Architecture and a Systematic Approach as Amplification of the Modern Project Lexicon. Modernist Experiences in Argentina Around the 1960s

Abstract

In the context of a generalized criticism of the canon set in the Second Post-War by main referents of modern architecture, and widely disseminated by contemporary historiography, different responses were raised as alternatives to “international functionalism”. The chapter explores a series of modernist experiments named as “systems architecture” by local architectural criticism. Unsatisfied with status quo, many professionals challenged the understanding of the architectural project as a closed and finished object, as it had been assumed up to these years by disciplinary tradition. These pursuits were manifestations of a deep confidence in technology and new materials, becoming in some cases “techno-utopian” proposals. In Argentina these theories gained great diffusion, and the important number of buildings and projects resulting from these ideas constitute relevant testimonies of the architectural culture of the period. It is an interest of this research to analyse, in particular, the San Vicente de Paul Hospital in Orán, in the province of Salta, designed in 1969 by local architects Juan Manuel Llauró and José Antonio Urgell. The selected case gives an account not only of the deep transformations of modern architectural language in a country then called “Third World”, but also exposes its instrumental reasons in an amplification of its limits, taking them to a technical extreme. The recognition of this building, on the other hand, seeks to call attention to a corpus scarcely attended by public strategies for the protection of cultural heritage in Argentina, preserving the memory of the past and its value for the future.