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Barrio, or neighbourhood, may well be the most significant urban word in the language of Buenos Aires. To speak of barrio is to say belonging, scale and character, myths and rituals that differentiate those areas where we live from others like the downtown, the harbor, the city or the suburbs.
Immigration settled those neighbourhoods, growing rapidly from the harbor outwards in succesive semi-circles. Those myths and rituals still provide us with an immediate recognition of what a “neighbourhood girl” is, an identification of a football club or a corner bar, the precise feeling of a summer walk along a tree-lined sidewalk.
The diversity of our neighbourhoods begins with the heterogeneous origins, purchasing power and goals of the inhabitants who share its residential and productive structure. Individual and group houses, small productive units, schools, churches, bars and movie houses meet heavily used street corners, sidewalks and squares, giving a special meaning to the concepts of public and private. This diversity stimulates the neighbourhood, whose character derives from the scale and structure of public spaces where people who are different -but equal- interact.
The neighbourhood is also emotionally charged by
this existential diversity: that is why so many of our poets have
sung about the barrio.
We should not forget, though, that in twenty years we will be faced with decisions concerning those neighbourhoods of low-rise houses, fitted between the city on the shore and the conflictive suburbs. We should try to recognize, now, what the essential elements of this way of life are.
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ideas y opinionesideas and opinions
buenos aires,
good neighbourhoods
Architecture in the barrio.
Having decided to live and work in the barrio, Palermo Viejo, we have tried to define what attract us: its scale and its character. We would like to preserve situations and places, more than just forms and their figurative values. We believe, therefore, in learning from tradition rather than imitating history.
New architecture in this neighborhood, then, should feel like the prolongation of a context made up of recognizable patterns such as facades level with the municipal lines, massive tree planting; galleries and climbing vines; corner bar and coffee shops: all those formal references that emerge from the way people use spaces. We believe, therefore, in an architecture that incorporates, as a guiding idea, the diversity of the environment; an architecture that aims at the organization of a place rather than at its order.
Recycling and renovating are key topics when speaking of neighbourhoods; our experience tell us that when working on an existing building, what is new should transcend what exist, or leave it as it is. The aesthetics of construction techniques and materials should be evident, since it originates in their “natural” beauty and not in preconceptions about them.
We advocate an architecture of public spaces through “small urban interventions” in residual spaces identified by neighbors, and which can be recuperated for people’s use.
Finally, we believe that the closest to a national architecture is that which emerges from our own existing realities and concerns; this is particulary true of barrio architecture. If, moreover, it is inscribed in a community project, it will become true popular architecture.
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