Industrial Heritage in Argentina. Analysis of the current situation

FERRARI, MÓNICA.

Lille

Congreso; In XVIth International TICCIH Congress 2015. Industrial Heritage in the Twenty-First Century, New Challenges; 2015

TICCIH (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage)

In Argentina, the most propagated version about the preindustrial period agreed with thethinking that a certain degree of industrial development began during the early years ofnational organization period which took place before 1880. Since that epoch, many agroindustrialcentres began to develop in some regions, and new companies appeared. Thissituation occurred with the appearance of other factors like the railway arrival and thegrowing importance that got the interior market. Then the industrial period started during thedecade of 1920s and had a great impulse as a consequence of the economic depression of1930s.The two aspects that allowed the entrance to the industrial period were: the installation of therailway in 1853 and the electric energy production since the decade of 1920s. These werethe key that allowed the development in general: politic, social, territorial and economic.During the XX siècle, many industrial buildings were abandoned when become out of use.The believing about they are a legacy of our industrial past and the consideration as aheritage that we should preserve, appeared at the start of the XXI century. In fact, theindustrial heritage is a thematic that is in the beginnings.The aim of this paper is to bring a summary of a current situation of the industrial heritage inArgentina trough a brief commentary about the following aspects: changing public policies,legislation, protected sites, documentation, research, academic production and someexamples of Industrial heritage rehabilitation. In methodological terms, we have workedabout the reports of TICCH members and researchers in industrial heritage, digitalnewspaper, academic reviews and institutional webs information.