Beneath the park of Chacarita

The underground pantheon as a modernizing funerary typology. Buenos Aires, 1939-1970

Abstract

This article studies the typology of underground pantheon, emerged as an architectural option to transform the Chacarita Cemetery into a public Park Cemetery. The idea of taking the niches underground in order to satisfy the growing demand for burial space, and to reduce the vision of death, circulated among the Municipal offices since the first decades of the 20th century, but it managed to take shape after the 1930s, an impulse that was sustained until the 1970s.

Through the analysis of municipal documents, we will restore a series of buildings that began with the four Integral Pantheons designed by the Engineer Alfredo Natale between 1939 and 1947, continued with the experiences of the Fifth Pantheon by Fermín Bereterbide and E. Muñoz in 1946, the project of “ Wilben” dated in 1948, that of Itala Fulvia Villa from 1955 (both in the sector called Sixth Pantheon), and culminating in the Pantheon of the Federal Police, projected in 1970. Set up in a chronological sequence, the study of these buildings problematizes the inertia of an attempt to modernize the architecture and the city of Buenos Aires, a process that was possible thanks to the municipal capacity to incorporate and relate various actors in a network. To do this, we take Giulio Carlo Argan's propositions on the typological series, where he reflects on the tension between historical forms and project innovation.