1963-1971, El Colegio Mayor Argentino Nuestra Señora de Luján. La mirada desde el margen de Horacio Baliero y Carmen Córdova

Abstract

In September 1963 a competition call for the Colegio Mayor Argentino Nuestra Señora de Luján was launched to accommodate Argentinian students in the Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid. The winning project was by the married couple Horacio Baliero and Carmen Córdova from Buenos Aires. Their proposal, as the rest of the entries, all from Argentina, was drawn from a few photographs and a site plan, but it was designed from its adaptation to the traces of the site. However, it was during a second stage, and the stay in the Iberian Peninsula, when Baliero and Córdova would end up rediscovering the site and its nature in its physical, social and cultural dimensions. The article proposes to reflect on the site and its inhabited condition through the journey by Baliero and Córdova with the written legacy published decades later by Baliero entitled “Arquitectura: la mirada desde el margen” (Architecture: the Look from the Margin). The article will show the work by Baliero and Córdova as a crossroads of tangible and intangible, variable and invariable, and illusory and real perceptions, unlike a simple visual or drawn approach. Under this point of view, it will be shown how much of the architects' intuition and craft was able to successfully supply a direct experience of the place and how much it was modified after a first idealized and intellectualized vision.