Buenos Aires' First Concrete Skyscraper: Galeria Guemes

BONICATTO, VIRGINIA

Chicago

Simposio; First Skyscrapers | Skyscraper Firsts Symposium; 2019

Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat / Society of Architectural Historians

In December 1915, several personalities gathered in Buenos Aires attracted by an event: the inauguration of the Galería Güemes. Started in 1912, the Galería Güemes (Francisco Gianotti) combines the Parisian (or Milanese) commercial gallery type with a 14-story, multipurpose skyscraper developing for the first time this building type innovation. Besides this, the structure of the complex, which includes vaults, dome, suspended and pivotal floors- is made of reinforced concrete, making it one of the early tall buildings using this technology, and the first for the gallery-skyscraper building type.Developed towards the middle of the 19th century in France and then in Germany, by the beginning of the 20th century reinforced concrete technique had expanded in different parts of the world almost simultaneously. Even though the first concrete skyscraper was built in 1903 in the United States, it was on the Río de La Plata where German companies and engineers experimented on the vertical use of concrete with remarkable results. But this building is not a pioneer only in technical aspects; it presents typological and functional innovations: the skyscraper emerges from a 116 meters long monumental galleria wich opens to the city as another public space receiving visitors in complete anonymity. As a result of metropolitan life, and as an early version of the Downtown Athletic Club or Raymond Hood´s "City under a single roof" proposal, the multifunctional skyscraper houses, among others, a cabaret, a theater-bar, offices, Roman baths, bachelor apartments, a pendentive restaurant, a pivotal theatre, a lookout terrace and beacon.This work presents multifunctional gallery-skyscraper, as a center for explorations and innovations and as part of a broader discussion of the skyscraper phenomenon. In this direction, the objective is, precisely, to examine the particularities that resulted from the adaption of the North American typology to the Buenos Aires context.