The internacional circulation of urban ideas and their transcultural applications: Buenos Aires and Rosario, 1979-1986.

JAJAMOVICH, GUILLERMO

Nueva York

Conferencia; Ambiguous territories. Articulating new geographies in Latin American Modern Architecture and Urbanism.; 2009

Columbia University

One of the main characteristics of the international circulation of ideas, as analyzed by Pierre Bourdieu, is their lack of adjustments due to the fact that ideas circulate without their context. In cities such as Buenos Aires and Rosario, very often, urban models arrive before the conditions that they originally meant to address. I approach the international circulation of urban ideas from the point of view of their transcultural applications in Buenos Aires and Rosario. My analysis surpasses national borders and focuses on cultural contacts between regional cities. It goes beyond unidirectional notions such as influence. I examine the context of the reception of those ideas regarding the disciplinary debate and the political moment in which they arrive. The new conditions modify the sense that these ideas had in their “original” context. I focus on some experiences that link the cities of Rosario and Buenos Aires to particular arguments of the international debate. In Rosario, I take into account the presence of the Catalan architect Oriol Bohigas and his first sketch for the ´Parque España´ (´Spain Park´) (1979) developed in a military dictatorship period. This sketch introduces new topics from the international debate such as criticisms to traditional urban planning. In the case of Buenos Aires, I analyse two experiences. In the first one, I study La Escuelita (The Little School, 1976-1983), a private architecture school – developed during the military dictatorship period – where many ideas related to the international debate were introduced. In the second one, I analyse the ‘veinte ideas para Buenos Aires’ (Twenty Ideas for Buenos Aires, 1986), an urban design competition carried out during a democratic period in Argentina by the Buenos Aires’ City Council in cooperation with the City Council of Madrid, Spain. Regarding this competition, I focus on the critique of traditional urban planning that this project presents.