexistence with marginality, vacancy and poverty. In this context, the aims of the work are: to evaluate urban patterns that define a new territorial structure for Buenos Aires city and its metropolitan area, to recognize and to characterize the obsolete and the degraded portions of fabric and to propose administrative strategies which will allow potential upgrades into areas of urban opportunities. Since the new urban reality requires theoretical inputs capable of giving answers to a structural crisis situation efficiently and dynamically, it has been assigned for this task the application of an urban informational system, named InfoUrban. Developed the present year and destined to the production of knowledge in the field of reference starting from the digital prosecution and the analytical interpretation of the territorial base data.