Early Draft

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Rosario architecture, a new generation
Early Draft
/ Contents
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Contents
p. 45 Project Intro / Introduccin proyecto p. 613 Historic Intro. Modern Pioneers / Introduccin histrica Chapter 1 p. 1452 60s Intro. The new school obra arquitecto Molin obra arquitecto Pantarotto obra arquitecto Scrimaglio p. 53145 90s intro. A generation anew obra arquitecto Iglesia obra arquitecto Caballero obra arquitecto Villafae p. 146170 00s intro / introduccin 00s obra arquitecto Campodonico obra arquitecto Arraigada obra arquitecto Guardatti obra arquitecta Suarez obra arquitecto Spina
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Project intro
Despite the all-encompassing stereotypical images created for simplied 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 imgenes estereotipadas creadas para el consumo simplicado y turstico, Latinoamrica es en realidad un conjunto de culturas territorialmente diferenciadas. La voluntad de ciertas regiones en preservar la identidad cultural, es decir, la relacin entre sociedad y territorio, es lo que ha creado una resistencia mnima a las fuerzas homogeneizantes de la globalizacin. En sociedades que por razones histricas y polticas se han estructurado como culturas de adopcin, discutir las condiciones de autenticidad o propiedad es inconducente. Es mas interesante evaluar las formas de apropiacin de los impulsos externos y discernir en esas formas valores negativos de subyugacin o alineacin y valores positivos de fagocitacin. La tensin entre lo global y lo local conforma la larga historia de la formacin cultural latinoamericana, una tensin enmarcada por un proceso de modernizacin incompleto. La dualidad modernizacin/modernidad incluye otras dicotomas fundamentales para entender los temas trabajados por la arquitectura latinoamericana: elite/popular, urbano/rural e innovativo/arcaico. En Latinoamrica, la arquitectura, en su prctica disciplinar y produccin legitimada, se ha presentado siempre como una opcin explcita por los polos progresivos de estas dualidades. Como agente de modernizacin fue presentada institucionalmente como elitista, urbana e innovadora. Dos caractersticas principales denen la identidad de la produccin arquitectnica contempornea latinoamericana. Primero, la imposibilidad de ejercitar una modernidad cultural completa, dado las imperfecciones del proceso de modernizacin poltico, social y econmico, que ha generado una produccin moderna adaptada, condicionada y transformada. Segundo, estrategias estticas que, desde una posicin institucional hegemnica, transforman los polos aparentemente regresivos de las dualidades articuladas previamente (lo popular, lo rural, lo arcaico) en el material sobre el cual producir diferenciacin e identidad para re-posicionarse en el mercado global de arquitectura contempornea.
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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-specic 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 tensin entre los tipos universales propuestos por la modernidad y las tradiciones constructivas y tipolgicas regionales. El objetivo de la coleccin de escritos que a continuacin sigue es el de localizar el trabajo de una nueva generacin de arquitectos Rosarinos en una perspectiva cultural e histrica. Los escritos combinarn una delineacin general del desarrollo de la tradicin moderna de la Escuela Rosarina, con interpretaciones crticas de obras individuales. Haciendo hincapi en los aspectos formales y simblicos de la prctica arquitectnica, los textos se concentrarn en obras de gran valor visual y calidad intelectual. La formacin 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 histricos crean condiciones para la innovacin y otros para la repeticin mediocre. La coleccin de escritos presentados a continuacin aliviar la narracin desestimando estos ltimos. El inters se concentrar en cmo, en esos momentos de intensa innovacin, soluciones pasadas son resueltas con nuevas intenciones, y lo global y lo regional es integrado en patrones de pensamiento arquitectnico. Una escuela particular es el resultado de la interaccin entre invenciones individuales, el trabajo sobre tipologias vernculas y las normas tecnolgicas. Una escuela es el resultado de una bsqueda intelectual por el momento en que forma, estructura y signicado se integran con conviccin y carcter de inevitabilidad. En el caso de Rosario, creo que es adems una hibridacin pragmtica y terica que al resolver necesidades locales ha contribuido al desarrollo global de la disciplina arquitectnica.
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Historic intro
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Historic intro
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Chapter 1 / p. 1452 60s Intro. The new school Anbal Molin / Augusto Pantarotto / Jorge Scrimaglio
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The new school
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The generation presented in this chapter participated, in the late 50s, 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 Porteos 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 rst 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 condence 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 rst 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 denition of modernity; these architects opened to the new textures, colors, and metallic reections 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.
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In order for a SCHOOL to exist, there must be rst 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 rst architectures in the 60s and maturing in the 70s, in mutual enrichment, competed among themselves, carefully gauging each others 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 inuences 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 inuential 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 dene a position from which to reinterpret the modern canon. The work of Anbal Moline is an example of a studied appropriation of Alvar Aaltos architecture, reinterpreted for the dense city grid and fabric of Rosario. The work of Augusto Pantarotto shows a strong inuence 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 reafrmed 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 60s and the following decade.
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The Aricana School by H. Hernandez Largua, Raul de la Torre, and Anbal Moline represents the best example of a Rosarinian appropriation of Alvar Aaltos 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 ow 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 inuence of canonic examples in the construction of their sensibility: from the center of the discipline, with their design intelligence, they take apart the specic 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 articial urban topographies in a brick covered courtyard at the center of a block in a gridded city on the at 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 nished their studies in the School of Architecture of Rosario in the 50s. 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 rst 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 tridimensional 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 60s, 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 reconguration 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 Villafae. In this sense, the buildings of the 60s 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 dont treat these architectures as museum pieces, but as live artifacts of contemporary disciplinary problems. Some architects do this with a disciplined gaze that nds value in them, renovating the joy of seeing them for the rst 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.
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La escuela Aricana de H. Hernndez Largua, Ral de la Torre y Anbal Molin representa el mejor ejemplo de apropiacin Rosarina de la arquitectura de Alvar Aalto. Esta apropiacin propone una interesante doble transposicin de una tipologia: el patio central a cielo abierto mediterrneo, que en Aalto es transformado en halles centrales de espacio publico interior cubierto y baado de luz nrdica, es aqu una vez mas transformado en patios aterrazados que descienden para traer la articulacin 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 lnea blanca de la losas de hormign reforzando la tensin 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 compresin horizontal de las circulaciones, la triple altura vertical del lobby y el terreno aterrazado del patio: son todos espacios pblicos excavados al centro de manzana. As es como los arquitectos investigan la inuencia de los ejemplos cannicos en la construccin de s sensibilidad: desde el centro de la disciplina, en uso de su inteligencia de diseo, separan los datos especcos de sus fuentes para concentrarse en aquellos hechos que resuenan en sus memorias y experiencias personales. De esta manera es como muros de contencin de ladrillo en la colina de una municipalidad nrdica reaparecen para conformar topografas articiales en un patio recubierto de ladrillos en un centro de manzana de una ciudad de grilla ortogonal de vocacin innita en la planicie argentina. En este patio, a travs de la articulacin de los niveles continuos aterrazados de los techos de la biblioteca, la circulacin interior y exterior se imbrican en un juego de planta y corte. Esta innovacin tipolgica propone imaginaciones de nuevos espacios pblicos 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 volmenes al centro de estas manzanas de lotes profundos. El edicio de Aricana es una reinterpretacin de un diagrama moderno. Los arquitectos de esta generacin terminaron sus estudios en la escuela de Arquitectura de Rosario en los 50. Esta generacin descubri los edicios cannicos del periodo heroico de la modernidad a travs de publicaciones extranjeras que llegaban en cuenta gotas, con pocas ilustraciones, pocas y de baja calidad. Mucho se dejaba abierto a la imaginacin. Esta generacin experimentar sus primeras arquitecturas con un deseo de imponer nuevas estticas a un medio que reaccionaba con resistencias culturales: la modernidad llego aqu antes que los procesos de modernizacin tecnolgica de los modos de produccin. Esta actitud moderna conform un canon: 1/El mdulo es el armazn conceptual del proyecto El mdulo no es ni un orden ni una ley: es una herramienta, una estrategia. El mdulo no se impone, se encuentra en el juego entre programa y sitio. El modulo es una grilla tridimensional, estructurada en base a repeticin. Una grilla permite la construccin de secuencias rtmicas espaciales. 2/La estructura y los materiales sostienen la expresin del proyecto La grilla se materializa y se convierte en estructura. Los materiales traban de acuerdo a sus posibilidades y denen las cualidades espaciales del edicio. Las texturas, los colores, la respuesta al paso del tiempo son factores fundamentales. Invencin y perversin son necesarios. En los 60, cuando Aricana fue construido, para los arquitectos rosarino lo moderno no era un estilo, sino la nica arquitectura posible. En Rosario, el proyecto moderno no fue abandonado, sino extendido en un lento proceso de apropiacin y reconguracin en temas y tcnicas locales que constituyen hoy la base de identidad de nuestra arquitectura contempornea. Con solo una interrupcin durante el apogeo de la posmodernidad de tendencia italiana, el proyecto moderno fue reinstalado con fuerza a principios de los 90, desde la arquitectura contempornea y conceptual, por la generacin representada en este libro en los arquitectos Caballero, Iglesia y Villafae. En este sentido, los ejemplos de los edicios de los 60 incluidos en esta publicacin 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 problemticos de contemporaneidad disciplinar. Algunos arquitectos hacen esto con una miradas disciplinada que encuentra valor en estas piezas, renovando la alegra de ver las cosas por primera vez. De esta forma retornan a estos objetos su originalidad, extienden sus investigaciones hasta el presente. Esta ambicin es compartida por esta publicacin.
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Augusto Pantarotto
Obra Casa en la barranca del ro Paran. Ubicacin Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe. Argentina. Proyecto 1998/99. Construccin 1999. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
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Augusto Pantarotto
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In Augusto Pantarottos 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 rst 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 ll 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. Pantarottos 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 dened 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, oors, staircases, frames, handrails, etc. This will of form is guided by his design intelligence; Pantarotto can dene the problems with precision and resolve them with prociency. His intelligence is that of the urban scouter, founding the exact location, inaugurating new places that strangely t 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).
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Augusto Pantarotto
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En los edicios de Augusto Pantarotto encontramos una manera puramente arquitectnica de resolver los problemas. Posicionado en la tradicin y el lenguaje de sus referentes modernos, Pantarotto va mas all del paradigma racionalista basado en sus intuiciones fenomenolgicas y plsticas. Pantarotto cree que el arquitecto debe primero imaginar espacios, debe sentirlos y caminarlos, los dibujos vendrn solo despus para traducir lo ya imaginado. Sus dibujos preferidos son unos pequeos pero intensos estudios axonomtricos y perspectvicos que ocupan cada espacio de papel disponible alrededor de plantas y cortes. Hay millones de ellos. Con precisin geomtrica y sensibilidad de lugar sus edicios son volmenes precisamente localizados en la trama urbana, que con un rme sentido de la escala se nos presentan por sorpresa, desde ngulos inesperados. Estos edicios son objetos unitarios que al mismo tiempo que marcan su posicin en la ciudad, ofrecen pistas, inauguran posibilidades de continuidad, de imaginacin, de transgresin. Son edicios macizos, que llegan al piso con peso. Aqu, el arquitecto trabaja como un escultor. La secuencia espacial de recorridos socavar la masa para proponer un urbanismo interior como continuidad natural del paisaje de la calle rosarina. Sus edicios son gentiles mounstros urbanos que descubrimos llenos de espacio, sus coreograas espaciales interiores articulando la miriada de juegos volumetricos que ercibimos dia a dia en nuesstra densa trama urbana. Aberturas precisamente localizadas dejarn 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 intuicin para moldear con riqueza plstica los materiales respecto de sus texturas y sombras, para agruparlos y superponerlos respecto de colores y calidades, Pantarotto dene 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, carpinteras, barandas, manijas. Esta voluntad de forma siempre ser guiada por su inteligencia y su sentido comn, 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 edicios iconicos de la alta modernidad europea de la misma menra en la que ha mirado su cuidad del sur del continente. Ha recolectad las imgenes amasando una coleccin personal sobre la cul trabajar. Ha sido desprejuiciado pero atento y crtico. En su retrabajo, en su obsesin 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).
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Jorge Scrimaglio
Obra Casa Norberto Alorda Ubicacin Lavalle 880, Rosario. Argentina Proyecto y construccin 1968/1973
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Jorge Scrimaglio
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/ Jorge Scrimaglio
60 90 00
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 dene 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 codied 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 rst operation establishes the limits, the small inll 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 oor, 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-signies 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
/ Captulo 1
p.1452
Jorge Scrimaglio
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 dene 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 codied 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 rst operation establishes the limits, the small inll 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 oor, 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-signies 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.
Referencias bibliogrcas Rafael Iglesia, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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 Villafae, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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 Observacin sobre replicantes y suplicantes, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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.
35
Casa Lavalle
/ Jorge Scrimaglio
36
/ Chapter 1
p.1452
Jorge Scrimaglio
Obra Casa Siri Ubicacin General Lagos. Argentina En construccin 1990
37
Casa Siri
/ Jorge Scrimaglio
38
/ Chapter 1
p.1452
Jorge Scrimaglio
39
Casa Siri
/ Jorge Scrimaglio
40
/ Chapter 1
p.1452
Jorge Scrimaglio
Referencias Roberto Fernndez, Teora del proyecto americano. Notas para la discusin de lo Global/ Local en Amrica Latina (Sin Publicar). Bibiana Cicutti, Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Nacional de Rosario: Su Formacin y Desarrollo 1923-1980, Publicacin Departamento de Historia de la Arquitectura, facultad de Arquitectura U.N.R., 1980. Rafael Iglesia, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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 Villafae, Sin Titulo, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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 Observacin sobre replicantes y suplicantes, en 041Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo N 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 Gonzles 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 gure 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 nd 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 nal 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.
41
Casa Siri
/ Jorge Scrimaglio
60 90 00
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 nullies 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. 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 gure 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 nd 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 nal 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 nullies 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.
42
Chapter 2 / p. 54145 90s Intro. A generation a new Rafael Iglesia / Gerardo Caballero / Marcelo Villafae
After the return of the democracy in 1983, in the early 90s 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 Villafae, the group did not have any afliation 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 gures 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 inuence that the contemporary Spanish and Portuguese architecture would have among the new generation of Rosarinian architects.
43
/ 90s Intro
A generation a new
60 90 00
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 scientic 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 selfsufciency 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 exemplied in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari, Jean Baudrillard among others. The inuence of this current of thought into Architectural discourse will arrive to Rosario via the journal Quaderns, the ofcial 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 inuences 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 countrys 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 prolic 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 90s allowed for an inux 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
/ Captulo 2
p.54145
Introduccin de la dcada del 90
After the return of the democracy in 1983, in the early 90s 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 Villafae, the group did not have any afliation 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 gures 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 inuence 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 scientic 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 selfsufciency 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 exemplied in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and
45
/ 90s Intro
Una nueva generacin
Felix Guatari, Jean Baudrillard among others. The inuence of this current of thought into Architectural discourse will arrive to Rosario via the journal Quaderns, the ofcial 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 inuences 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 countrys 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 prolic 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 90s allowed for an inux 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
Rafael Iglesia
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Obra Clnica. Ubicacin Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto y construccin 1990
Texto por Rafael Iglesia

Los hombres incesantemente, se fabrican un paraguas que los resguarda, en cuya parte interior trazan un rmamento y escriben sus convenciones, sus opiniones; pero el poeta, el artista, practica un corte en el paraguas, rasga el propio rmamento, para dar entrada a un poco de caos libre y ventoso y para enmarcar en una luz repentina una visin que surge a travs de la rasgadura, primavera de Wordsworth o manzana de Czanne, silueta de Macbeth o de Acab. Entonces aparece la multitud de imitadores que restaura el paraguas con un pao que vagamente se parece a la visin, y la multitud de glosadores, que remiendan la hendidura con opiniones: comunicacin. D. H. Lawrence, El caos en poesa1
Cmo no ser un restaurador de paraguas? Cmo intervenir sin mimetizarse con su lenguaje, hoy que se ha roto la unidad del discurso, cmo 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 signicado, la interpretacin? Que no establezca ninguna verdad o falsedad. Que deseche lo hecho anteriormente, que se maneje con la parte, la reversin, la mentira. Una obra de equvocos y respuestas parciales. Una arquitectura que est dispuesta a despojarse de sus certezas, que se mida con lo que no sabe, que se aventure a seguir pistas ms difusas, incluso pistas falsas; que corra riesgos, que se anime a caminar fuera de su red conceptual. Una arquitectura que no slo se angustie por el encuentro entre el plano horizontal y el parmetro vertical, sino que cuestione los fundamentos mismos. Una arquitectura infundada. La piedra no es capaz de rasgar el rmamento; tampoco de remendarlo con una imagen que vagamente se parezca a la visin. La piedra est all, conviviendo con esa lnea imaginaria que une las cosas con el suelo, quitndole razones de peso, atestiguando la gravedad de la situacin. La piedra, a pesar de ser una objecin en el camino entre el racionalismo y sus fundamentos, no pertenece al mundo de los objetos, est 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, asemntica, asignicante, intil, anarquitectnica. Es la materia, el principio, el n. Siempre har falta otros artistas para hacer otras rasgaduras, llevar a cabo las destrucciones necesarias, quiz cada vez mayores, y volver a dar as a sus antecesores, la incomunicable novedad que ya no se saba ver. 2
Notas 1 Cita en G. Deleuze y Flix Guattar en el libro Qu es la losofa?, Anagrama, 1993, Barcelona, pgs. 204 y 205. 2 Op. cit., pg. 205.
47
Clnica
/ Rafael Iglesia
Texto por Rafael Iglesia

Los hombres incesantemente, se fabrican un paraguas que los resguarda, en cuya parte interior trazan un rmamento y escriben sus convenciones, sus opiniones; pero el poeta, el artista, practica un corte en el paraguas, rasga el propio rmamento, para dar entrada a un poco de caos libre y ventoso y para enmarcar en una luz repentina una visin que surge a travs de la rasgadura, primavera de Wordsworth o manzana de Czanne, silueta de Macbeth o de Acab. Entonces aparece la multitud de imitadores que restaura el paraguas con un pao que vagamente se parece a la visin, y la multitud de glosadores, que remiendan la hendidura con opiniones: comunicacin. D. H. Lawrence, El caos en poesa1
Cmo no ser un restaurador de paraguas? Cmo intervenir sin mimetizarse con su lenguaje, hoy que se ha roto la unidad del discurso, cmo 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 signicado, la interpretacin? Que no establezca ninguna verdad o falsedad. Que deseche lo hecho anteriormente, que se maneje con la parte, la reversin, la mentira. Una obra de equvocos y respuestas parciales. Una arquitectura que est dispuesta a despojarse de sus certezas, que se mida con lo que no sabe, que se aventure a seguir pistas ms difusas, incluso pistas falsas; que corra riesgos, que se anime a caminar fuera de su red conceptual. Una arquitectura que no slo se angustie por el encuentro entre el plano horizontal y el parmetro vertical, sino que cuestione los fundamentos mismos. Una arquitectura infundada. La piedra no es capaz de rasgar el rmamento; tampoco de remendarlo con una imagen que vagamente se parezca a la visin. La piedra est all, conviviendo con esa lnea imaginaria que une las cosas con el suelo, quitndole razones de peso, atestiguando la gravedad de la situacin. La piedra, a pesar de ser una objecin en el camino entre el racionalismo y sus fundamentos, no pertenece al mundo de los objetos, est 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, asemntica, asignicante, intil, anarquitectnica. Es la materia, el principio, el n. Siempre har falta otros artistas para hacer otras rasgaduras, llevar a cabo las destrucciones necesarias, quiz cada vez mayores, y volver a dar as a sus antecesores, la incomunicable novedad que ya no se saba ver. 2
Notas 1 Cita en G. Deleuze y Flix Guattar en el libro Qu es la losofa?, Anagrama, 1993, Barcelona, pgs. 204 y 205. 2 Op. cit., pg. 205.
48
Rafael Iglesia
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Obra Casa en la barranca del ro Paran. Ubicacin Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe. Argentina. Proyecto 1998/99. Construccin 1999. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
49
/ Rafael Iglesia
Casa en la barranca
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 Paran River, a thick free hand line denes 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 denes 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 buildings 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 eld.
Texto por Rafael Iglesia (Rois ed.) En la pampa, la historia es breve y el espacio inmenso, somos ms geogrcos que histricos. La vastedad es nuestro medio. El paisaje es lo que nos hace paisanos. Sobre el Paran, el horizonte que divide lo terrenal de lo divino est 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 ms abajo; la piscina y el techo de la casa conformando el mayor espacio de uso, por debajo de ste, la casa y el muelle sobre el nivel del ro. El patio, entre la pared de la piscina y la casa, organiza el proyecto. Desde ac se sigue viendo el ro a travs de las paredes de vidrio, un ventanal con el espesor del espacio habitable que alberga. Este lugar es un reparo. En la cascada que dene uno de sus lados, el agua desarrolla todo su potencial sobre los sentidos. No slo se la puede ver: se escucha el sonido que provoca su cada, se huele el roco sobre el csped y, fundamentalmente, se siente el cambio de temperatura. El edicio es la estructura y nada ms que la estructura. Busco, como en mis ltimos trabajos, hacer ms compleja la descarga de fuerzas, trato de complicar el camino de la gravedad, esa lnea imaginaria que une las cosas al suelo por el camino ms corto. Las vigas se desplazan ya sea invirtindose para obtener un determinado encuadre del paisaje, hacindose 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 edicacin no tiene ms lenguaje que lo que la sustenta. Es como son nuestros pueblos en la inmensidad del territorio: un aerolito cado del cielo, una roca tirada en el campo.
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Obra Edicio Altamira. Ubicacin calle San Luis 470, Rosario. Argentina. Arquitectos colaboradores Andrs Lombardo, Mariano Fiorentini. Proyecto 1998/99. Construccin 2000/01. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
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Text by Rafael Iglesia Gilles 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 codied 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 fullled.
Texto por Rafael Iglesia Me servir de la descripcin que Gilles Deleuze hace del Ajedrez y el Go para ilustrar dos maneras de hacer arquitectura. En una arquitectura codicada todos sus elementos funcionan como las piezas de ajedrez: tienen una naturaleza interna o propiedades intrnsecas 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 denidos. Cada uno de ellos es un sujeto de enunciado dotado de un signicado relativo; los signicados relativos se combinan en un sujeto de enunciacin. En mi edicio busco que suceda lo contrario. Lo que intento poner en juego son slo las vigas tratadas como simples unidades cuya funcin es annima, colectiva y de tercera persona como las piezas del Go. Las vigas aqu son elementos no subjetivados que no tienen propiedades intrnsecas sino de situacin: pueden ser muro, ventana, puerta. Eventualmente, actuarn trabajando como sostn y sus roles dependern del lugar que ocupen en el espacio. La insistente viga se desplaza construyendo, destruyendo, bordeando, subiendo, bajando, soportando, detenindose, ausentndose y desapareciendo cuando menos se lo espera, sin alterar la unidad. En la obra la viga puede ser el hroe o el mayordomo, apareciendo y desapareciendo slo cuando ello es necesario para que se cumpla el destino.
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Obra Quincha y piscina. Ubicacin calle J. Newbery 9196, Rosario. Argentina. Colaboradores Silvio Vacca, Gustavo Faras. Proyecto 2001. Construccin 2001. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
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Text by Rafael Iglesia The trunk, at rst glance, may seem a gurative gesture, but it is not. While it is not normal, it is natural. This is, if you will, the rst 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 Benjamins 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 nds its essence. In order to be, it abandons its servility. The liquid reected 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 espaol?
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Obra Quincho Gallo. Ubicacin pasaje Sol de Mayo 76. Rosario. Argentina. Colaboradores Silvio Vacca, Gustavo Faras. Proyecto 2002. Construccin 2002. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
Texto por Rafael Iglesia Quincha: Sobre esta voz -quincha-, el diccionario establece, entre otras acepciones: Chile. Pared hecha de caas, 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 telrico sombrero de paja: el rancho. Una pared hecha con durmientes de quebracho colorado y una losa de hormign que les imprime compresin. Un piso hecho con varillas. En su interior una mesa. No existe aqu la tradicional parrilla: hay estacas y un horno de barro, rmado por su autor, Don Palacios, albail y domador entre otras cosas. Mesa: Es una mquina simple: una palanca que est trabajando literalmente- para sostener los cuatrocientos kilos de los durmientes. Esta mquina con su magia hace levitar la pesada mesa, quitndole razones de peso. Se trata simplemente de un sistema de fuerzas que actan por roce y carga; no hay ni tensores, ni clavos, ni otro elemento ms que la madera; completan el sistema unas cuantas cuas, 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 lnea de la gravedad, complicndole su conocido y ms corto camino al suelo. Suponemos que as podr ver otras cosas. Tronco: Esto que a simple vista puede parecer un gesto gurativo, no es tal. No es una caritide arbrea, es una columna dispuesta a empezar de nuevo. Si bien no es normal, es natural. Es la primer columna si se quiere, la ms elemental, la ms arcaica. Antes de la modernidad, el tronco era la columna. Los griegos arcaicos, en la maraa selvtica hallaron la imagen de la materia sin forma, de lo indeterminado y por lo tanto inconocible. En el sentido ms antiguo materia y madera son lo mismo. En el rbol genealgico de la columna, el tronco es el origen.
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El lugar en horas de la tarde, se vuelve estril. Ya no protege, el oeste lo atraviesa y lo inutiliza. Sus formas y su color ya no sirven. El objeto pierde su sentido, su razn. En esta momentnea inutilidad encuentra su esencia. Deja la servidumbre para ser. La pared no ampara, la cubierta ya no cubre, sta slo recoge el reejo del agua y su movimiento. El lquido, al reejarse en la losa, se transforma en el ondeante follaje del cadavrico 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 rbol, hace memoria: produce a partir de un recuerdo un pasado. Si bien sabemos que este fantasmal follaje, como tal, no da sombra, y que ste desaparecer el resto del da sin dejar huellas, el acontecimiento no deja de entroncarse con el origen. El pasado y el futuro, hoy, ayer y maana La 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 intencin de naturaleza que lo anima (acaso la realidad es algo ms que una ccin?). Insistentemente, todos los das de sol y durante las noches de luna llena-, el rbol volver a presentarse casi como un recuerdo que relampaguea en un instante de peligro, para manifestar que el pasado no permanece igual a s mismo, el pasado acontece una vez ms todas las veces en el corazn del presente, comunicndose 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 hroe o el mayordomo, apareciendo y desapareciendo slo cuando ello es necesario para que se cumpla el destino.
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Obra Parque de diversiones. Ubicacin Parque Independencia, Rosario. Argentina. Arquitecto Colaborador J. J. Dapello. Colaboradores Arq. G. Castiglione por MR, Ing. Osela, Andr Barton, G. Farias, L. Villanueva. Proyecto 2002. Construccin 2003. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
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Texto por Rafael Iglesia Public 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 nishing 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 gure and background. Baos pblicos El primer pabelln se ha emplazado al ingreso del parque. La ubicacin de los baos es un tema aparte, ya que siempre se les asigna el lugar ms oscuro, cuando no el ms srdido. As las cosas, hemos hecho con ellos una operacin que ya aparece en otros trabajos anteriores: sacar a la luz mbitos que permanecen ocultos asignndoles nuevos lugares. Su localizacin al ingreso del parque expresa nuestra intencin de que ocie de linterna en una zona que siempre ha presentado poco iluminacin. Se trata de una estructura de hormign armado cerrada con vidrio, cuyo lenguaje no es ms que la propia estructura. Esta estructuracin interna permite por un lado el grado de privacidad que requieren estos mbitos y por otro, el vidrio translcido hace visibles las siluetas a travs de l y con ello la circulacin interna, de manera que quien est 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 estructuracin, adems, hace posible la ubicacin de los lucernarios en los pliegues de los tabiques que se expresan en la cubierta. El edicio se mantiene de hormign visto en su exterior tanto como en su interior, buscando contrastar la rusticidad del hormign y el quebracho colorado de las mesadas con las supercies pulidas y brillantes del vidrio y el acero inoxidable que ocian de espejos que confunden fondo y gura.
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Text by Rafael Iglesia Party Pavilion The rst 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 Ren Magrittes 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 nd 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 oor. The counters and the storage rooms oor 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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El pabelln para estas Cuando visit el lugar, la primera impresin que tuve fue el notable contraste de la luz del da visible en el cieloy la sombra cerrada bajo la arboleda que suma al terreno en una noche imposible, a la manera de las pinturas de Ren Magritte. Por otro lado, bajo la masa oscura del follaje de la arboleda, la luz pasa recortada a travs de los troncos a la altura humana. Una luz compartimentada, cuyo ujo est 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 travs de las lneas verticales de los tallos. En esa alternancia de sombras y luces est el proyecto. El proyecto, entonces, plantea una losa que se sostiene sobre unos troncos de quebracho colorado, colocados en el permetro. La losa simplemente est apoyada y anclada con un tabique en uno de sus extremos. En esta estructura los tabiques divisorios cuelgan del techo para otorgarle ms peso y estabilidad. En el interior nada llega al piso. Las mesadas, barras y pisos del depsito estn acuados a estos cortinados rgidos de hormign. Estamos en presencia de que comnmente llamamos una planta libre. La imagen resultante responde a lo pretendido al comienzo: es decir, el edicio desaparece, los troncos se confunden con los de la arboleda y slo se maniesta la lnea recta de la losa gravitando en la arboleda como nica seal de la intervencin del hombre. Es decir: el rbol no tapa el bosque. Sin embargo, los troncos han sido cortados en tres lonjas para favorecer su manipulacin y con el n de interrumpir el efecto mimtico 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 qu pasa del otro lado. Con el tiempo los troncos irn perdiendo la corteza para dejar paso al color rojo que el tanino le da a la piel y, ms tarde, adquirirn el color plateado que le da el tiempo: la vejez. Mientras proyectaba este pabelln de estas tuve tambin muy presente la imagen de los ranchos arreglados para el festejo de un cumpleaos. Recortada sobre la llanura, la mancha marrn del rancho se transforma con los colores de los globos y las guirnaldas que hacen su trabajo an en la casa ms modesta. Soslayando clases sociales y presupuestos dispares, globos y guirnaldas son, donde quieran que estn, la seal inequvoca del festejo.
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Obra Casa Bv. Argentino. Ubicacin Bv. Argentino al 8000, Fisherton, Rosario. Argentina. Junto con Mariel Surez. Proyecto 2003. Construccin 2003. Crditos fotogrcos Gustavo Frittegotto.
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Gerardo Caballero
Obra Plaza Santa Cruz. Ubicacin Ayacucho esquina Pasaje Santa Cruz, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1990. Construccin 1991. Crditos fotogrcos 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 ofce. Gerardo (together with Marcelo Villafane and Rafael Iglesia) was part of a group that organized at the beginning of the 90s, 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 ow, and exchange of ideas between them and us. There is a generosity in that attitude that I nd extinguished in this world. I was going to read something I wrote three years ago about Gerardos practice, for a book that never came out, but I managed to lost the le. I described in that text his ofce 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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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 rst 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 ows 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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Gerardo Caballero
Obra Quincho Puricelli. Ubicacin Funes, Argentina. Proyecto 1992. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Ariel Gimnez. Colaboradores Diego Nakamatsu, Fabin Llonch. Constructor O. Cavagnero. Estructura Ing. Chillemi.
Quincho Puricelli The 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 specic 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 Puricelli La palabra Quincho dene una construccin secundaria de la vivienda principal utilizada como lugar de recreacin y reuniones familiares. El programa dene en este caso no slo la parrilla (barbacoa) para los asados, sino tambin una galera cubierta, un bao, una cocina y un pequeo dormitorio de servicio. Con un total de 70 m2, este pequeo edicio se concibe como un objeto rural aislado que se relaciona ms con la inmensidad de la Pampa que con su emplazamiento concreto, elaborando una idea de paisaje y de lugar. Relaciones ms conceptuales pero no por ello menos fsicas. Para su construccin, se recurri a una estructura de perles rolados y chapa aluminizada de forma parablica, como una reelaboracin de las estructuras agrcolas de la zona.
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Obra Edicio Marcos Paz. Ubicacin Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecucin 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira. Colaboradores Maite Fernndez, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro. Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografa Gustavo Fritegotto.
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Gerardo Caballero
Q. When Alvaro Siza writes in reference to Fernando Tavoras 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 rst 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 nd 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 nd 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, its 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 sketchs lines have that elegance, without losing the precision. Could you talk a little about the space that your drawings have in your design process? 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 ow. 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 dont 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 uid 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 ts. That has inuenced my way of working tremendously. It is not only a concern of geometry. You rst have to inhabit a project and then from the inside, work it trough.
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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 pequea 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 ah no nos dice nada ms que la primera. Siza relaciona a Tavora con otro tipo de arquitectura, aquella que causa menos impresin 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 razn 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 dira de gente curiosa, que sabe que la obra trasciende sus propios lmites, sean estos fsicos 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 fsico sino tambin con su entorno cultural, con las demandas del programa, de la tecnologa disponible, los presupuestos, cuestiones loscas, la topografa, etc. Atender estas demandas, que son de diferente ndole, es lo que dota al proyecto de complejidad, es lo que lo hace consistente y en denitiva 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 obstculos, yo pienso que es verdad, y que a los obstculos hay que confrontarlos y superarlos, pero lo que no se puede hacer es ignorarlos y quizs tampoco inventarlos. P. Esta imagen del proyecto como carrera de obstculos habla de una relacin muy dinmica con el acto de proyectar. Por un lado debe haber precisin y determinacin, 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 lneas de tus croquis tienen esa elegancia, sin perder la precisin. Podras hablar un poco del espacio que ocupan tus dibujos en tu proceso de diseo? R. Los dibujos han ido adquiriendo cierta elegancia, como decs, 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 atencin y a que no, las cosas que le parecen mas importantes. No tengo un fetichismo por el dibujo. Me parece una especia de cdigo y una manera de hacer, de pensar. Tambin pienso los proyectos sin dibujar, dibujndolos mentalmente. P. En tu proceso de diseo parece haber una relacin muy uida entre los croquis y los planos. Los croquis explican momentos visuales y la planta funciona estructurando esas posibilidades. Pero no hay una jerarqua, son simultneos. El proyecto se descubre de alguna manera a travs del acto de dibujar. Desde tu imaginacin arquitectnica y por el dibujo, fragmentos del proyecto asoman poco a poco y la imagen se va aclarando. Parece tambin que la geometra 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 ms 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 as, la aprecio mucho. La Facultad de Arquitectura de Siza o el Cementerio de Igualada de Miralles tienen geometras que estn hechas para captar, mirar, y cuando uno las recorre todo cobra sentido, todo encaja. Eso ha inuido mucho en mi forma de hacer. No es solamente una geometra, hay que primero habitar el proyecto y luego, desde adentro, trabajarlo.
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Obra Edicio Marcos Paz. Ubicacin Cortada Marcos Paz, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1993. Ejecucin 1995-2001. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Roberto Shiira. Colaboradores Maite Fernndez, Diego Nakamatzu,Yanina Nicastro. Estructura Ing. Marcelo Soboleosky. Fotografa Gustavo Fritegotto.
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Q. In your process of design there seems to be a uid 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 ts. That has inuenced my way of working tremendously. It is not only a concern of geometry. You rst 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 dont 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.
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P. En tu proceso de diseo parece haber una relacin muy uida entre los croquis y los planos. Los croquis explican momentos visuales y la planta funciona estructurando esas posibilidades. Pero no hay una jerarqua, son simultneos. El proyecto se descubre de alguna manera a travs del acto de dibujar. Desde tu imaginacin arquitectnica y por el dibujo, fragmentos del proyecto asoman poco a poco y la imagen se va aclarando. Parece tambin que la geometra 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 ms 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 as, la aprecio mucho. La Facultad de Arquitectura de Siza o el Cementerio de Igualada de Miralles tienen geometras que estn hechas para captar, mirar, y cuando uno las recorre todo cobra sentido, todo encaja. Eso ha inuido mucho en mi forma de hacer. No es solamente una geometra, hay que primero habitar el proyecto y luego, desde adentro, trabajarlo.
P. Volviendo a la imagen de la carrera de obstculos, decs que a los obstculos no se los puede ignorar, pero tampoco inventar. Esto coloca al proyecto de arquitectura como resolucin de problemas, mas cerca del sentido comn que de la oscuridad de la sobre determinacin intelectual. Tu frase sobre la diferencia entre lo realmente complejo y lo simplemente complicado resuena con fuerza. Podras extenderte un poco sobre esta idea? R. La prctica de la arquitectura requiere de una especulacin intelectual y tambin de un cierto sentido comn. Yo no creo en el divorcio entre prctica y teora. Los proyectos demandan atencin desde lo abstracto y tambin desde lo concreto, esto es lo que al nal los dota de complejidad, que como he dicho en algn momento es diferente a complicacin. 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, tecnolgico, perceptivo, programtico, estructural, losco. Cuando el proyecto logra traspasar todo eso y sale airoso es una gran obra. Yo intento hacer los proyectos as.
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Obra Biblioteca Parque de Espaa. Ubicacin Centro Cultural Parque de Espaa, Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto 1995. Ejecucin 1996. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernndez. Constructor Carpintera Ricardo Molinaroli. Fotografa Gustavo Fritegotto.
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Q. Marcelo Villafae always repeats that in order to dene 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 difcult 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 ofce? R. Personally, I dont nd a difference between the small project and the big project. One should adapt to each projects 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 rst 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 rst 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 specic requirements of measurement. The complexity lies in surpassing the requirements to transcend them. Q. Going back to the rst 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 intensication 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 antiart 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 nds profound resonances. I would call this an attempt to nd 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 dont know if you saw the Eames lm, The Uncommon Beauty of Common Things, its 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 nds 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 nd 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.
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P. Marcelo Villafae siempre repite que para denir a un arquitecto lo que importa no es la obra solitaria sino la trayectoria. Es decir, el desarrollo de ideas, la persecucin de preguntas a travs de mltiples obras en el transcurso del tiempo. Es casi un llamado a una tica de resistencia, que es por supuesto mucho ms difcil si el da a da se va en tratar de mantener vivo un estudio con una obra de pequea en escala. Podes hablar un poco de esto y del da a da del estudio? R. Personalmente no encuentro diferencia entre el trabajo pequeo y el trabajo grande. Uno se adapta a las circunstancias de cada proyecto, a los programas , a los presupuestos, a los terrenos. Pero al nal creo es siempre lo mismo, cuando estudie arquitectura se daba al primer ao una casa, en segundo ao dos casa apareadas, en tercer ao una escuela, en cuarto un conjunto de vivienda y as, pero la complejidad de la arquitectura no esta en el tamao! Con Pablo Rosenwaser habamos diseado unos ejercicios que eran as: en primer ao le dbamos a los alumnos un programa; en segundo ao 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 ah. El arquitecto debe tener la sensibilidad justa para hacerla visible. En la misma lnea, lvaro Siza dice que usa sus croquis como herramientas para descubrir sus proyectos como lo casi nada que ya casi esta ah. Es una imagen maravillosa! En algn sentido, tus proyectos emergen, casi como registro o intensicacin de relaciones pre-existentes y dan la impresin de ser la respuesta justa, de siempre haber estado ah. R. Muchas veces la arquitectura aparece como una extensin 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 relacin con los lugares trasciende los fsico 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 aqu, 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 sosticada que aspira a diluir la presencia de la impostura de los prejuicios de la disciplina arquitectnica para dejar lugar a la vida, a la cotidianeidad, y al hacerlo encontrar resonancias profundas. Yo llamara a esto un intento de encontrar una pica de lo cotidiano. Tus intervenciones de pequea escala con presupuesto mnimos tienen esa sensibilidad, tu lectura de arquitecturas populares tambin. Podes hablar un poco de esto? R. Yo miro lo que me rodea. Edward Hopper retrato Amrica con una mirada sobre lo banal. No se si viste el lm 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 visin cosmopolita de la arquitectura, no quiero que se me considere como un regionalista. P. Creo que tu valoracin por las arquitecturas cotidianas no se basa en una relectura intelectual de lo popular sino en una apreciacin 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 precisin. R. No me interesa la cuestin demasiado abstracta, no me interesa la obra pensada demasiado como un dibujo. Me gustan los edicios cuando pierden esa abstraccin y son capaces de asumir todas las deformaciones, las verrugas. Me gusta la arquitectura con defectos. No reniego de la cuestin sublime de la arquitectura, pero creo que a veces hay que pensarla ms como un hecho ms cotidiano. Trato de ver y hacer arquitectura como un hecho natural. Me gusta la arquitectura que pase casi desapercibida, inadvertida.
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Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses
Text by Diego Arraigada Architect. National University of Rosario. MA in Architecture. University of California, Los Angeles
Gerardo Caballeros Town Dwellings 1 In 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. 2 The 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 classication is likely to be arbitrary, which is probably the case in any kind of classication. However, I believe that in this case, my classication might serve to shed some light onto the interpretation of Caballeros 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 Gimnez, 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 Caballeros work to be endowed with poetic realism, which he denes 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 Caballeros Poetic Realism) Within this interpretative framework, Caballeros architecture has gradually evolved by both incorporating, with more and more sensitivity and intelligence, accidental and contingent aspects of the specic reality into which it inserts, and by including, probably in a lower scale, references to idealized and abstract contexts. As a result, Caballeros work has been slowly enriching itself with some poetry in which modest causes produce memorable architectural effects.
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Ampliacin Casa Colmegna

Obra Ampliacin Casa Colmegna. Ubicacin Zona Rural, Totoras, Santa Fe. Argentina. Ao 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernndez, Gerardo Bordi. Constructor A. Golin, D. Imsand. Supercie existente 88 m2. Supercie ampliacin 42 m2.
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3 Casa Barbero (Barbero House) is the rst work of an architect who was at that time recently graduated. It has a at roof, pure geometry and direct inuences of the most well-known architectures of those years. Back then, the insertion of reality in Caballeros 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 Gimnez, reveals the great intellectual growth that Caballero underwent after having had work and academic experiences abroad. Paradoxically, and this is a fetaure of Caballeros 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 at 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 ndings 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 whats old and whats 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, rst 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 Caballeros 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 whats preexisting and whats 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.
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Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) is not exactly an enlargement, but it looks like it. Because... isnt 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. 4 Caballero 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 Caballeros 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 absentmindedness, by its everyday use and sensory perception. Even though Caballeros work seems to reect Bejamins idea, an attentive and lengthy look at his work will nd innite meanings and discoveries. Caballeros work is basically discrete and sensual, which, if analized, produces great intellectual happiness. 5 Once, after a lecture in a teaching contest, I heard Caballero answer the redundant question of a jury about the inuence of local techniques on his work and on his teaching of architecture: I ... I believe in that idea of paint your town, and youll paint the world. The meaning of Tolstois 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. Whats 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 rst time. 6 In the countryside and provincial towns (just like in any place) there are innite shades awaiting for architectures capable of endowing them with new meanings. The most important merit of Caballeros architecture is to have developed a completely new eld of architectural sensitivity that nurtures itself from the most particular and specic 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.
97
/ Gerardo Caballero
98
/ Chapter 2
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Gerardo Caballeros Town Dwellings 1 In 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. 2 The 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 classication is likely to be arbitrary, which is probably the case in any kind of classication. However, I believe that in this case, my classication might serve to shed some light onto the interpretation of Caballeros 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 Gimnez, 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 Caballeros work to be endowed with poetic realism, which he denes 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 Caballeros Poetic Realism) Within this interpretative framework, Caballeros architecture has gradually evolved by both incorporating, with more and more sensitivity and intelligence, accidental and contingent aspects of the specic reality into which it inserts, and by including, probably in a lower scale, references to idealized and abstract contexts. As a result, Caballeros work has been slowly enriching itself with some poetry in which modest causes produce memorable architectural effects.
99
/ Gerardo Caballero
Casa Frittegotto
Obra Casa Frittegotto. Ubicacin Arequito, Santa Fe, Argentina. Ao 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernndez, Gerardo Bordi. Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti. Fotografa Gustavo Frittegotto.
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/ Chapter 2
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3 Casa Barbero (Barbero House) is the rst work of an architect who was at that time recently graduated. It has a at roof, pure geometry and direct inuences of the most well-known architectures of those years. Back then, the insertion of reality in Caballeros 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 Gimnez, reveals the great intellectual growth that Caballero underwent after having had work and academic experiences abroad. Paradoxically, and this is a fetaure of Caballeros 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 at 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 ndings 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 whats old and whats 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, rst 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 Caballeros 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 whats preexisting and whats 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.
101
/ Gerardo Caballero
Casa Frittegotto
102
/ Chapter 2
p.54145

Casa Frittegotto (Frittegotto House) is not exactly an enlargement, but it looks like it. Because... isnt 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. 4 Caballero 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 Caballeros 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 absentmindedness, by its everyday use and sensory perception. Even though Caballeros work seems to reect Bejamins idea, an attentive and lengthy look at his work will nd innite meanings and discoveries. Caballeros work is basically discrete and sensual, which, if analized, produces great intellectual happiness. 5 Once, after a lecture in a teaching contest, I heard Caballero answer the redundant question of a jury about the inuence of local techniques on his work and on his teaching of architecture: I ... I believe in that idea of paint your town, and youll paint the world. The meaning of Tolstois 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. Whats 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 rst time. 6 In the countryside and provincial towns (just like in any place) there are innite shades awaiting for architectures capable of endowing them with new meanings. The most important merit of Caballeros architecture is to have developed a completely new eld of architectural sensitivity that nurtures itself from the most particular and specic 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.
103
/ Gerardo Caballero
Ampliacin Casa Moriconi

Obra Ampliacin Casa Frittegotto. Ubicacin Totoras, Santa Fe, Argentina. Ao 2003. Arquitectos Gerardo Caballero, Maite Fernndez, Gerardo Bordi. Colaboradores Gonzalo Carbajo, Maria Eva Contesti. Constructor A. Peruzzo, D. Imsand. Supercie existente 118 m2. Supercie ampliacin 81 m2. Fotografa Gustavo Frittegotto.
104
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
105
/ Gerardo Caballero
Ampliacin Casa Moriconi
CORTE 1-1
106
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
Obra Edicio Brown. Ubicacin Brown 2909, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. Ao de proyecto 2005. Final de obra 2007. Arquitecto Gerardo Caballero. Equipo de proyecto Maite Fernndez, Orlando Alloatti, Gonzalo Carbajo. Colaboradores Gerardo Bordi, Maria Eva Contesti; Juan Fonseca, Mariana Suso. Ingeniero Jos Ramn Orengo. Promotor HORGEN Construcciones. Empresa Constructora PROAS S.R.L. Supercie construida 1400 m. Fotografa Gustavo Frittegotto / Walter Salcedo.
107
Edicio Brown
/ Gerardo Caballero
108
/ Chapter 2
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Gerardo Caballero
109
Edicio Brown
/ Gerardo Caballero
110
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que ltimamente ha adquirido inters debido a una serie de intervenciones pblicas 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 tpica 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 vnculos visuales con el paisaje del ro y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alent la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que sta relacin fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje. Se trata de un edicio 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 pequeo gimnasio La estructura de hormign 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 fbrica vista de 36 cm de espesor, que es el elemento ms signicativo del proyecto. Estas dos paredes plegadas a la manera de biombos organizan todo el edicio. EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que ltimamente ha adquirido inters debido a una serie de intervenciones pblicas 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 tpica 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 vnculos visuales con el paisaje del ro y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alent la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que sta relacin fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje. Se trata de un edicio 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 pequeo gimnasio La estructura de hormign 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 fbrica vista de 36 cm de espesor, que es el elemento ms signicativo del proyecto. Estas dos paredes plegadas a la manera de biombos organizan todo el edicio.
111
Edicio Brown
/ Gerardo Caballero
geometrales Edicio Brown?
112
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
113
/ Gerardo Caballero
Puerto Roldn House
114
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
EL proyecto se encuentra ubicado en un barrio de la zona norte de la ciudad de Rosario que ltimamente ha adquirido inters debido a una serie de intervenciones pblicas 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 tpica 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 vnculos visuales con el paisaje del ro y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alent la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que sta relacin 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 ltimamente ha adquirido inters debido a una serie de intervenciones pblicas 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 tpica 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 vnculos visuales con el paisaje del ro y de las islas que se encuentran frente al mismo. Esto alent la idea de desarrollar unas plantas en forma de conos visuales para que sta relacin fuese mas elocuente desde el interior de las viviendas, enmarcando el horizonte del paisaje.
115
/ Gerardo Caballero
Puerto Roldn House
geometrales?
116
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
117
/ Gerardo Caballero
Showroom Matassa
118
/ Chapter 2
p.54145
Gerardo Caballero
119
/ Gerardo Caballero
Showroom Matassa

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Rosario architecture, a new generation

Rosario architecture, a new generation

Edicio Luy y Fuerza

Edicio Luy y Fuerza

Edicio Luy y Fuerza

Obra Casa Siri Ubicacin General Lagos. Argentina En construccin 1990

Introduccin de la dcada del 90

Una nueva generacin

Obra Clnica. Ubicacin Rosario. Argentina. Proyecto y construccin 1990

Texto por Rafael Iglesia

Texto por Rafael Iglesia

Casa Bv. Argentino

Plaza Santa Cruz

Plaza Santa Cruz

Edicio Marcos Paz

Edicio Marcos Paz

Biblioteca Parque de Espaa

Biblioteca Parque de Espaa

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Ampliacin Casa Colmegna

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Ampliacin Casa Colmegna

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Ampliacin Casa Colmegna

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Ampliacin Casa Moriconi

Gerardo Caballero / 3 small houses

Ampliacin Casa Moriconi

geometrales Edicio Brown?

Puerto Roldn House

Puerto Roldn House

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