Cincuentenario del Teatro San Martín, Buenos Aires

Teatro General San Martín, Buenos Aires. Imagen de http://farm4.static.flickr.com/

Ayer se celebraba el bicentenario de nuestra patria argentina. Entre las celebraciones, se reabrió el Teatro Colón al público, y no olvidemos que el Teatro San Martín, del arquitecto Mario Roberto Alvarez cumplía su cincuentenario. Hace varios años ya, tuve la oportunidad de recorrer íntegramente ambos teatros, una experiencia que recomiendo a los arquitectos y estudiantes de arquitectura argentinos.

De la nota de Leni González para revista Eñe:

Complejo del Centro Cultural San Martín. http://www.ba3d.com.ar/

Como a los inoportunos nacidos en Navidad o Reyes, los cincuenta redondos años del Teatro General San Martín (TGSM) cayeron en fecha complicada: coinciden nada menos que con los festejos del Bicentenario de la Patria (aunque sea un suceso porteño porque en 1810 no existía la Nación) y el Centenario postergado del hermano mayor e hijo pródigo Teatro Colón. No obstante, no está mal patear un poco para delante el descorche de champán y despegar de fiestas privadas, goteras torrenciales sobre los escenarios y rumores de nombramientos. Para estrenar y conmemorar nunca faltan oportunidades, ni ahora ni antes, en alguno de los tantos principios. 
El 25 de mayo de 1960 se inauguraron los 30 mil metros cuadrados cubiertos de Corrientes 1530. 
Hacía seis años que el edificio de trece pisos y cuatro subsuelos, proyectado por los arquitectos Mario Roberto Alvarez y Macedonio Oscar Ruiz, había comenzado a construirse, en el mismo predio del viejo Teatro Municipal. 
Sin embargo, el aire en el TGSM empezó a moverse en 1961, cuando se estrenaMás de un siglo de teatro argentino, un collage de fragmentos de obras nacionales desde Dido, de Juan Cruz Varela (1834) hasta Un guapo del 900, de Samuel Eichelbaum (1940), que se enlazaban con el relato de Iris Marga y Santiago Gómez Cou. 

Las salas estrenadas eran dos: la Martín Coronado (en homenaje al dramaturgo), con su escenario a la italiana y capacidad para 1.049 espectadores; y la Juan José de los Santos Casacuberta (quizás el primer actor criollo de la historia), con lugar para 566 personas y platea semicircular. En 1967, con la proyección de La pasión de Juana de Arco, de Carl T. Dreyer, se sumó la sala cinematográfica Leopoldo Lugones, con 233 butacas. 
La tercera sala teatral, bautizada Antonio Cunill Cabanellas (por el director y pedagogo catalán), se inauguró en 1979 por iniciativa de Kive Staiff quien convenció al entonces intendente, el brigadier Osvaldo Cacciatore, para que no renovara la concesión de la confitería del subsuelo con el fin de convertir ese espacio en una sala de 200 localidades. "Un café costaba casi lo mismo que una entrada", recuerda en su despacho el actual director general y artístico en su último año de gestión. Hablar de Kive Staiff es hablar del San Martín. Y al revés y desde cualquier lado, también. Porque no hay manera de separar el destino del ex periodista del diario La Opinión y fundador de la revista Teatro XX y el de la institución que tuvo a su cargo en tres etapas diferentes: 1971-73, 1976-89 y 1998-2010. 

Reparación de la fachada del Teatro San Martín. Imagen de http://www.ajedrez.com.ar/024.jpg

Para leer la nota completa:
50 Años a Telón Abierto

http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/notas/2010/05/25/_-02199812.htm

The Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Interview with Peter Eisenman

Aerial Picture of the Holocaust Monument, Berlin. From Spiegel.com

There´s too much controversy about this monument. Some people say it looks like a gigantic cemetery; others, that it is too abstract; some think that instead of those blocks it would have been better to plant trees ¨trees and plaques are for memorials¨. And some say Eisenman´s design was to provoke disorientation, anguish, feelings that had the Jews in the Holocaust. It is difficult for me to express an opinion, because I´ve never been there. Maybe 2711 abstract blocks is too much, it looks like too big for me and I´m thinking how long a person could be walking inside without wanting to escape. But this is just my feeling. I preferred to reproduce Spiegel´s interview with its author, American architect Peter Eisenman in may 2005. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE:

Berlin has been watching the monument take shape for years. You've been working on it much longer, close to six years to be exact. Are you happy it's over?

Eisenman: No. For sure not. It's like saying you're happy you're going to die. I am not a finisher, I am a starter. And I am always thinking, what is the next project, we are working on, and those are the things that are exciting to me. Endings are like, I always say, like a women's pregnancy. When she has a child, she is happy to have the child, but there is a thing called postpartum depression, that is that she is no longer carrying the baby. Is it exciting to see and having gotten it finished? Is there a sense of accomplishment? Is it more than I could have thought? Yes.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you satisfied with the finished product? Does it look like you wanted it to look?

Eisenman: What is interesting to me is how much I have learned in doing the project. Just yesterday, I watched people walk into it for the first time and it is amazing how these heads disappear -- like going under water. Primo Levi talks about a similar idea in his book about Auschwitz. He writes that the prisoners were no longer alive but they weren't dead either. Rather, they seemed to descend into a personal hell. I was suddenly reminded of that passage while watching these heads disappear into the monument. You don't often see people disappear into something that appears to be flat. That was amazing, seeing them disappear.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You hadn't thought of that effect when you designed the monument?

Eisenman: No, I hadn't. You pray and pray for such accidental results, because you really don't know what the finished product will be like. For example I didn't realize that the sound would be so muted inside. You don't hear anything but the sound of your footsteps. Also, the ground. We didn't want to use any materials that came out of the soil because the soil was for the Germans. "Blood and Soil" was the ideological moment that separated the Jews from the Germans. And here, the ground is very uneven and difficult. My wife yesterday got dizzy walking in the memorial because it slopes in several directions. It was really extraordinary.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there anything you don't like about the finished product?

Eisenman: I think it is a little too aesthetic. It's a little too good looking. It's not that I wanted something bad looking, but I didn't want it to seem designed. I wanted the ordinary, the banal. If you want to show a picture, just show it -- don't spend too much time arranging it. And unfortunately it looks a bit too arranged.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people say it looks like a cemetery.

Eisenman: I can't think about it. If one person says it looks like a graveyard and the next says it looks like a ruined city and then someone says it looks like it is from Mars -- everybody needs to make it look like something they know. There was an aerial shot in the paper on Saturday -- a beautiful photo. I have never seen a graveyard that looks like that. And when you walk in, it certainly doesn't feel like one. But if people see it like that, you can't stop them. It's fine.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a feeling or an emotion that you wanted to generate in the people who visit the monument?

Eisenman: I said all along that I wanted people to have a feeling of being in the present and an experience that they had never had before. And one that was different and slightly unsettling. The world is too full of information and here is a place without information. That is what I wanted.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You were against the building of the Center of Information underneath the monument, weren't you?

Eisenman: I was. But as an architect you win some and you lose some.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who is the monument for? Is it for the Jews?

Eisenman: It's for the German people. I don't think it was ever intended to be for the Jews. It's a wonderful expression of the German people to place something in the middle of their city that reminds them -- could remind them -- of the past.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: An expression of guilt, you mean?

Eisenman: No. For me it wasn't about guilt. When looking at Germans, I have never felt a sense that they are guilty. I have encountered anti-Semitism in the United States as well. Clearly the anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s went overboard and it was clearly a terrible moment in history. But how long does one feel guilty? Can we get over that?

I always thought that this monument was about trying to get over this question of guilt. Whenever I come here, I arrive feeling like an American. But by the time I leave, I feel like a Jew. And why is that? Because Germans go out of their way -- because I am a Jew -- to make me feel good. And that makes me feel worse. I can't deal with it. Stop making me feel good. If you are anti-Semitic, fine. If you don't like me personally, fine. But deal with me as an individual, not as a Jew. I would hope that this memorial, in its absence of guilt-making, is part of the process of getting over that guilt. You cannot live with guilt. If Germany did, then the whole country would have to go to an analyst. I don't know how else to say it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The monument is specifically devoted to remembering the Jews who died in the Holocaust. Do you think it's right that the other groups victimized in the Holocaust are excluded from this monument?

Eisenman: Yes, I do. I changed my mind on that a few months ago. The more I read about World War II history, the more I realized that the worse the war went in Russia, the more Jews were killed by the Nazis. When the Nazis realized they couldn't defeat the Bolshevists, they made sure they got the Jews. Now I think it's fine that the project is just for the Jews.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But now there is the danger that all other groups will want a monument and Berlin will turn into a city of memorials.

Eisenman: I don't know about that. I'm certainly not going to do another one. I'm not into doing these monuments.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You're project was originally chosen in 1999 from among hundreds of proposals. What was the most difficult part of the six years that have elapsed since then?

Eisenman: The project was heavily politicized. And knowing how to deal with the political process was difficult for me. I am an American and I don't fully understand the sensitivity or the sense of humor that operates in this country. Sometimes it has been difficult to know how to maneuver. There were a lot of problems and if you sit in a room with 20 politicians of different colors around a table, each one of them has to speak. That's a beautiful thing, but also very tedious. In the end, there is no such thing as a pure client who gives you totally free reign. And the best clients in the world are the people who cause you to struggle.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Now that the monument is finished and open to the public, it probably won't be long before the first swastika is sprayed onto the monument.

Eisenman: Would that be a bad thing? I was against the graffiti coating from the start. If a swastika is painted on it, it is a reflection of how people feel. And if it remains there, it is a reflection of how the German government feels about people painting swastikas on the monument. That is something I have no control over. When you turn a project over to clients, they do with it what they want -- it's theirs and they occupy your work. You can't tell them what to do with it. If they want to knock the stones over tomorrow, honestly, that's fine. People are going to picnic in the field. Children will play tag in the field. There will be fashion models modeling there and films will be shot there. I can easily imagine some spy shoot 'em ups ending in the field. What can I say? It's not a sacred place.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you have a favorite monument?

Eisenman: Actually, I'm not that into monuments. Honestly, I don't think much about them. I think more about sports.

Interview conducted by Charles Hawley and Natalie Tenberg

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,355252,00.html

Pictures from Spiegel.com

Shattering Myths About Glass. Museum aan de Stroom, Belgium

Museum aan de Stroom, Belgium. Picture by Daniel de Rudder

This is an article by Josephine Minutillo, published at Architectural Record, may 2010. After reading it, we shouldn´t be so scared about the glass technology. ..

Glass may be stronger than concrete, but you’re not likely to see too many glass columns holding up floor slabs. Nevertheless, more and more projects are beginning to embrace glass as a structural element to create innovative facades and interiors as well as bold urban spaces.

Though vast expanses of glass are not holding up huge sections of the soon-to-open Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) in Belgium, it certainly looks as if they are. The surprising building, designed by Dutch architects Neutelings Riedijk and located along Antwerp’s waterfront, contains a series of stacked boxes housing galleries, each twisted 90 degrees and connected by a spiraling staircase. Visitors traveling up the staircase have broad, unobstructed views of the harbor and city center thanks to the groundbreaking use of corrugated glass in the facade.

“If you used straight panels, the glass would have been enormously thick because the free span is 18 feet,” explains Rob Nijsse of ABT consulting engineers. “Since the corrugated glass is so much stronger in bending, we were able to use 1⁄2-inch-thick panels to take up the wind load for the large span.” Nijsse first used corrugated glass in the Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal, designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and completed in 2005. There, three layers of 13-foot-high corrugated panels rest on top of each other to form nearly 40-foot-high window openings within the heavy concrete facade.

With MAS, the heavy elements of the facade seem to float above the glass, which wraps around the building. In reality, the concrete boxes cantilever out from a central core and are separated from the glass panels by a 2-inch-wide airspace. “We had to keep the glass clear of the cantilever because there’s a tendency for the concrete to deform slightly when it is loaded with people,” says Nijsse.

Soon to open along Antwerp's waterfront, the Museum aan de Stroom was designed by Neutelings Riedijk. The spiraling exhibition "boxes" appear to float above vast expanses of glass.

http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=674&P=1

1111 Lincoln Road Herzog & de Meuron's Parking Garage

Here is a different solution, a parking with shopping. My partner says "there wouldn't be parkings above the ground, leave it for public space", anyway, I think it is a nice solution that considers aesthetical details. Though underground garages leave more open space for the public space, sometimes, as it happens in Los Angeles, technical issues, earthquakes in the area, push cities to have those huge structures, like car containers everywhere in the City. At least this garage has been designed with concern for the urban environment and pedestrians.

El bambú invade bosques nativos en el NE argentino

Foto que acompaña la nota. Fuente La Nación

El 17 de mayo, salió publicado en La Nación, suplemento Ciencia y Salud, una nota de Susana Gallardo ¨El bambú invade bosques nativos¨. Este artículo que cuenta sobre la tarea de investigadores argentinos de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales de la UBA, dió lugar a controversias, acusaciones, consejos.

Básicamente, se trata que ¨el bambú, cuyo tallo puede alcanzar alturas de treinta metros, forma parte de muchos ecosistemas americanos y es un recurso muy utilizado por el hombre. Pero, como consecuencia de la extracción forestal no planificada, algunas especies colonizan con rapidez los claros de los bosques en la provincia de Misiones e impiden que puedan renovarse los árboles de importancia económica, como el cedro, el guatambú y el peteribí. Esta planta (conocida como tacuara o tacuarembó) puede convertirse en una especie invasora debido a los disturbios producidos en el ambiente. "Es una planta nativa que cambia su comportamiento y crece en exceso, ocupa grandes áreas y limita el crecimiento de las demás especies", señala la doctora Lía Montti, del laboratorio de Ecología Funcional de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales de la UBA-Conicet y del Centro de Investigaciones del Bosque Atlántico.

Esta planta, que posee un tallo (culmo) muy resistente y apto para usos muy diversos, es muy particular: algunas especies pueden florecer una vez cada treinta, cincuenta o cien años, y cuando lo hacen, mueren, irremediablemente. Mientras no florece, se reproduce en forma asexual, generando nuevos culmos a partir del mismo rizoma. De este modo, las plantas hijas son genéticamente idénticas a su madre.¨

Los lectores, han respondido que este tema, tan conocido por los lugareños, no es noticia. Se sabe bien que la tacuara es terriblemente invasiva, muchos utilizan a los cerdos para comerlas cuando empiezan a crecer. Lo peor, es que se extiende a través de rizomas, de los cuales nacen las otras plantas y así el suelo se vuelve inutilizable.

Luego, la discusión vira hacia un uso propuesto, que a la vez incremente la mano de obra misionera. Al menos hay quien aclara que este tipo de bambú, no es el mismo de Asia, tan útil para construcciones y muebles, sino que se habla de tacuara, tacuarembó, que es una caña hueca por dentro, no como la del tipo colihue, del Sur argentino, que es maciza y sí es apta para hacer muebles. Sin embargo, la tacuara es un buen recurso para empalizadas naturales de las costas.

En realidad, lo que más me sorprendió, es que un lector mencionara que en la Facultad de Arquitectura de Tucumán, hay una cátedra de construcción con bambú. Me pregunto cómo es posible que no se aunaran esfuerzos entre los expertos sobre bambú de ambas facultades de la UBA, la de arquitectura de Tucumán y la de Ciencias Exactas. Es que acaso no conocen la interdisciplina? Y los convenios, se proponen sólo para facultades extranjeras?

Para leer la nota completa

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1265439&origen=NLCien#lectores

Urban benefits for South Africa in times of the World Cup

Master plan for the urban park around Green Point, site of the new Cape Town Stadium. 

The following are excerpts from the great article by Nate Berg published at Planetizen.com. Pictures are from the article.

Next month's World Cup in South Africa will bring a lot of attention to the country, and a lot of opportunity. Though many hope the country will see an economic benefit, the biggest impact is likely to be the creation of urban infrastructure.

New airports and expanded terminals have opened in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Bus rapid transit systems are under construction in cities across the country, most notably the Rea Vaya in Johannesburg. The first segment of the Gautrain regional rail system in the Johannesburg area is set to open June, meeting its deadline to open before the Cup's opening match on June 11. Major road projects are being undertaken in every host city, updating access and circulation. New train stations have also opened in many host cities. The National Treasury has invested more than $2.1 billion on transportation and infrastructure projects, in addition to local funding sources.Transportation will be the main legacy of the World Cup, according to South African Minister of Transport Sibusiso Ndebele.

But even with all this in the works, buildout of that transportation legacy has not been an entirely smooth process. Projects have gone vastly over budget, past deadline and beyond feasibility. The cost of Cape Town's BRT system ballooned from an estimated $171 million in 2008 to more than $600 million. It was recently announced that one section of the Johannesburg Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system would not be ready in time for the tournament  as had previously been planned. Benchmarks for the Gautrain have been scaled back. Planned BRT systems have been delayed or called off in Durban, Bloemfontein and Tshwane.

Tunneling Johannesburg for the new regional rail system

Cape Town stadium

A new public space 

These troubles highlight some of the problems with South African transit in general. Most cities are dominated by cars and minibus taxis. As a result, the cities are often congested and hectic with car traffic. Unsafe drivers are a constant menace on South African roads, where crashes claim thousands of lives every year. And for the rail systems that do currently exist, underinvestment and aging infrastructure have some concerned that the entire passenger rail system could collapse within a decade.

Public space in South Africa also stands to benefit as a result of the World Cup. Like previous World Cup host Germany, South Africa's host cities are creating fan parks during the tournament where the public can view games on big screens. A new concept first tested during the 2006 World Cup, these public viewing areas are seen as a way of spreading the event beyond the edges of the stadia and opening the games up to those who can't afford tickets for the matches. Each of the nine host cities has a public viewing area planned, as do a handful of other cities.

Though most of these venues will be temporary establishments during the event, there are some examples of permanent improvements to the public realm. One example is in the city of Cape Town, where planners have turned the public space surrounding the city's World Cup stadium into a huge urban park.

But recognizing that actually getting to that park could be difficult for the poorest of this city's 3.5 million people, officials have also taken advantage of the World Cup as an economic engine to build a series of public spaces in some of the less advantaged parts of the city. Officials are building 23 new public parks and community facilities all over town. Not directly related to the World Cup events per se, this program uses the event as a springboard to invest in the creation of much-needed public spaces within underserved sections of the city.

"The popular belief that this World Cup and the infrastructure associated with the stadium will, of necessity, yield a benefit to the public and leave a legacy that will have meaning for the poor is a bit of a pipe dream," said Cedric Daniels, manager of the Urban Design Branch of the Cape Town Planning Department. He says the city wanted to use the World Cup to edge in some public projects aimed at helping the city's poor, but which it hadn't previously had the opportunity to do.

The city's Quality Public Space program is building amenities like playing fields, community centers, and public plazas. Daniels says these facilities are likely to have a bigger impact on the city's poor population than the spaces created specifically for the World Cup, 8 games of which will take place in Cape Town.

"Public space is central to public life," said Daniels. "Civic life wouldn't be possible without public space, and good quality public space at that."

Read the full article

The Infrastructural Benefit of South Africa's World Cup

http://www.planetizen.com/node/44124

The potato as an analogy for dwellings

The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh, 1885. The artist tried to emphasize that those people eating the potatoes in the lamp-light had dug the earth with their hands- Picture from Google images

The wheat harvest in the British Isles failed in 1794, sending the price of white bread beyond the reach of England’s poor. Food riots broke out, and with them a great debate over the potato that would rage, on and off, for half a century. The potato debate is recounted in Redcliffe Salaman’s 1949 volume, “ The History and Social Influence of the Potato”. This debate brought to the surface predictable English anxieties about class conflict and the “Irish problem”. But potato’s advocates argued that introducing it in England, would be a way to feed the poor.

Arthur Young, a respected agronomist, had traveled to Ireland and returned convinced that the potato was a “root of plenty”. The radical journalist William Cobbett also traveled to Ireland, yet he returned with a very different picture of the potato eaters. Cobbett argued that while it was true that the potato fed the Irish, it also impoverished them, by driving up the country’s population –from three million to eight million in less than a century-. The prolific potato allowed young Irishmen to marry earlier and support a larger family. This “damned root” (as Cobbett said in his articles) pulled the Irishman out of civilization and back down into the earth, gradually muddying the distinctions between man and beast, even man and root.

This is how he described the potato eater’s mud hut: “No windows at all;…the floor nothing but the bare earth; no chimney, but a hole at one end…surrounded by a few stones.” In Cobbett’s grim imagery, the Irish had themselves moved underground, joining their tubers in the mud.

English usually depicted the potato as mere food, primitive, unreconstructed, and lacking in any cultural resonance. Bread, on the other hand, was as leavened with meaning as it was with air. Like the potato, wheat begins in nature, but it is then transformed by culture; it symbolized civilization’s mastery of raw nature. A mere food thus became the substance of human and even spiritual communion, for there was also the old identification of bread with the body of Christ.

Reference.

Text adapted from “The Botany of Desire”, by Michael Pollan. Pages 203-204. USA, 2001

‘Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline’

Here is a book I´d like to have. From the New York Times -Books- I´ve downloaded the following paragraphs and pictures on the representation of time:

“Cartographies of Time,” published recently by Princeton Architectural Press, is an eye-popping record of the ways that mapmakers, chronologists, artists and others have tried to convey the passage of time visually.

This illustration from Lorenz Faust’s 1585 “Anatomia statuae Danielis” (Anatomy of Daniel’s statue), by an unknown artist, shows the rulers of the four great world monarchies on different parts of the armor, according to the historical scheme laid out by the biblical prophet Daniel. Each part of the statue’s body corresponds to a historical person or event. For example, Darius of Persia is located on the lung because Jews could breathe freely under his regime, while the sun-god-worshiping Roman emperor Heliogabalus, whose body was tossed into a sewer after he was deposed, is shown near “the exit from the rear.”

The 1840 “Catholic Ladder” was designed by a French Canadian Catholic priest named Francois Norbert Blanchet to teach basic Christian chronology and concepts to native peoples in the Pacific Northwest. The horizontal bars running up the middle represent the number of centuries since Creation, which is shown at the bottom using pictorial symbols for the sun, the stars and the earth. The detail at right shows the three crosses of Calvary and, above them, the founding of the Church.

The “Temple of Time,” created in 1846 by the pioneering American girls’ educator Emma Willard, draws on the tradition of Renaissance “memory theaters,” mnemonic devices that allowed people to memorize information by imagining it as architectural details in a three-dimensional mental space. The vertical columns represent centuries, with those on the right showing names of important figures from the Old World while those on the left show figures from the New World.

In her work “201 Days” (detail at left), the contemporary American artist Katie Lewis used pushpins to record the dates of everyday sensory events, whose synchronicities were then linked with thread. The result is an eerily abstracted portrait of her body over time. As Lewis has written, “My choice to use the body as a starting point aims to give visual form to physical sensations that are invisible to the eye and medical imaging, and only exist in the subjective realm.”

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/04/15/books/20100415-timelines-ss_index.html