Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: The Latest Architecture and News

From 1987 to 1993, architect Pablo Tomás Beitía set out to transform the former housing complex and rental houses of Argentine artist Alejandro Xul Solar into a museum. The goal was to create a new space that would adapt to exhibition requirements and engage in avant-garde dialogue with the pre-existing structure. Situated in the Palermo neighborhood within the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the Xul Solar Museum was designed to serve as a space for cultural encounters. The remodeling and expansion project was conceived by interpreting the artist's pictorial worldview, maintaining the facade intact, and embracing the painter's house with a new interior architecture.

On Avenida Corrientes, the Teatro Municipal General San Martín (TGSM) rises between party walls in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires. Designed by Mario Roberto Álvarez and Macedonio Oscar Ruiz in 1954, this building comes to address an artistic and cultural issue common to the large cities of America. It stands as one of Argentina's most important theaters, providing spaces for theatrical and cinematic performances as well as art exhibitions. Spanning 30,000 square meters, it constitutes a theater complex alongside the General San Martín Cultural Center, operating independently.

Perhaps without even looking for it, Cora Kavanagh would leave one of the most emblematic buildings of rationalist architecture in Argentina. Inaugurated in January 1936, with its almost 120 meters of height, the Kavanagh Building stands in front of the ravine of Plaza San Martín, located in the central neighborhood of Retiro in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.

"Cora Kavanagh and her Building" is the title of Marcelo Nougués' new book that gathers the entire story, revealing everything from her building and her travels to her art collection and the different houses she lived in during a period of almost 50 years. In collaboration with Díaz Ortiz Ediciones, this 572-page printed volume compiles texts, photographs, and documents from the author's collection and also showcases selected images and illustrations from extensive research. Discover a part of this story below.

"History of the villas in the city of Buenos Aires. From the origins to the present day" is the book by Valeria Snitcofsky that reconstructs the historical background of the villas in the city of Buenos Aires based on research that began in 2003 and whose advances were expressed in a bachelor's and a doctoral thesis. It is framed within the objective of the Tejido Urbano Foundation, which is focused on promoting research and the generation of knowledge on the problems of habitat and housing.

The Teniente General Castiñeiras building stands on a triangular plot of land in the heart of Buenos Aires, one of the most emblematic of the city's modern architecture. Better known as the SOMISA Building, its origin was the result of a design competition for the design of the new headquarters of the Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina company. The first prize was won by MRA+A, Mario Roberto Álvarez & Associates, and its construction began around 1966, with the works completed in 1977.

Located in the Retiro district of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires is the IBM building designed by Mario Roberto Álvarez & Associates. Conceived to house the headquarters of the IBM company, this office building was designed around 1979 and consists of a tower supported by two large concrete structural cores on a base, which is separated from the ground and the shaft of the tower to house the ground floor and a level of common areas in order to maintain the urban scale. The language of the building is recognizable from a distance as it is formed by an enclosure of horizontal bands of glass and exposed concrete parapets-parasols, which achieve a dialogue and balance in the proportion of full and empty spaces.

As a protagonist of the Argentinean culinary scene, the barbecue plays a prominent role. In architecture, beyond the dimensions of the spaces where they are installed, grills are consolidated as a meeting point for visitors and residents of the houses, coming into direct contact with the customs and culture of the country. 

Towards the end of the 1970s, the architectural office of Flora Manteola, Javier Sánchez Gómez, Josefina Santos, Justo Solsona and Rafael Viñoly (MSGSSV) together with Carlos Sallaberry began to devise the project for the Prourban Building, which would become one of the most emblematic buildings in the city of Buenos Aires and would be popularly nicknamed "El Rulero".

In a tour of the layout of Buenos Aires, around 500 passages are distributed throughout the city. Regardless of the neighbourhood in which they are located, they represent postcards of contemporary urban architecture with a tinge of improvisation. However, they bear witness to the organisation of Buenos Aires, which aspired to a checkerboard regularity.

On many occasions, it is difficult to tell the difference between the passage, the cut-off and the dead-end street, but they are all part of the urban space, that place of exchange, of encounter, of signs, symbols and words where people live, play and learn at the same time.