medianeras

“buenos aires is growing uncontrollably and imperfectly. an overpopulated city in a deserted country. a city in which thousands of buildings rise into the sky. arbitrarily. next to a tall one, a small one. next to a rational one, an irrational one. next to a french one, one with no style at all. these irregularities probably reflect us perfectly. aesthetic and ethical irregularities.

these buildings, which adhere to no logic, represent bad planning. just like our lives: we have no idea how we want them to be. we live as if buenos aires were a stopover. we’ve created a “culture of tenants”. the buildings are becoming smaller to make room for even smaller ones. apartments are measured by their number of rooms and range from five rooms with balconies, playrooms, servants’ quarters, and storerooms to one-rooms apartments also known as “shoeboxes”.

just like almost all man-made objects, buildings are made to differentiate between us. there’s a front side and a back side. high and low apartments. privileged people have the letter A or sometimes B. the farther back in the alphabet, the worse the apartment. the promised view and brightness rarely coincide with reality. what can be expected of a city that turns its back on its river?

i’m convinced that separations, divorces, domestic violence, the excess of cable TV stations, the lack of communication, listlessness, apathy, depression, suicide, neuroses, panic attacks, obesity, tenseness, insecurity, hypochondria, stress and a sedentary lifestyle are attributable to architects and builders."