Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
art deco Edificio Kavanagh ( Click here ) in 1936. The Kavanagh in turn, when finished,
was the largest concrete building in the world and remains an impressive piece of archi-
tecture.
In the 1930s, in Palermo and Recoleta, fancy apartment buildings started popping up.
This trend would continue intermittently into the 1940s, by which time the city would also
have a subway system with multiple lines.
Rogelio Yrurtia (1879-1950) was one of Argentina's best-known sculptors. Many of Yrurtia's
pieces are displayed at his own museum ( Click here ) in the BA neighborhood of Belgrano, or
you can see his masterpiece Canto al Trabajo on the Plazoleta Olazábal in San Telmo.
Buenos Aires continued to grow upward and outward during Juan Perón's spell in
power (1946 to 1955). Though the economy flagged, anonymous apartment and office
blocks rose in ever greater numbers. Bucking the trend were such oddball buildings as the
Banco de Londres on Reconquista, designed in 1959 by Clorindo Testa, whose long archi-
tectural career in BA began in the late 1940s. The bank was finished by 1966, but Testa's
Biblioteca Nacional ( Click here ) - which must've looked pretty groovy to him on the
drawing board in 1962 - was hideously dated by the time it opened (following many
delays) in 1992. Its style is somewhere between late Offshore Oil Platform and early
Death Star.
A heartening trend of 'architectural recycling' took off in Buenos Aires in the latter
20th century and continues today, helping to preserve the city's glorious old structures.
Grand old buildings have been remodeled (and sometimes augmented) to become luxury
hotels, museums and cultural centers; notable examples include the Centro Cultural del
Bicentenario ( Click here ) , which used to be the city's main post office, and the Usina del
Arte ( Click here ) , a concert hall that used to be an old electricity factory. Old markets
have also been restored to their original glory to live again as popular shopping malls,
such as the Mercado de Abasto ( Click here ) and Galerías Pacífico ( Click here ) .
At the same time, the first decade of the 21st century has seen an increasingly modern
skyline develop in Buenos Aires. Soaring structures of glass and steel tower above earlier
efforts, many innovative and quite striking, such as the Edificio República in Buenos
Aires' downtown. It was designed by César Pelli, who also did Kuala Lumpur's Petronas
Towers.
The renovation of Puerto Madero turned dilapidated brick warehouses into offices, up-
scale restaurants and exclusive lofts. Contrasting with these charming low, long buildings
 
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