The art of building skyscrapers. Mario Palanti and the Palacio Salvo

BONICATTO, VIRGINIA

Getty Research Journal

Getty Research Institute

Lugar: Los Angeles; Año: 2013 p. 183 - 188

1944-8740

In 1922 the Milanese architect Mario Palanti won an international competition and for the second time in his career gained the opportunity to design and construct a skyscraper: the Palacio Salvo in Montevideo, Uruguay. The building was commissioned by the Salvo brothers, a family of immigrant industrialists, and combined real-estate investment with architectonic experiment. The documentation on this building in the collection of the Getty Research Institute affords a new perspective on Palanti´s architecture. In the context of early 20th-century Montevideo, this architect brought to bear his Milanese training on the new problems presented by the urban landscape; the result was a building, an iconic landmark, that combined technical, formal, and functional innovation in the context of a city which was developing into a metropolis.