Estación inferior del funicular Pío XI (1925), Parque de Santiago, cerro San Cristóbal / Lower station for the Pius XI funicular (1925), Park in Santiago, San Cristobal hill.
with the aim of being in tune with a global phenomenon in which America was particularly involved. His explorations can be understood in the context of the new meanings that architecture should assume to be in tune and in scale with the metropolitan dimension of a large city. Public Architecture, the picturesque strategy Towards 1921, Luciano Kulczewski took over some works on the new park in Santiago at San Cristobal hill. The general proposal was commissioned to Carlos Thays in 1919, which had been the landscape designer of the city of Buenos Aires for more than 20 years. The Thays plan for the park (1920) featured interlacing new and existing paths, creating more than 180 groups of trees and a number of lookout points to appreciate the landscape of the valley in its entirety 1 . The ideas for the construction were linked to the concession of radial portions of land at the base of the hill. Some were assigned to the different foreign communities established in Santiago, Greeks, Italians, French, among others. However, the higher areas remained within the public scheme with the construction of pavilions, urban facilities and furniture. The proposal included the preexisting points, such as the Sanctuary of the Virgin (1908) and the Observatory (1903), and added several other buildings grouped around focal points (a casino hotel, theater, gym, ballroom, restaurant, select garden, several courts and playgrounds, camping areas for scouts), with three nurseries, some roundabouts and small squares in the traffic layout and a belvedere with a round tower on the summit. Kulczewski materialized the idea of placing small pavilions on the different focal points, to enhance the sites with ample views and the access routes. His work is contemporary with the opening of the road to the summit and the beginning of the extensive planting of trees as proposed by Thays. But he made far fewer works than planned, although following the proposed locations, such as the restaurant- casino and the pavilions on the viewpoints. In the El Salto ravine he built the O’Brien lookout point, a kiosk with a lightweight structure and reed roof beside the northern nursery. He also modified some specifications of the master plan,
for example by erecting the so-called Lautaro Park (1921) around the restaurant with the Las Arañas Pavilion. The casino was certainly the biggest work and therefore the best one to set the tone regarding the type of shapes and material approaches: on the one hand, load-bearing walls made of stone and clean roofs made with wooden frames and covered with reeds. Thays’ plan foresaw two funiculars, Pius IX, built in 1924, and Bellavista, not implemented, each with small squares at the top level. LK took over the construction of the lower station for the Pius XI funicular (1925), while Carlos de Landa designed the upper 2 . Kulczewski’s station replicated a small medieval castle, with two asymmetrical towers framing the entrance, made of exposed stone. Near the upper station he later built the terrace, with a restaurant, a stone tower, a large central stage and a series of structures resembling pergolas around the edge of the hill. A strong decorative imprint gave the necessary playfulness to a terrace for dancing and enjoying the views. The architectural design proposed by Kulczewski for the park on the hill definitely took on a theme-park air where the different ornamental and decorative elements were prominent and necessary to give a certain unity of character. They were part of a system concerned with formal approaches and spatial relationships to provide legibility to the operation as a whole. He gave an idea of unity within the territorial dispersion, which meant the construction of amenities for use in the extension of the hill. The idea of unity came from the thematic character assigned to the architecture: a certain sense given by formal variation, recreational incentives, fragmentary, unique, diverse, and able to attract and generate curiosity, to provoke admiration. A picturesque strategy, a physiognomy – alter ego - the academy proposed for landscaping proposals. The strategy employed in the hill - and repeated later in the project for Luna Park - presents a young Luciano Kulczewski with a clear notion of the ability of architecture to produce a system of signs to represent popular aspirations. He proposed an architectural narrative with devices that caused free associations to a nonexistent memory of an illusory time, and where relations prevailed between places and the meanings assigned by the architecture and its public purpose.
19
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator