A stage for a new capital: the casa de renta en altura in the construction of Buenos Aires metropolitan grid (1880-1930)

BONICATTO, VIRGINIA; FRANCHINO, MAGALI

París

Jornada; Journée d?études doctorales en histoire de l?architecture Ville et architecture : des relations conflictuelles ? Représentations, théories, pratiques, héritages (XIXe-XXe siècle); 2020

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (ED441/HiCSA) ? École de Chaillot

At the beginning of 20th century, transformations that came with progress and metropolization gave many cities in Latin America an ?air of irrepressible and unlimited adventure?. As a fruitful historiographical tradition points out, Buenos Aires can be understood as the first metropolis in Latin America. In the context of the massive immigration flow from major countries to the southern region of the continent, it synthesizes representative aspects of material and social transformations of the passage of a nineteenth- century postcolonial city to urban center, during the period known as the first cycle metropolitan formation of a ?metropolis en la pampa?(Gorelik, 1998). In the context of formation of the National States, from the definition of Buenos Aires as a Federal Capital of the national territory (1880), the city went through a period of long transformations in which the transition from city to metropolis coexisted alongside its capitalization. This meant a confluence of architectural programs that responded to symbolic needs around the values that the ?capital permanente? claimed (Shmidt, 2012), as well as those economic interests that respond to the metropolis (Liernur, 2012) The conflicts arise because of the coexistence between the public architecture destined to characterize the Nation and the private architecture. As well as the State found in the palace a project piece that evoked ?beauty, strength and illusion of power? (Shmidt, 2012), private architecture should express the values of the dominant liberal culture in hands of private initiative and business real estate. Business headquarters, tertiary and commercial activities, as well as the ?casa de renta en altura? -tall building typology, mainly more than four floors, intended for private rent-, are linked to the consolidation of Buenos Aires urban grid. Because of the growth of middle sectors of society, the densification and quality of urban services in central areas, during the period 1890-1930 ?la casa de renta en altura? was built in the main areas of Buenos Aires, emblematic urban pieces of the local modernization (like Avenida de Mayo, Paseo L. Alem, Plaza San Martín, Avenida Alvear, Santa Fe, among others). This residential program will define a singular typology resulting from a dialectical relationship between the responses of the disciplinary field with the urban plot structure, its insertion in the market forces and its regulations, together with the technological- constructive modernization and the specialization of the domestic sphere (Gentile, 2004). Recent historiography has taken up the figure of Richard Morse (1985) about the cities of Latin America as ?arenas culturales? (Gorelik, ArêasPeixoto, 2016). In this registry, if as J.L. Romero (1976) affirmed, ?all the modern cultural life of Latin America has had its center in the city?, it is worth asking: What role did the high-density residential program play in the construction of Buenos Aires as South American metropolis during the first decades of the 20th century? If we understand the Latin American city as ?the place of germination and cultural experimentation, but also the arena in which the struggle of ideas takes place? (Gorelik, Arêas Peixoto, 2016) it is essential to approach this program in an interdisciplinary crossroads that gather diverse registers, methods and disciplines. This subject has been mainly studied from the perspective of human habitation transformations. In the metropolization city, the consequent real estate speculation due to the increase in the price of urban land, the expansion of the presence of the state and mobility infrastructures would guarantee the construction of tall building typology for private rent, as R. Aboy pointed out to study the period after 1929 Crack (Aboy, 2012). It is the typology par excellence of the real estate speculation, while it is the subject of technical-constructive, typological and linguistic experimentations, in relation to the reference models that are adopted of the main western capital cities. It is then proposed to approach this object from a cross between the logics of the real estate market -as a constitutive program of an investment chain that benefited the construction and banking industry, investing in certain sectors of the traditional city-, the Building Ordinances and their application -in pursuit of regulating private construction by means of the normative- as well as the answers from the architectural disciplinary field -with positions of rejection and acceptance both in the sphere of university education and liberal practice of the profession- in hands of main referents of local architectural culture.