ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

Throughout the 20th century, several factors contributed to Buenos Aires’s architectural significance. In the early decades of the century, when Buenos Aires was the capital of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, architects were commissioned to design luxurious residences and institutional buildings, many influenced by French and Italian styles. Later, different immigrant groups looking for status constructed important examples that followed European traits of Viennese secession, Italian liberty, and Catalan modernism. The rationalist architecture of the early 1930s and 1940s in Buenos Aires is one the most significant of the world. This era of architecture greatly influenced the present profile of the city. Also relevant are the examples of Brutalist architecture. The last decades of the century have been characterized by an interest in preserving this rich architectural heritage and by new architectural interventions related to the existing urban fabric. Buenos Aires is sit...

In the late 19th century, a powerful group of politicians and intellectuals known as “The Generation of the Eighties” incorporated Argentina into a world economy dominated by the British Empire. The early decades of the 20th century witnessed the transformation of the social and economic foundations of the country. Administrative and educational reforms were implemented during the modernization process. Immigration and the movement of the rural population to the city generated the rapid growth of metropolitan areas. Concurrently, an ideological break with the Spanish colonial past generated a cultural identification with the ideas of the French Enlightenment. As a result of a widespread cultural debate between what was understood as civilization and progress versus barbarism and savages, the larger cities of the country, particularly Buenos Aires, were transformed by boulevards, parks, avenues, and building following the Beaux-Arts tradition. In Argentina, modernization was implemented...