Italian and French influences increased after the Argentine War of Independence at the beginning of the century, although the academic style&action=edit&redlink=1 "Academicism (architecture) (not yet written)") remained until the first decades of the century. Attempts at renovation were carried out during the second half of the century and the beginning of the 19th century, when European trends penetrated the country, which is reflected in numerous and valuable important buildings in Buenos Aires, such as the unique German neo-Gothic Church of Santa Felicitas in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas[4] designed by Ernesto Bunge; The central Post Office Palace and the Palace of Justice of the city of Buenos Aires "Palacio de Justicia de la Nación (Argentina)"), works by Norbert Maillart; and the National Congress and the second and current headquarters of the Teatro Colón works mainly due to Vittorio Meano or the works due to Alejandro Christophersen.
The architecture of the first half of the century continued the French adaptation of neoclassical architecture, such as the main headquarters of the Banco de la Nación Argentina "Banco de la Nación Argentina (central house)") in the microcenter of the city of Buenos Aires, and the Gran Hotel Provincial of the city of Mar del Plata, built by Alejandro Bustillo (the city of Mar del Plata until mid-century was adorned by a majestic boulevard") in the art nouveau style, but this one like the Pavilion de las Industrias") (built in 1871) in the city of Córdoba or the Argentine Pavilion (1890) have been destroyed like many other valuable Argentine buildings from the Belle Époque.
In the city of Santa Fe "Santa Fe (Argentina)"), those mainly responsible for the architectural change that occurred mainly between 1930-1955, were the National Construction Technicians, graduates of the Higher Industrial School, dependent on the National University of the Litoral.
Among the most notable are the Construction Technicians Pedro Abbatte, José Tonelli and Orlando Oviddi.
Tonelli (1892-1946) was the first to venture into European designs in the city of Santa Fe, with rationalist works that stood out from the traditional architecture that the city presented.
Numerous Argentine architects have enriched urban landscapes in their own country, and in recent decades, those around the world. Juan Antonio Buschiazzo helped popularize Beaux-Arts architecture ("Beaux Arts (architecture)"), and Francisco Gianotti has combined art nouveau with details of the Italianate style"), adding a special touch to Argentine cities during the first decades of the century, highlighting among their works the Galería Güemes and the Confitería del Molino. Francisco Salamone and Viktor Sulcic left a valuable legacy of art deco, while -almost contemporary to them - Alejandro Bustillo created a prolific rationalist architecture.
Both in Buenos Aires and in almost the entire Argentine territory (except for now the Argentine Antarctic Sector) you can find buildings of notable beauty, such as the Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes (typical art nouveau style full of eclectic style), the Cathedral of Salta (Spanish colonial style with neoclassical touches), the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires "Faculty of Law (University of Buenos Aires)") (monumental mid-century style), the Barolo Palace (like the Mercado de Abasto, it is an art deco jewel in Argentina), the Monument to the Flag (Rosario "Rosario (Argentina)") in monumental style with very sober art deco details, the Government House of Tucumán in San Miguel de Tucumán (an example of Bellepoquian eclecticism "Eclecticism (architecture)")), the Hotel Llao-Llao (San Carlos de Bariloche), neo-Alpine style (the same as the Civic Center of Bariloche), the Church of San Francisco "Basilica y Convento de San Francisco (Salta)") in the city of Salta, among others.
Among the most famous representatives of the architecture of the century, it is worth mentioning Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, Juan Kurchan, Teresa Bielus"), Mario José Buschiazzo, Carmen Córdova, Delfina Gálvez Bunge de Williams, Martha Levisman, Flora Manteola, César Pelli, Alberto Prebisch, Josefa Santos, Odilia Suárez, Clorindo Testa, Olga Wainstein and Amancio Williams.
In urban planning, Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, Juan Kurchan, Itala Fulvia Villa, Ernesto Vautier"), Sergio Fernández Pico"), Eduardo Sarrailh"), Odilia Suárez, Godofredo Cecio"), Debora Di Veroli, Juan Duprat"), José Manuel Felipe Pastor"), among others, should be mentioned.
Especially in landscaping, the work of the French nationalized Argentine Carlos Thays stands out, who made his great contributions to his adopted homeland since the end of the century.
Italian and French influences increased after independence (1810 to 1816), although the academic style persisted well into the century. Attempts at renovation, however, occurred during the second half of the century and the beginning of the 20th century, when European trends penetrated the country and were reflected in various buildings in Buenos Aires, such as the church of Santa Felicitas&action=edit&redlink=1 "Iglesia de Santa Felicitas (Buenos Aires) (not yet written)"), the work of Ernesto Bunge; the Palace of Justice "Palacio de Justicia de la Nación (Argentina)"), the Palace of the Congress of the Argentine Nation and the Teatro Colón "Teatro Colón (Argentina)"), all of them by Víctor Meano.
At the beginning of the century, neoclassical and eclecticist models "Eclecticism (architecture)") of French and Western European origin in general were still being built, such as the central house of the Banco de la Nación Argentina "Banco de la Nación Argentina (central house)") located in the historic center of the City of Buenos Aires in front of the northeast façade of the Italianate Casa Rosada, the central house of the BNA was built by Alejandro Bustillo. Other valuable buildings that are preserved from Bellepoquian Argentina are the Palacio de Aguas Corrientes, the Palacio San Martín, the Palacio Pizzurno (which after being a private residence became the former headquarters of the National Council of Education "Ministry of Education (Argentina)"), the new building of the Teatro Colón, the Government House of Tucumán, the Palacio Barolo (although the Palacio Barolo like the Confitería del Molino or the Galería Güemes already have examples of the architecture of the 1920s where Art Deco predominated) and the Hispanic neocolonial style that is reflected in the Cervantes National Theater and the Isaac Fernández Blanco Museum of Hispanic American Art designed by Martín Noel among other buildings. Thus many other valuable buildings in Argentina reflected the Belle Époque and the almost consequent crazy years of the 1920s in the cities of Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Córdoba "City of Córdoba (Argentina)") (in the latter, neoclassicism stands out in the Palacio de Justicia&action=edit&redlink=1 "Palacio de Justicia (Córdoba) (not yet written)") and in a large part of the recently demolished, to make terraced PH, Nueva Córdoba neighborhood, such as the Medina Allende Mansion or the beautiful original nucleus of the Emilio Caraffa Provincial Museum of Fine Arts or the main headquarters of the Teatro del Libertador); But, since the 1930s, the influence of Le Corbusier and to a lesser extent the Bauhaus[5] and European rationalism was consolidated in a group of young architects at the University of Buenos Aires, among whom Amancio Williams stood out, later considered one of the most important of the first half of the century.[6] Thanks to the influence exerted by this new wave of architects and fundamental technical advances such as concrete and steel, new buildings began to move away. of the so-called baroque ornamentations to seek the simplicity of its forms, prioritizing logic and constructive functionalism.
Among the main factors of rapid growth in urban areas, is that of mainly European immigration forced to settle unseemly in the main urban centers; in particular, those of Buenos Aires, Córdoba "Córdoba (Argentina)"), Mendoza "Mendoza (Argentina)") and Rosario "Rosario (Argentina)"): in effect, while presidencies such as those of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento from San Juan and Nicolás Avellaneda from Tucuman tried to promote the massive immigration of European farmers from northern and central Europe (in this following the successful model in the United States) to populate the extensive and fertile fields of Argentina, the concrete thing was that the "vested interests" distributed the best lands and only allowed in the richest areas the establishment of poor European tenants who had to pay with a large part of the income from their production to the supposedly "Argentine" mega-landlords such as the Martínez de Hoz and other self-proclaimed "patricians", this type of neo-feudalism in a country that since 1810 (and this ratified in 1853) had declared itself free and democratic, made the farmers show the injustice they suffered with the so-called Grito de Alcorta in 1912.
So, unlike what happened in the USA and Canada, most of the productive lands remained under the power of absentee landowners, which forced a large part of the workers in intensive agriculture (many of them Italians and Spaniards) to have to, after some harvests, either return to their impoverished countries of origin or emigrate to other countries or reconcentrate (with much inanity "and in anomie "Anomia (social sciences)")) in the city of Buenos Aires, or in the cities of Rosario and Córdoba, or in the cities of San Miguel de Tucumán and Mendoza and, later more diffusely in other cities or in areas such as certain rural areas of Entre Ríos, Misiones, Río Negro, etc. This caused in many of the Argentines of the first and older generations a certain detachment from their Country (Argentina) by largely ignoring it... you cannot love what you do not know (... it is still common that A porteño "Porteño (from Buenos Aires)") has more pleasant and "friendly" views - and this enhanced through mass media such as TV or the Internet - of any place in the USA or Western Europe than of his own Country [Argentina]) and who often does not feel (along with other Argentines) as the owner of his Homeland.[7].
In any case, the high rate of urbanization, mostly with a population of European origin, that since the first half of the century has characterized Argentina makes it an ethnically and culturally very unique country in all of America: for decades (and with much truth between the 1990s and, at least until the mid-1990s, it is said that "Argentina is a great European island in Ibero-America", this means that a European culture or of European origin predominates in the vast majority of its cultural features: from such structural issues as language, religions, beliefs, gastronomy, customs, popular architecture, narrative, and in general almost all types of art and cultural features, etc.
Starting in the 1930s, the emerging middle class knew how to live (many times only during long vacations) in chalets (chalets) that still maintained traces of Norman architecture and other preceding influences, from such synthesis the Mar del Plata Style emerged.
Largely inspired by the Mar del Plata Style and the Mission Style in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, the homely homes of the newly emerging middle class stood out, the Californian chalets.
A conspicuous detail of urbanization in Argentina was the city of Buenos Aires, which approximately from the 1860s onwards featured Parisian-type architecture in its elegant neighborhoods. This was reinforced after the cholera plague in the 1870s. After such a tragedy, a large part of the upper class moved to the neighborhoods of the "Northern Zone" of the city of Buenos Aires and its suburbs: Recoleta, Palermo, El Retiro "Retiro (Buenos Aires)"), Barrio Norte "Barrio Norte (Buenos Aires)"), Belgrano, the elegant suburbs of San Isidro "San Isidro (Buenos Aires)"), Olivos or Adrogué, etc. In such neighborhoods, an eclectic Bellepoquian architecture flourished at that time in which French influences predominated with petits hôtels (many of them were roofed with mansards), Norman chalets "with exposed tracery and gable roofs of tiles (many times the tiles were made of slate "Slate (rock)"), or modern stile buildings") and art-nouveau, followed by the English influences of the Reina styles Anne and Tudor; The interiors of the upper and upper-middle class homes in the aforementioned neighborhoods used to be decorated with majolica, tiles, Carrara marble steps, boiseries, marquetry or parquet floors), stained glass skylights, stained glass, lamps of the tulip type or the chandelier (lamp) type with chandeliers (the latter were modest and were only installed hanging from the soffits or ceilings of the main room that later became the living), sometimes they had attics under mansards "Attic (dwelling)") topped with domes like those that characterized the entire length of Avenida de Mayo or attics "Attic (dwelling)") covered by mansards. For this reason, the city of Buenos Aires received the nickname "The Paris of the South", but this very rich cultural heritage was wasted starting in the 1960s and most of it has been demolished and continues to be demolished due to real estate speculation and the resale at auction, almost always abroad, of sculptures, lamps, artistic railings and gates, etc.
In 1929, the Swiss-French Le Corbusier visited Argentina and, regarding the city of Buenos Aires, he made an observation that seemed to have gone unnoticed because of the obvious: the city of Buenos Aires turns its back on the immediately great Río de la Plata. To what was and is this notorious urban anomaly due? First of all, to a natural reason, for centuries the relatively low River Plate coast of the city of Buenos Aires made it unattractive to build on the natural-original coast of the Río de la Plata on its western side, although there were high ravines such as those of Belgrano, the Puntas de Buenos Aires after Lezama, etc. But the high areas of the Buenos Aires coast were taken over or monopolized by companies (initially slave merchants) so that instead of filling the Buenos Aires River Plate coast with homes and monuments, it was transformed into a port area almost interdicted to the people of the city. Le Corbusier himself was the first to devise and project in 1929 an aeroisland or Buenos Aires airport on an artificial island. Such a project was perfected by Amancio Williams but was never carried out. Instead of creating such an aeroisland, the so-called aeropark was committed, which in addition to being another barrier for people to access the coast of their city, resulted in a high double ecological impact: on the one hand, it destroyed an entire plant and natural zoo ecosystem, and on the other, such airpark, pollutes (mainly acoustically) the many nearby homes with its thunderous turbojet noises and even accidents.
The antecedents of the "rationalist" architecture "Rationalism (architecture)")" that would later lead to the massive "architecture" of the international style appear in the 1930s, highlighting then the Building of the Ministry of Public Works "Edificio del Ministerio de Obras Públicas (Argentina)") with few notable sculptures still Art Deco due to José Hortal")[n. 1][8] built in 1932 and the Kavanagh Building built in 1936, the second being a rental or apartment building. Although rationalist architecture predominates, they nevertheless have details (reliefs, relatively small sculptures) of art deco.
Between October 1937 and 1938 Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan developed, under the direction of Le Corbusier, the ideas for a Master Plan for Buenos Aires. They worked on it for more than a year until rumors of World War II made them return. In any case, they would resume the project years later, under the direction of Le Corbusier himself in 1947.
In September 1938, the architects Antonio Bonet, Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan, together with Juan A. Lepera"), Abel López Chas, Luis Olezza"), Alejandro Vera Barros"), Samuel Sánchez de Bustamante"), Itala Fulvia Villa, Hilario Zalba") and Simón Ungar, formed the first core of the Grupo Austral. This group was a collective of architects that exerted a great influence on the panorama of architecture and design. Latin Americans from the 1930s, both through their works and designs and through their publications. In June 1939 they published the Group's manifesto under the title Voluntad y Acción Archived October 23, 2019 at the Wayback Machine, in which they defended the superposition of some values of surrealism to the rationalist training of architects, and incorporated the psychological needs of the individual into the strict functionalism of the modern movement. its effort to establish continuity with the landscape, techniques and materials of each area. Unfortunately, during the 1940s the Grupo Austral, which was the reference of the national and international modern movement, has not yet achieved the recognition it deserves, taking into account its importance within the Argentine modern architecture scene.
In 1941 the architects Kurchan and Ferrari Hardoy joined forces to form a studio that was responsible for avant-garde works, such as the transformable apartments of O'Higgins 2319, which served as a test of a set of principles that were fully realized in the collective housing building "Los Eucaliptos" on 2446 Virrey del Pino Street (1941/1943), the single-family homes of Conesa 1182 and the of Rivadavia 613, all in Buenos Aires.