The fragile crystalline skin from the river plate

Abstract

The gradually completed process around the development of new languages, through the constructive evolution and subsequent turn from wall to framework architecture, made it possible to create an independence of the exterior enclosure from the structure, attending to a technical experimentation around the glazed enclosure for high-rise buildings that inevitably led modern architecture to the possibility of having windows occupying the entire surface of the building façade, along with the advent and development of the curtain wall in the 1950s in the United States. Thus the modern skyscrapers became the new image of modernism and progress spanning to all latitudes. This research focuses on the crystalline enclosure of the "Carlos Pellegrini" building, headquarters of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), with the intention of clarifying the challenge faced by local professionals from the third world, particularly in the city of Buenos Aires, for the approach and production of a crystalline modern language in tune with the proposals of the developed metropolises. Attempting to elucidate how the first continuous crystalline skin-membrane is composed in Buenos Aires architecture, through the use and adaptation of local technology when the mullions are moved into the interior space and the opaque parapets, so decisive at that time, are dispensed with. Explore its conceptualization (transparent / reflective), its execution and the technical resolutions adopted at the end of the 60s. It proposes a review of the different aspects and referential influences and which were the design procedures for the conformation of this unique work, and if it had them, which significant contributions or experiences did it introduce to the local architectural culture, for the creation of these pure crystalline stand-alone prisms in the city of Buenos Aires.