touring the bush (7) : buenos aires, projects 3

5. mellow modernists : i don't get this latinoamerican fixation on old-school modernism. sometimes i think it might be a sort of rejection to the tropical modernisms of the 50s-60s authoritarian developmentalism (desarrollismo). the thing is, instead of rejecting the modernist part, contemporary architects are rejecting the tropical. houses outside of santiago, in guadalajara, in rio are leaving behind the ondulating, sinous curves or the bright pink walls for more standard, straight-lined, minimalist, boxy building types. even when this usually dissapoints, some of these recent projects aren't half bad, and some even try to work their way out of boring bourgeois. more than ennui, in a city that easily tends to barroque, contemporary modernist architecture in buenos aires acts as a pleasing sedative (click pics for details)









next stop : brasilia vs. curitiba, failed and future utopias

touring the bush (6) : buenos aires, projects 2

sicoactiva@flickr bsas pool

3. hotels galore : in buenos aires home is not house, it’s a hotel. the city has its own (concentrate) share of the boutique and/or super-design hotel frenzy. designer hotels are a great way to pile up on taste and even innovation and grab hold of the juicy coorperate dineros at the same time. buenos aires notables include:

faena hotel / “experience”: yes, it’s obscene. it’s got its own cabaret and a bistro that features unicorn heads. how do you top that?



home: won the wallpaper 2007 hotel of the year design award. that should be enough.



bobo: bobo means silly. the “rebel and conservative” motive is pretty bobo too, but they have a 90s-themed “tecno” room, and that’s more than most hotels can say for themselves.



4. sounds like tango : not the newest thing around, but still, everytime i listen to this stuff, i think it's really really hot. city-soundtrack courtesy of gotan project and bajofondo tangoclub.

foto: julianrod

to be continued (last one, mellow modernists...)

touring the bush (5) : buenos aires, projects 1

albi@bsas flickr pool

dunno what borges would make of his beloved hometown these days, maybe instead of insides he would say zip-lock bags stuffed with leftover fat from liposuction. yes, buenos aires is grandeur faded and all that. it usually evokes images of an oldish-world, decadent modernist, steamy south-american take on paris. some would say that’s pushing it a bit. i would say it’s not pushing enough. buenos aires is more than tree-lined avenues and squeaky milongas and grade-a beef (cow and human alike). it’s a city that surely more than often borders on the grotesque, and still manages to keep its cool. like the good latinoamericana capital that it is, buenos aires has had plenty of chaos and shit in the past few years. but aside from la crisis (the 2000-2001 devaluation of the then-‘dollarized’ argentinian peso and subsequent economic stroke suffered after years of extreme neoliberalist policies), the porteño (that’s what people from buenos aires –it’s a port, you see- call themselves) habit of flaunting goes for the bad just as it does for the good. yes, buenos aires is borges, and bioy casares, and cortázar, and bife, and piazzolla and gardel but it’s also the boca, and the fat, coked-up maradona, and peronismo and ménem, and las gatitas de porcel (i used to watch the reruns late at night staying over at friends’ houses –it was totally forbidden for us when we were about 11 and it showed in mexico. more than the half-naked bunnies, i had a thing for the earth wind and fire theme song). buenos aires is class but it’s also quite trash. this city’s budding is miles away from that of bogotá, it’s not as overtly social conscious – i read somewhere that the current argentine brand of leftist politics could be termed leninist-narcissistic – on the contrary, it’s sometimes superficial and frivolous as sin. a different way of challenging hardship, i guess. like spitting on the wound instead of using antiseptic. or even better, having your incredibly gorgeous boyfriend or girlfriend lick it and then making out.

1. design boom : architecture is big, design is huge. from the annual design connection fair to the moma to fashion week, buenos aires has been on its way to becoming a true design epicenter for some years now. they might just have made it.





2. chic as shit : yes the girls, the boys, the eats, the clothes ... buenos aires oozes with beyond-standard coolness. but these days art is riding on top of the chic wave. and it's not bad, either.

appetite:





galería braga mendez:






éxito e-zine:




more:
malba
ramona


to be continued (hotels galore, sounds like tango, mellow modernists...)

touring the bush (4) : buenos aires, intro (fervor)

daido moriyama, from the book buenos aires

the streets of buenos aires
are now my entrails.
not the anxious streets
with all their annoying mobs and racket,
but the apathetic streets of the barrio,
so usual they’ve become all but invisible
tender from the half-light and the dusk
and those lying further out
without the pious trees
where austere little houses dare go, barely,
overwhelmed with immortal distance,
to loose themselves in the deep vision
of sky and plains
…

this is (sort of) how the first poem of borges’s first book (fervor de buenos aires, 1923) las calles (the streets) goes.