In August, Shelter screens architect le Corbusier’s radical plan to drastically modernise the Argentine capital in the 1920s, and an exclusive behind the scenes tour of one of the most important architectural firms in the world.
Plan for Buenos Aires
(79 mins) Argentina 2022
August 5
By the early 20th century, Buenos Aires was swiftly outgrowing and straining against its original Spanish colonial foundations; and in desperate need of a major urban overhaul. With new larger housing blocking out the sun and river, and the streets once designed for horses and carts were now clogged with cars and traffic, prominent local figure Victoria Ocampo and the Society of the Friends of Art decided to lead the way, and in 1929 invited the famous architect le Corbusier to Argentina: enticing him with the possibility of implementing his modernist ideas in South America, of which he’d been met with resistance in Europe. When in Buenos Aires, le Corbusier gave a series of 10 lectures on Modern Architecture. During this time, he proposed an urban plan for the city. In modernising the city, he sought to unlock the greenery buried underneath the layers of concrete, to free the “5 million citizens crawling like ants between the bars of this huge jail.” From his initial trip and for the next twenty years he would obsessively develop his proposal, trying by all possible means to make the Plan for Buenos Aires a reality.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
(52 mins) Italy 2022
August 19
Come along on an exclusive behind the scenes tour of one of the most important architectural firms in the world, and join the Renzo Piano Building Workshop team working across a span of several months. Sit in on the meetings, phone calls, project reviews, decisions and second thoughts, and see how the team of more than 100 architects and collaborators work together, dealing with a range of unexpected events and challenges across the world, to redesign the face of our cities – including museums, hospitals, schools, waterfronts and skyscrapers.
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