Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Following logics of privatization and specialization, the new consumption habits of certain socioeconomic groups are collaborating in the creation of themed commercial and service poles, with an aesthetic and sophistication increasingly distant to the neighborhoods that contain them, aimed at a different audience from that of its original residents. More and more frequently, these dynamics are institutionalized to diversify the tourist offer of cities. In this sense, the paper proposes to analyze how the “neighborhood” aesthetics of the traditional sectors of Palermo Viejo in Buenos Aires and Usaquén in Bogotá are capitalized to incorporate them as new tourist products in their cities, their typological specificities and globalizing tendencies, the emergence of temporary accommodation offer (Airbnb) and the role of the public sector in its dissemination.

From 1969, near the vicinity of the city of Puerto Madryn in the argentine Patagonia, the project to install an industrial plant for the production of primary aluminum was able to acquire the necessary strength during the de facto government of General Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970). Finally, after a public tender not unrelated to the country's political ups and downs and the opposition of local and foreign business groups, it was awarded to a group led by the national tire company FATE. The national state would guarantee the supply of energy from a hydroelectric plant on the Futaleufú river -550 km west of the city-, the execution of a deep-water port, in addition to other civil works. For its part, the private capital company executed the construction of housing complexes and its services for the employees who would move to work in the area. The aim of this article is to study the material conditions of these complementary works to the plant installation project that account for the use of reinforced concrete on large scales and, in the case of housing, the experimentation in industrial construction.

Little has been written in Argentinian archeology architecture materials and techniques used at western provinces of the country during the colonial period. In the case of the city of San Juan, part of Chilean Governorate for over two centuries, there are no history of direct analysis of buildings or remains of colonial buildings. The current Museo y Biblioteca Casa Natal de Sarmiento is one of the few late colonial buildings still remain standing in the city and its analysis from an archaeological perspective was considered a valuable opportunity. This article presents the preliminary results obtained during the construction of a database that gathers all the mentions identified in documentary, historical and bibliographic sources, regarding raw materials, techniques and systems used in the construction of the house and further interventions.

La historiografía sobre la arquitectura en América Latina conforma de por sí un corpus controversial. Entre la adjetivación latinoamericanista en búsqueda de una esencialidad existencial y la aspiración a un supuesto internacionalismo, encuentra en su propia delimitación un problema de difícil solución. Si se puede consentir que hay una unidad geográfica, cuál podría ser su alcance continental. Pero, si se tratara de una suma de países ¿cómo pesarían en la arquitectura sus historias nacionales respecto de los distintos procesos de colonización y modernización? ¿México, Perú o Surinam tienen un pasado diferente al de Brasil, Argentina o Chile? ¿Hay una América Latina precolombina, colonial o una moderna tout court? ¿Uruguay es un “caso particular”? Varios de estos interrogantes atraviesan aún hoy los debates en el campo de la cultura arquitectónica. En el marco de la construcción de una historiografía sobre la arquitectura en América Latina, se propone recorrer el caso de Uruguay a través de diferentes representaciones que van, desde la pertenencia “rioplatense” o la “singularidad uruguaya”, hasta el inexorable “destino moderno” de la mano de la abstracción a partir de la contribución crítica que la historia aún puede ofrecer.

The mountain towns that mark the high valley of the Mendoza River, in the homonymous province of central west Argentina, are testimony of the Turn of the century modernity, since its appearance in the context of the implantation of the Trasandino Railway, at the end of the 19th century. Their presence in the mountain itinerary was fundamental since they facilitated trade and transport, in the westernmost section of the route that linked Buenos Aires with the cities of Santiago and Valparaíso in the neighboring country of Chile. Being located in close relationship with the Mendoza River, and in a geographical support of unique characteristics; they acted as structuring of the territory, with a systemic disposition that defined the border territory until the middle of the 20th century.The problem that motivates this work is based on the detection of a vacancy referring to the comprehensive reading of cultural assets, linked to the upper section of the Mendoza River. The contributions which were made recently are fragmentary, especially in relation to the assets that consolidated the territory of the Mendoza high mountain area; at Tourism-, Road- and Service- Levels. With the help of the descriptive-explanatory analysis of four historical towns, the study seeks to fill an inclusive approximation and to help understanding the fundamental role they played in the process of gradual occupation of the high mountain territory, which began in the modernity.

Throughout the history of mankind, wars and conflicts represented a threat against cultural heritage. The impact of these violent and intentional attacks, determined the destruction of monuments, historical buildings and entire cities. However, this destruction did not only involve material damage, but also moral aggression understood in its symbolic character. In other words, damage against architecture became the quintessential tool to weaken a culture, attacking the icons that make up its identity and its collective memory.What is meant to be exposed is the destruction of heritage specifically during the 20th and 21st centuries. The Second World War will be taken as a starting point for the atrocious consequences generated in European cities. From this historical context, we will identify the different strategies used in regard to urban reconfiguration. Finally, we will demonstrate how this phenomenon, the war against architecture transcended to the present time, materialized in the 21st century with the terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers from New York.

In 1960, two Argentinian provinces (Santa Fe and Entre Ríos) historically separated by the Paraná River, signed a treaty to build a subfluvial tunnel. This would definitively end the isolation of the Mesopotamian region in this country. Projected, built and inaugurated (1969) within the framework of development policies, the “Uranga – Sylvestre Begnis” tunnel constitutes a technical, political and architectural milestone, as the result of an active State in the construction of the territory. In addition, just as the engineering scopes had enough merits to enter the history of great achievements, in architecture, high quality thresholds were also reached. This article aims to make visible the importance of the Subfluvial Tunnel in technical terms and highlight its architectural dimension. This is achieved by recognizing the performance of the studio of Mario Roberto Álvarez and associates as doers of the architecture that is integrated into what is ultimately an exceptional work, positioned in a prominent international level of disciplinary debate.

The objective of this article is to characterize one of the convents founded by the Franciscans in Sucre, as a response to the needs and requirements of the place and historical moment, carrying out an architectural analysis from the morphological, functional, spatial and stylistic aspects. To collect the information, an intensive review of primary sources obtained from the National Archive of Sucre was carried out, as well as a review of secondary sources, highlighting the work of researchers José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert, together with rigorous field work aimed at Survey of the convent and the wooden architecture, in order to identify the furniture of the complex, a subject that has been scarcely or not registered to date. To fulfill the objective of this work, the history of the construction is presented, as well as the description and analysis of the convent and the temple, taking into account the influence of the altarpieces, in order to understand the relationship between the components to finish with the analysis of the exterior architecture.

Few connaisseurs in Latin America as Martín Noel. With a taste formed in European classrooms, but assigned to the nourishing role of traveling, he uses sight, descriptions and adjectives to make aesthetic judgments attribute filiations and, even, isolate cultural essences printed in physiognomies he discerns, mainly, in urban landscapes. The paper emphasizes the importance of travel as experience and as methodological substrate of Noel as an art historian, and traces sources, arguments and references to Spengler and Ruskin for his theoretical contribution: the notion of “fusion” as the seed of an autonomous colonial art. As a member of a Building Aesthetics Commission behind the Organic Project of 1925, he uses this notion of fusion to justify, in the name of an essential physiognomy of Buenos Aires, a possible reconciliation between its condition of capital city with a disturbingly cosmopolitan present.

In the 1950s a series of Uruguayan architects were based in Ecuador; many of them widely recognized and documented in the local environment. Ethel Arias, Uruguayan architect born in 1925, was part of a privileged group of professionals, national and foreign, who executed emblematic buildings at that time. However, little has been documented of this professional who was the first woman to practice architecture in Ecuador. The study involves brief biographical aspects, the contextualization of the 1950s, a review of the complexities of being a woman in a conservative environment with a masculinized profession, and her learning in Ecuador between the colonial and the indigenous. Finally, his most relevant work, the reconstruction of the Government Palace, is analyzed as part of a discourse on modernity in Quito, with an emphasis on technical decisions as shapers of space, which maintains its characteristics despite several subsequent interventions.