That Gray Object of Desire

The Buenos Aires Kavanagh in the Reflective, Teaching and Project Practice of Justo Solsona (1976-1994)

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship that Justo Solsona (1931) established with the Kavanagh skyscraper (Buenos Aires, 1934-36) as a reference for his teaching practice in architecture and his professional projects. A relationship that, born in the context of La Escuelita (1976-1983), operated decisively, according to my hypothesis, in the turn in his way of conceiving the project process based until then on what Liernur calls "a kind of permanent singularity" to adopt a position favorable to reflecting on what has been built. But, at the same time, the Kavanagh skyscraper operated for Solsona temporarily as a neo-avant-garde objet trouvé, but at the same time - and due to the historical-critical thickness that the building endowed - this attraction could be argued disciplinarily.

The long-standing link with this Buenos Aires icon recognizes three stages: the first, very brief, focuses on 1977 when the Kavanagh was chosen to constitute the object of the formal redesign of the Architecture Course at La Escuelita; the second corresponds to his return to the UBA in 1984 and where the Kavanagh became the iconic and methodological reference for projects by students in the third year of his workshop who had a defined program and a precise terrain; while the third stage, temporarily overlapping the second, began in 1989 when Solsona adopted the morphology of the Kavanagh as part of his own reflexive and projectual searches that continued until the end of the last century.