Dia de los Arquitectos

Got three hours of sleep Thursday night. We presented our work in a mock review to a panel of architects. We've been in good company of architects down here.

Eugenio Xaus: laid out the master plan of Puerto Madero. He traveled with us to Sao Paolo and Rio. Known as "El Loco" to his staff, for his eccentricity and enthusiasm. With his grizzled beard, grin, and perpetually partially unbuttoned shirt, he reminds me of a cheerful pirate.

Sergio Foster: engaged with the municipality to develop a means of connecting the river with the city with a series of park. Heavily into diagrammatic design and diagram theory of architecture, similiar to but much more rigorous than, for instance, Eisenmann's diagrammatic designing.

Claudio Vekstien: Has had a huge amount of work in the past four years, including a monument to the argentine arquitecto Amancio Williams, an emergency room and hospital redesign, and an amazing rehabilitation clinic for which he just won an award. Extremely principled in architecture, and unfaltering in his fight to get work built in the city, to push through the politics and bureaucracy and economic crises and government changes.

Angelo Bucci: Perioically visits us down here in Buenos Aires, as he is the head of school of architecture at FAU in Sao Paolo. Definately Brazillian modern architect, you can see some of his built work >>here<<. After he reviewed our work, he showed us some of his. He's got some phenomenal projects that made me want to go visit all of them.

The two architects that I still want to meet down here, but have as yet been unable, are Paolo Mendes da Rocha, a Brazillian , and Clorindo Testa an Argentine whose works we have visited as a class, and actually whose work I now write in, a renovation of the waterwork labs.

To come to think of it, life sometimes grabs me and shakes me with its surreality. Today after I got up (at noon, I needed the sleep), I walked to a bakery and picked up some medialunas stuffed with dulce de leche. The woman working there complemented my good Spanish. Stopped on the way back home at a kiosk and bought a box of orange juice. I took a bus which was absolutely packed with people and stood all the way to Libertator, where I passed a massive street market along the main street of Chinatown. The main entrances to school were locked so I had to go around to the back to get in.

The school we're exchanged with is the private Universidad Torcuato di Tella, (UTDT). Compared with UBA which is free, UTDT is extemely expensive and exclusive. The main campus is actually much smaller than my high school, occupying only one building. The feel is like a small town high school. The campus we're at was recently acquired from the city. It actually used to be the municipal water laboratory and the complex was partially renovated by Clorindo Testa. The main massive building is still untouched, but there are plans to renovate it and shift the entire UTDT to this location. Our architecture program is actually a tester, as next semester, UTDT will begin offering architecture as an undergraduate program for the first time, in the studio spaces we're currently using.

The other main program at this annex is the business masters, regarded as one of the best in South America. The cafe downstairs always lays out coffee, tea, and medialunas for their classroom breaks, and the students (all older people) all have their suits, cars, and briefcases. Our mix is strange. We try to scavenge the occasional coffee and cookie from the tables, looking scruffy after a night without sleep, shuffling through their chatting groups to the hot water machine or vending machines for more alfajors.