Plano original de planta general casa director Alliançe Française, 1961 / Original plan of the house for the director of the L’Alliance Française School.
Ziegler house, for example, entailed an inordinate dedication of time. I remember seeing the client appear in the office was cause for amusing comments by us due to the duration and frequency of the interviews, sometimes unannounced, also in French, on the table of the architect in charge and on top of the drawings he was developing. We all participated in a way. Other houses were cases I’d rather not remember, they were an ordeal and I think they never achieved a satisfactory result. Sometimes the client was an obstacle rather than a positive stimulus, probably also compounded by a lack of flexibility of the architect. There was also the influence of the DFL 2 (Decreto con Fuerza de Ley N°2), a decree whose footage standards and regulations acted as a kind of taboo, limiting the aspirations of both client and architect. The house projects were located on both extremes and in some cases the results were deplorable. In his own house on Vaticano Street and in the Pinto and Ziegler houses there is a succinct language reduced to the essentials in which nothing else is said other than what is strictly right. This character appears in other works: the project for the Seminary church, L’Alliance Française School, the Carozzi factory. Perhaps here lies what is most characteristic of the architect’s personality. The building for the United Nations was conceived under the tremendous influence Corbusier’s turn into what is called brutalist architecture had at the time, characterized by strong volumes and an aggressive material expression. Emilio Duhart commented that when he showed Corbusier some of his works, the master - who was already at his post Ronchamp period - would have said that they “lacked meat”. Within the United Nations complex (today the headquarters for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the Snail is a slightly different element with a more sensual expression. A kind of restraint is also apparent in the rest of the complex, a fear of exceeding a margin of self-control which is the base for his characteristic way of working. If we set him against his historical context, he is a modern architect looking for a new language. However, deep down, I feel he is strongly possessed by the discipline and temperament that dominate the most exalted Classical period, which perhaps explain his way of working and his characteristic sobriety. In his work there is a spinal column that always keeps an intellectual control of sensitivity.
probablemente esto se originaba también en una falta de flexibilidad del arquitecto. También hubo una influencia del DFL 2, cuyo metraje y reglas actuaban como una especie de tabú, límite para las aspiraciones tanto del cliente como del arquitecto. Los proyectos de casas se situaron en dos extremos y en algunos casos los resultados fueron deplorables. En su propia casa en calle Vaticano y en las casas de Pinto y Ziegler hay un lenguaje reducido a una economía y esencialidad en que no se dice más que lo estrictamente justo. Este temperamento aparece en otras obras: el proyecto para la iglesia del Seminario, L’Alliance Française, Carozzi. Quizás allí está lo más propio de su personalidad de arquitecto. El edificio para las Naciones Unidas fue concebido bajo la influencia tremenda que tuvo en aquella época el giro que dio Le Corbusier hacia lo que se denominó arquitectura brutalista, con una fuerte volumetría y agresiva expresión material. Comentaba Emilio Duhart que cuando mostró a Le Corbusier –este ya en su período post Ronchamp– alguna de sus obras, le habría dicho que encontraba que les “faltaba carne”. Dentro del conjunto de Naciones Unidas (hoy CEPAL), el Caracol es un elemento algo diferente, con una expresión más sensual. En el resto del complejo hay también esta especie de restricción, un temor a sobrepasar un margen de autocontrol donde reside su característica forma de trabajo. Si lo situamos frente a su contexto histórico, es un arquitecto moderno buscando un nuevo lenguaje. Sin embargo, en lo más profundo, me parece firmemente poseído por esa disciplina y temperamento que dominan en lo más excelso del Clásico, que explican quizás su forma de trabajo y esa sobriedad característica. Hay en su obra una columna vertebral que mantiene siempre un control intelectual de la sensibilidad
I remember that one of the first concepts I received from Emilio Duhart when joining his team was a friendly warning that I was entering “an office, not an atelier”. Here the fulfillment of contracts and the timing and quality of the product was more important than experimentation. However, I seem to recall that the
35
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software