Buenos Aires demolished

Pablo Sirven published a note in La Nación where he critics the status of buildings of Buenos Aires and the government's responsibility Mauricio Macri

Social extremes, rich and poor, seem to have plotted to bring the well-known slogan from a Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires building ") to translate into practice a maximized version of the classic" Demolishing hotels ", de Charly García, it would be" demolishing Buenos Aires."

Advance through many streets of Buenos Aires is equivalent to watching a children's teeth where teeth fall out and instead appears a mischievous smile full of holes. Perceive these absences in the middle of the rows of buildings, however, is more like a grimace sad empty space where the melancholy cry of buildings and houses from different eras and stylistic backgrounds are gone.

At their disposal, they take forever valuable fragments of the identity of a neighborhood and steal aesthetic references that made much of a visual landscape, architecture and culture that permeated our lives. The feeling is dual because it causes sadness disappear forever see traces of the generations that preceded us, overlaps the joy to see that the city is alive and construction jobs that so many claim, is experiencing a new era splendor.

But any growth that is not rationally driven, like a child who is left to its own instincts and whims, without the care of a larger, more exposed to risk congratulations.

Horacio Salas relates in his book El Centenario (Planeta, Buenos Aires, 2009) a century ago the historian Enrique González Ves and with great foresight saw what would happen to us today in Buenos Aires building industry. "In the year 2010-assured, everything will be completely new. An inhabitant of today appeal in vain for memories because nothing would be left standing." So far about right, but wrong in the reasons. "This demolition implacable aims guess, will not have the slightest sign of vandalism. They will have been simply overriding the severe forms of construction."

The news recently related in one way or another with such fury to demolish, which is no limits, go to excess tragic irregular allotments, poor inspections and a blind eye to everyone to do what he pleases with the stock of buildings of the city that produces casualties and damage concrete, serious and irreversible. The dead in the Villa Urquiza gym and bowling Scalabrini Ortiz Avenue, the pen that he lost support in the Cañitas and fell on buildings that caused serious damage, but miraculously no casualties, and three balconies that separated of a building are too Lanús Oeste evidence that something is wrong. That anxiety is greedy for each square meter to achieve maximum profitability in the shortest time possible, run faster than the defense of the common good.

No more than walk around Buenos Aires to see how quickly follows their traditional clothes to wear more conventional and cheaper, less distinguished, if not more ugly. Old houses, hotels and houses petit chorizo are turned here and there, while others have their windows and doors boarded up with bricks and mortar so that no "squatters' nests within them. Barrens palisades with inscriptions that we can announce new projects, trucks coming and going of tremendous holes or cracks that are shaking the surrounding buildings account for a massive movement of earth that is not caused by any natural phenomenon, but the cherry stubborn man looking to start in the biggest solar gain.

Although several national agencies and the city created to guard the urban heritage, the political will to make them work to the letter, and weigh more than economic interests at stake. The Urban Interpretation Directorate, under the Ministry of Urban Development in Buenos Aires, adopted what interventions can be made on capital, private or public, it is protected. It is your responsibility to create the APH (historical protection areas) and categorize buildings, monuments and plazas. There is even a temporary rule that prevents tear down buildings before 1941.

"They should conduct a survey of heritage throughout the city, but there is no intention to," says Santiago Puss, vice president of the NGO is enough to demolish, known for its active efforts to preserve significant buildings. The Ministry of Culture has been virtually relegated decisions by the current administration, which is compliant with the destruction. Nationally, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Sites which regulates protected heritage, but has been inactive in the case of demolishing unprotected heritage and complacent and lack of authority in cases of heritage protection, such as the Palacio de Correos. " Indeed, those who have passed near the building (renamed by Kirchner Bicentennial Cultural Center) will in horror has been ravaged many of its wonderful interiors to make a sort of empty shell left standing only the outer walls and little more.

The urban landscape will suffer. The proliferation of commercial signage on the ground floor and disrupt the ecosystem and in turn provide a residential aspect of Persian market where everything is intertwined. The disorder progresses through the sidewalks and streets: the campers parked in public places to protest groups and do not attract attention, trying to preserve landmarks clumps of attacks such as the AMIA, the trees are bulky arm around yards of concrete or bars and even bicycle paths defend their territories narrow cars with thick yellow cords.

Not coincidentally, the World Monuments Fund included the city center of Buenos Aires between "risk sites in 2010, one hundred list of world cultural heritage sites in danger.
Architectural depredations occur in social ends, while the middle class complains quietly or look the other way: where the money flows in quantity, châteaux Pharaonic projects (with questionable details of ornamentation and columns and portals artificial scenery Hollywood), buildings with amenities (extra luxury amenities) and boutique hotels (nothing major, but with wave) aspire to the best locations, no matter what you have to disarm to achieve.

Where money, however, necessary to cover the most vital needs, the capitalist instinct breaks through wildly to usurp land and realize the dream of homeownership, spurred by the slowness of the authorities to regulate the use of public space. Some do not to get your first roof, but they are poor that seek income from other poor wretches. The President arrived to ponder an absurdity: the upward growth of the town, 31 in multi-storey buildings very poorly constructed, that could one day collapse like a house of cards.
Thus, at one end and the other social arc, predation is given to the public view, spasmodic and lawless, without patterns in harmony with their environments, naturalizing the most basic rights in the
preservation of the city be razed to impunity.

The absence of a state-regulated approach supplanted the traditional eclecticism Buenos Aires (articulated rich fusion of architectural styles from different backgrounds, which translate into bricks our varied backgrounds as diverse immigration) by a sort of cocoliche increasingly come to less. Widens the gap between rich and poor building industry also geographically: class neighborhoods are grouped in the north of the city, the South is impoverished by poverty ostensible or muted.
In the nineteenth century, a "big village" characterized not beauty. Decades of conflicts, wars between the interior and Buenos Aires and a capitalization law that took blood, sweat and tears to come out determined that the "Reina del Plata" very slowly stretches before you decide to grow with vigor and claims to be reflected in European mirror.

A series of happy coincidences, the management in the municipality of Torcuato de Alvear, modeled on the French and the invaluable help of the creative landscaper Carlos Thays, state policies continued in the period 1880-1930 and continued to come and go Paris, for pleasure or business address or studies by the highest aristocracy of Buenos Aires, had monumental effects on the architecture of the main port city in the country, to the Centennial and was proud of his huge public and private palaces (the Courts and Congress buildings, the Teatro Colon, the Post Office, the sumptuous residences of wealthy families). Thus, the original Spanish colonial style were added the air of European neoclassicism with breezes mixed French, Italian and English. Architectural exuberance that was acquired after the city joined the Art Nouveau, Art Deco and rationalism, including architectural trends.

When turning the pages of the two huge volumes Bustillo / A national architectural project (Fundación YPF, Buenos Aires, 2010), which concentrate the lush and essential architectural work that left the country the architect Alejandro Bustillo (1889-1982) endearing postcards can be seen and easily identifiable by any Argentine as the Provincial Hotel and Casino complex, in Mar del Plata, the Civic Center and the Hotel Llao Llao, Bariloche, the National Bank's headquarters, opposite the Plaza de Mayo, the Museum of Fine Arts and many more. Bustillo is noted in a powerful idea that transcends each of these buildings. "The work he would say talk to that knows her, she will defend itself."
Rated Levisman Marta rich archive of ten thousand thousand drawings and photos of this architect-artist-philosopher who lived until the age of 93 lucid and, as some of its peers, saw his career as the most obvious setting the idea of a country in its buildings, beautiful shells, while we contain, we as a society projected to the world and ourselves.

Buenos Aires is a wounded body to express its growing cuts and wounds, the unconscionable neglect and looting of its architectural gems which we submit. Urge to recover the sense of its great builders and developers before we ourselves demolished.