ARCH_500-600 Comprehensive Options Studio Abroad: ‘Buenos Aires: Links’

Projects are made through the interpretation of site and program. The process and the outcome depend on how that interpretative work is done. The program—the real one—is not a list of bureaucratic requirements and the site is not a portion of land with specific dimensions where the project must fit. Projects emerge from a process of understanding and evaluating both of these categories. Architects do not simply place a building that meets the program requirements onto a parcel of land. They read the existing conditions of the site and derive an atmosphere and spatial quality from the program brief. The project emerges from that interpretative work.

The site for this studio was placed in the southern hemisphere. Buenos Aires, sometimes known as the Paris of South America, is a city full of contradictions and contrasting conditions. The context is social, cultural, technological, and climatic. The city is undergoing its own dynamic of transformation. At the edge of a well-known and studied shanty town—Villa 31 (future Barrio 31)—and in proximity to the business district of a large metropolis, the site could not better represent the conditions of a developing nation or a more intense urban experience.

For the program, students were tasked with proposing a gymnasium that acts as a community activity center and link between different the urban fabrics at the edge of an informal settlement. They had to consider the types of activities that might take place there to identify the project’s unique character.

In addition, students were required to think about and present examples of the kind of places they first recalled when facing this studio statement and requirement: traditional or contemporary buildings and sites; different attitudes toward the existing, aggressive or more respectful of former precedents; invisible or outspoken; more radical (as in the result of a bold invention) or more conservative (as in derived from a long-standing tradition). They also analyzed projects from a variety of architects in order to discuss the intellectual context of the studio. The choice of a technical, constructive approach to building and material repertoire were also promoted as conscious design decisions and were emphasized early in the development of the project.