Amancio Williams: The Latest Architecture and News

Through his unbuilt projects, built works, and research, Amancio Williams's ideas emerge as the result of a deep understanding of the most advanced trends of his time reflecting on architectural design, urbanism and city planning. By exploring various themes, concepts, and even materials, he aims to create a personal universe that interprets the present as something future-oriented, both international and distinctly Argentine. His proposal "La ciudad que necesita la humanidad" presents linear and layered buildings raised 30 meters above ground, incorporating everything from office spaces to roads and magnetic trains on different levels of a single structure. The Amancio Williams archive at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal documents Williams' career as an architect and designer from the 1940s to the late 1980s. The fonds documents his work for over 80 architectural, urban planning and design projects, as well as the administration of his architecture practice and his professional activities. Including drawings and sketches, presentation models, photographic materials, such as photographs of models, finished project (when realized), reference images, photographic reproduction of plans, and site photographs, the archive is available to consult offering more details.

+ 5

The 1940s architectural marvel Casa Sobre el Arroyo has been awarded the 2024 Worlds Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize for its outstanding restoration. Initially designed in 1943 by architects Amancio Williams and Delfina Galvez Bunge de Williams, this “house on the bridge” symbolizes Argentina’s modernist movement. The project is the first winner of the prestigious Modernism prize in the Global South, now standing as a museum for the protection of Argentina’s modern heritage.

+ 11

Mar del Plata is an obligatory reference to the Argentine modern movement. At the same time, it is the setting for many architectural classics that have been victims of neglect for years.

Magalí Marazzo, director of the municipality's Department of Works and Urban Planning and member of the National Monuments Commission, has taken charge of the situation by completing the restoration project of a paradigmatic work of 20th-century architecture: The House on the River.

Within South America, different dates have been established to pay tribute to and honour the career, life and work of architecture professionals. While in Uruguay it is celebrated every 27th of November in relation to the creation of the first Faculty of Architecture, in Brazil every 15th of December in homage to the birth of Oscar Niemeyer or in Chile every 4th of August for the founding of the College of Architects, the Argentine Federation of Architects' Associations (FADEA) kept the 1st of July to commemorate the Day of the Argentinean Architect, respecting the establishment of the International Day of Architecture, established by the International Union of Architects (UIA) in 1985.

It was designed and built between 1943 and 1946 by Amancio Williams and Delfina Galvez Bunge over the Las Chacras Stream in the city of Mar del Plata. It eventually became known as "The House on the River" or "The Bridge House". However, it ceased to have a stream, and thus to be a bridge, in 1957 when the watercourse on which it rested was interrupted for sanitation reasons. It was used as a radio station between 1970 and 1977, but the last military dictatorship in Argentina ended up shutting it down. It remained closed, maintained by its owner until their death in 1991. Studied by all, but cared for by none. It suffered two major fires, in 2004 and 2008. Abandoned during the whole succession process, it was recovered by the Municipality of General Pueyrredón in 2012.

Located in a particularly natural setting in the city of Mar del Plata, the "Casa sobre el Arroyo" (House on the River) - known as the "Casa del Puente" (The Bridge House) - is considered a paradigmatic component of 20th-century architecture and an obligatory reference of the Modern Movement in Argentina and Latin America.

The house designed by the Argentinean architect Amancio Williams, commissioned by his father, the musician Alberto Williams, is constructed evidence of the capacity to establish a link between the modern rationality of human beings with nature and its topography.