Estancia Los Cerrillos, de Juan Manuel de Rosas

Estancia Los Cerrillos. Foto de Walter Pontalti

Reproducción del artículo de Silvia Long-Ohni, para La Nación, sección Campo:

Fue lento y duro el avance de los españoles sobre la pampa hacia el sur de la incipiente Buenos Aires. Allá, en cercanías del Salado, la situación era siempre de riesgo, pues los malones asolaban las estancias desde que éstas comenzaron a surgir, a comienzos del siglo XVIII.

Para dificultar los arreos de ganado, en 1760, el rey aprobó el despliegue de guardias militares más allá de la originaria línea de fortines. Pero sólo en 1776 el gobernador Vértiz dio cumplimiento a la ordenanza y dispuso la construcción de cinco puestos de avanzada que fueron matriz de actuales poblaciones.

El teniente coronel Francisco Juan Betvezé estableció el fortín de la Guardia de San Miguel del Monte Gárgano, nombre dado por el cerro napolitano en que San Miguel se apareció para señalar una gruta con forma de iglesia, más tarde convertida en lugar de peregrinación. En 1778 amparaba un pequeño caserío sobre la orilla norte, cerca de la boca del arroyo Totoral. La población era de ocho familias, pero otras se sumaron pronto y el 18 de noviembre de 1789 se informaba al virrey la construcción de una capilla: esa fecha sirve hoy para memorar la fundación de San Miguel del Monte.

En 1820, los socios Juan Manuel de Rosas, Juan Nepomuceno Terrero y los hermanos Luis y Manuel Dorrego, compraron a don Julián del Molino Torres la estancia Los Cerrillos, situada a pocos kilómetros de allí, verdadero fuerte, además, protegido por fosos y cañones. Allí levantó Rosas su rancho famoso y dio vida a un importante centro ganadero y agrícola, dotado nada menos que con 60 arados.

Rancho de Rosas. Imagen de http://www.lagazeta.com.ar/los_cerrillos.htm

Rosas era meticuloso y quiso que hubiera una policía de campaña; ese mismo año con más de cien de sus peones y los de varios estancieros más creó un cuerpo de milicianos que se conocería como "Los Colorados del Monte". De todo eso hoy quedan dos presencias: una es ese escuadrón reaparecido en Monte como formación simbólica en 1979 y al que en 1994 se admitió como guardia de honor del gobernador de la provincia. La otra, ese célebre rancho de Rosas, único exponente en pie de sus pertenencias, cuidado durante más de un siglo por la familia Bemberg, que había llegado a ser propietaria de Los Cerrillos. Es una típica construcción bonaerense de su época; el techo consta de un entramado tipo bambú, con espadaña y atado con tientos de cuero de potro. Tiene paredes de barro y paja, de unos 45 cm de espesor y la planta es de tipo "chorizo", con cuatro habitaciones sucesivas.

Luego de un acuerdo con Otto Bemberg para remover la edificación, en 1987 se la trasladó los 30 kilómetros que distaban de Monte y se la emplazó en el solar que ocupó la primitiva Guardia, en la intersección de las calles Belgrano y Rosas. El edificio fue extraído de cuajo y asentado sobre tres vigas de concreto de 25 metros de largo y ocho cruzadas de 8 metros; para el traslado usaron un carretón de 120 ruedas, sobre el que se lo puso con criques hidráulicos: fue el primer traslado de una construcción de adobe hecho en América del Sur.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1373099-rastros-de-historia-en-san-miguel-del-monte?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=suples&utm_campaign=NLCamp

The Flash. By Italo Calvino

Image from rochestersubway.com

It happened one day, at a crossroads, in the middle of a crowd, people coming and going.

I stopped, blinked: I understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything: I didn’t understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd. And I started to laugh. What I found strange at the time was that I’d never realized before.

That up until then I had accepted everything: traffic lights, cars, posters, uniforms, monuments, things completely detached from any sense of the world, accepted them as if there were some necessity, some chain of cause and effect that bound them together.

Then the laugh died in my throat, I blushed, ashamed. I waved to get people’s attention and ‘Stop a second!’ I shouted, ‘there’s something wrong! Everything’s wrong! We’re doing the absurdest things! This can’t be the right way! Where will it end?’

People stopped around me, sized me up, curious. I stood there in the middle of them, waving my arms, desperate to explain myself, to have them share the flash of insight that had suddenly enlightened me: and I said nothing. I said nothing because the moment I’d raised my arms and opened my mouth, my great revelation had been as it were swallowed up again and the words had come out any old how, on impulse.

‘So?’ people asked, ‘what do you mean? Everything’s in its place. All is as it should be. Everything is a result of something else. Everything fits in with everything else. We can’t see anything absurd or wrong!’

And I stood there, lost, because as I saw it now everything had fallen into place again and everything seemed natural, traffic lights, monuments, uniforms, towerblocks, tramlines, beggars, processions; yet this didn’t calm me down, it tormented me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I answered. ‘Perhaps it was me that was wrong. It seemed that way. But everything’s fine. I’m sorry,’ and I made off amid their angry glares.

Yet, even now, every time (often) that I find I don’t understand something, then, instinctively, I’m filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.

China. Image from ipenideo.com

REFERENCE:

The Flash. In the book Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories by Italo Calvino. USA 1995. P. 9-10

Masdar Institute. Abu Dhabi. By Foster and partners

" The global financial crisis has derailed construction all over the world — even in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. But certain megaprojects continue to march ahead, though with tighter budgets, more pragmatic goals, and less ambitious schedules. One such project is Masdar City, in Abu Dhabi. In 2007, the government-owned Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company chose a consortium led by London-based Foster + Partners to design the master plan for the 2.3-square-mile development it touted as the world’s first zero-carbon city. Originally slated for completion by 2016, plans for Masdar included housing, cultural institutions, educational and research facilities, and space for tenants focused on the development of advanced energy technologies.

“Masdar is still a compact, high-density, mixed-use development, with well-integrated public transport and a street design that enforces walkable communities and neighborhoods,” says Jurgen Happ, a Foster associate partner.

The planning principles that Happ cites are evident in the first piece of the development — 680,000 square feet of a 3.7 million-square-foot campus designed by Foster for the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. Occupied since November, the completed portion of this graduate-level university dedicated to the study of sustainability comprises a laboratory, a library, and student housing.

Masdar Institute’s campus combines high-tech materials and technologies, like ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) cladding for the laboratory buildings, with features that take their cues from the region’s vernacular, such as glass-reinforced concrete mashrabiya screens that shield the residential buildings’ balconies."

Masdar officials envision that the city will cover 2.3 square miles, as depicted in this rendering, and have a daytime population of 90,000 by 2025.

Excerpts from the article by Sona Nambiar and Joann Gonchar, AIA.

http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/2011/05/Masdar_Institute.asp

All pictures downloaded from archrecord.construction.com

El sepulcro de San Pedro en el Vaticano

Tumba de San Pedro, Vaticano. Copyright Ray Williams Jr

Basílica de San Pedro en el Vaticano. Imagen de aimdigital.com.ar

Reproduzco debajo el interesante artículo de Mariano de Vedía para La Nación, acerca de la tumba de San Pedro dentro de la basílica del mismo nombre, y agrego otros datos ilustrativos:

La Basílica de San Pedro esconde en su interior una máquina del tiempo, que conduce a los orígenes más entrañables de la historia cristiana. Las excavaciones iniciadas en los tiempos del papa Pío XII, entre 1939 y 1958, permitieron reconstruir el camino al corazón de la Iglesia: el lugar donde fueron depositados los restos del apóstol San Pedro, víctima de la persecución de Nerón, en el año 67 de nuestra era.

Hoy ese sitio puede visitarse, en grupos reducidos, y a medida que se desciende en un trayecto serpenteante, rodeado por sepulturas paganas y cristianas de los primeros dos siglos de la era cristiana, es inevitable sentir un impacto interior tan profundo como el silencio y los secretos que guardan los muros que sobrevivieron a los tiempos.

Por tradición, siempre se supo que en el siglo IV, en la colina vaticana, sobre el sitio donde se había colocado la tumba de Pedro, en medio de un cementerio en las afueras de Roma, el emperador Constantino había construido una basílica en agradecimiento a su conversión al cristianismo, luego de que una cruz se le apareciera en el cielo y lo ayudara a triunfar en la batalla de Majencio, en el año 312.

Todavía vivían en ese tiempo descendientes de los cristianos que habían acompañado a los apóstoles y conocían el lugar donde había sido sepultado Pedro y al que muchos iban a venerar.

Tan identificada tenía Constantino la sencilla y austera sepultura que la hizo proteger con una urna funeraria, conocida como Trofeo de Gayo, luego sellada con un muro rojo, para evitar que fuera afectada por eventuales represalias y filtraciones de agua. Ese signo indicaba que allí se encontraba alguien digno de ser venerado.

La basílica de Constantino construida sobre ese tesoro perduró durante doce siglos, hasta que fue demolida para levantar la actual Basílica de San Pedro, en el siglo XVI. Bajo el templo, todo quedó cubierto de tierra, hasta que las excavaciones de Pío XII permitieron reconstruir el sendero a las primeras tumbas y localizar la sepultura de Pedro.

Tras remover más de 50.000 metros cúbicos de tierra, los arqueólogos recuperaron 22 sepulturas y descifraron inscripciones muy significativas en los muros, como las que señalan "Petros eni" ("Pedro está aquí") y otros signos llamativos, como la letra P con tres rayas horizontales que forman el dibujo de una llave.

La sepultura se encuentra justo debajo del Altar de la Confesión, que señala el nivel de la basílica constantiniana en la actual Basílica de San Pedro, y por encima de ella está el imponente Baldaquín de Bernini, que custodia no sólo el altar donde hoy celebra el Papa, sino el origen más estremecedor de la era cristiana.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1371715-el-interesante-camino-a-la-tumba-de-san-pedro?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

Tumba de San Pedro. Imagen de parroquiatorrelodones.com

Sepulcro de San Pedro. Foto bajada de apostolicos.en.telepolis.com

De la página http://apostolicos.en.telepolis.com he leído sobre el arqueólogo jesuita que identificó la tumba:

El Padre jesuita Antonio Ferrua, arqueólogo que identificó la tumba y las reliquias del Apóstol San Pedro bajo la Basílica vaticana.

El P. Ferrua encabezó las excavaciones arqueológicas de la Basílica de San Pedro, desde 1944 hasta 1949, por encargo del Papa Pío XII, y bajo su liderazgo se encontró la cripta auténtica y los “graffiti” que disiparon toda posible duda sobre la ubicación de la tumba de San Pedro en la colina vaticana.

Por cuenta del mismo Papa, el P. Ferrua dirigió también la reconstrucción de la basílica de San Lorenzo, gravemente dañada por los bombardeos sobre Roma del 19 de julio de 1943.

Durante más de cincuenta años, el sacerdote jesuita se desempeñó como catedrático del Pontificio Instituto de Arqueología Cristiana; y desde 1948 fue conservador del Museo Sacro de la Biblioteca Vaticana.

http://apostolicos.en.telepolis.com/5-CASUALIDADES_IBERICAS2003.html

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Orange Cube in Lyon, France

"Completed last fall, the 67,640-square-foot building, which contains a ground-floor furniture showroom and offices above, is perched on a river’s edge in a converted industrial zone in Lyon, France. Surrounded mostly by gray, modern structures, the six-story box, with its conical gashes and pulsating orange veil, is the life of the party.

On any given day, you’ll find locals and tourists alike gathering outside the building, studying its unusual features and snapping photos.

It’s a brazen work of architecture for any city, particularly Lyon. While one of the most progressive industrial centers in the 19th century and home of the visionary urbanist Tony Garnier (1869-1948), Lyon has become fairly subdued in recent decades. The city has, however, embarked on various endeavors to boost its cosmopolitan character. In the 1990s, it opened Cité Internationale, a 37-acre mixed-use project by Renzo Piano. More recently, it set out to redevelop a run-down harbor district dominated by warehouses. It is here, in the new “Lyon Confluence” district — so named because it occupies the tip of a peninsula where the Saône and Rhône rivers meet — that the Orange Cube enlivens the landscape.

In January 2006, Jakob + MacFarlane won a competition to design the building that would become the Orange Cube. No tenants were lined up at the time; the brief simply called for an eye-catching structure on a half-acre site. “The idea was to have a competition, get iconic buildings, and, through this interesting architecture, get someone to pay for it all,” explains MacFarlane. The building’s first two floors had to accommodate cultural programming, while the upper levels would house offices. The brief also stipulated that the building envelope not fill the entire site, that it have a certain amount of negative space.

That last requirement inspired the architects to create a box pierced by three large voids oriented toward the water. “The most obvious solution, from our point of view, was to take the negative space and treat it as a cutout from the whole,” says MacFarlane. “It seemed like a good of way of making something interesting out of the project.”

Excerpts from:

Article by Jenna M. McKnight

http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/2011/05/Orange_Cube.asp

All pictures from archrecord.construction.com

Land reclamation in Hong Kong

Hong Kong. Photo credit: wired-destinations.com

An introduction of the interesting article by Mark Huppert and Marc Weigum for metropolismag.com:

¨Our interdisciplinary team, supported by the Runstad Center at the University of Washington, recently went on a research trip to Hong Kong. We were there to view the city through a multifaceted lens, looking to identify success metrics and their outcomes within the built environment. This led us to interview a diverse array of government decision-makers, private developers, investors, consultants, planners, policy-makers, and community representatives. The themes that emerged from our conversations were not quite what we expected in this intensely capitalistic city containing the most skyscrapers in the world. The glittering towers and pulsing streetscapes are on a foundation that is not quite what it seems. Hong Kong, from what we could tell, is at a monumental tipping point.

The phrase “land reclamation” is commonly used to describe the process of creating new land from sea, riverbeds or, as Webster’s puts it, from “wasteland.”Since most people associate the word reclaim with taking something back, it seems odd to use the word reclamation when it’s about creating land from something useful like the ocean or a harbor. In the case of Hong Kong, the land area wasn’t originally taken BY the sea for someone to take back, but it was certainly taken FROM the sea in order to develop something of greater economic value. It’s all a matter of perspective.¨

Central Hong Kong Island via Government House, photo: usageorge.com

Keep on reading:

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20110425/from-reclamation-to-renewal

Beaumont-l'Eglise. From The Dreams

Beaumont-l'Eglise. From Panoramio.com

"Beaumont is composed of two villages, completely separated and quite distinct one from the other—Beaumont-l'Eglise, on the hill with its old Cathedral of the twelfth century, its Bishop's Palace which dates only from the seventeenth century, its inhabitants, scarcely one thousand in number, who are crowded together in an almost stifling way in its narrow streets; and Beaumont-la-Ville, at the foot of the hill, on the banks of the Ligneul, an ancient suburb, which the success of its manufactories of lace and fine cambric has enriched and enlarged to such an extent that it has a population of nearly ten thousand persons, several public squares, and an elegant sub-prefecture built in the modern style. These two divisions, the northern district and the southern district, have thus no longer anything in common except in an administrative way. Although scarcely thirty leagues from Paris, where one can go by rail in two hours, Beaumont-l'Eglise seems to be still immured in its old ramparts, of which, however, only three gates remain. A stationary, peculiar class of people lead there a life similar to that which their ancestors had led from father to son during the past five hundred years.

The Cathedral explains everything, has given birth to and preserved everything. It is the mother, the queen, as it rises in all its majesty in the centre of, and above, the little collection of low houses, which, like shivering birds, are sheltered under her wings of stone. One lives there simply for it, and only by it. There is no movement of business activity, and the little tradesmen only sell the necessities of life, such as are absolutely required to feed, to clothe, and to maintain the church and its clergy; and if occasionally one meets some private individuals, they are merely the last representatives of a scattered crowd of worshippers. The church dominates all; each street is one of its veins; the town has no other breath than its own. On that account, this spirit of another age, this religious torpor from the past, makes the cloistered city which surrounds it redolent with a savoury perfume of peace and of faith."

From Chapter II of The Dream (Le Reve) by Emile Zola

Read The Dream at Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29004/29004-h/files/9499/9499-h/9499-h.htm

A street of puzzles

Illustration by arch. Matteo Pericoli

When my writing is not going well, there are two things I do in the hope of luring the words back: I read some pages of books I love or I watch the world. This is my view when I am at home in Nigeria, in the port city of Lagos. An ordinary view, with houses close together, cars crammed in corners, each compound with its own gate, little kiosks dotting the street. But it is a view choked with stories, because it is full of people. I watch them and I imagine their lives and invent their dreams.

The stylish young woman who sells phone cards in a booth next door, the Hausa boys who sell water in plastic containers, stacked in wheelbarrows. The vendor with a pile of newspapers, pressing his horn, his hopeful eyes darting up to the verandas. The bean-hawker who prowls around in the mornings, calling out from time to time, a large pan on her head. The mechanics at the corner who buy from her, often jostling one another, often shirtless, and sometimes falling asleep under a shade in the afternoon.

I strain to listen to their conversations. Once I saw two of the mechanics in a raging but brief fight. Once I saw a couple walk past holding hands, not at all a common sight. Once, a young girl in a blue school uniform, hair neatly plaited, looked up and saw me, a complete stranger, and said, “Good morning, ma,” curtsying in the traditional Yoruba way, and it filled me with gladness. The metal bars on the window — burglary-proof, as we call it — sometimes give the street the air of a puzzle, jagged pieces waiting to be fit together and form a whole.

AUTHOR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author, most recently, of “The Thing Around Your Neck.” Matteo Pericoli, an artist, is the author of “The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York.”

From: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/04/opinion/20101205_Windows.html?scp=9&sq=pericoli&st=Search