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Delfina Gálvez Bunge: The Latest Architecture and News

Restored Amancio Williams' House on the River Will Open as a Museum in Argentina

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.

The House on the River: Restoration after Eight Decades of Attacks

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.

Architecture Classics: House on the River / Amancio Williams + Delfina Gálvez Bunge

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.