Curutchet House
Encyclopedia
The Curutchet House, La Plata
, Argentina
, is a building by Le Corbusier
. It was commissioned by Dr. Pedro Domingo Curutchet, a surgeon, in 1948 and included a small medical office on the first floor. The house consists of four main levels with a courtyard between the house and the clinic. The building faces the Paseo del Bosque park. The main facade incorporates a brise soleil
.
Construction began in 1949 under the supervision of Amancio Williams
and was completed in 1953. The house exemplifies Le Corbusier's five points of architecture and incorporates a ramp
and a spiral staircase. The house represents a landmark in Corbusier own trajectory because it exemplifies how cultural and historical characteristics of architecture (the elements of the traditional Latin American courtyard house) can be rewritten using Corbusier's five points of modern architecture. Dr. Curutchet's house is also one of the very few buildings that Corbusier built attached to pre-existing buildings and perfectly responding to a historical context. With this house Corbusier proved, more than with any of his other projects, that modern architecture could in fact be in a harmonious dialogue with traditional architecture.
The house was restored from 1986 to 1988 during the centennial of Le Corbusier's birth and declared a national landmark by Argentina's Commission on National Landmarks. It currently houses the Buenos Aires
professional association of architects, the Colegio de Arquitectos, and is open to the public for tours.
La Plata
La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, is a building by Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
. It was commissioned by Dr. Pedro Domingo Curutchet, a surgeon, in 1948 and included a small medical office on the first floor. The house consists of four main levels with a courtyard between the house and the clinic. The building faces the Paseo del Bosque park. The main facade incorporates a brise soleil
Brise soleil
Brise soleil, sometimes brise-soleil , from French, "sun breaker"), in architecture refers to a variety of permanent sun-shading techniques, ranging from the simple patterned concrete walls popularized by Le Corbusier to the elaborate wing-like mechanism devised by Santiago Calatrava for the...
.
Construction began in 1949 under the supervision of Amancio Williams
Amancio Williams
Amancio Williams was an Argentine architect and among his country's leading exponents of modern architecture.-Life and work:...
and was completed in 1953. The house exemplifies Le Corbusier's five points of architecture and incorporates a ramp
Inclined plane
The inclined plane is one of the original six simple machines; as the name suggests, it is a flat surface whose endpoints are at different heights. By moving an object up an inclined plane rather than completely vertical, the amount of force required is reduced, at the expense of increasing the...
and a spiral staircase. The house represents a landmark in Corbusier own trajectory because it exemplifies how cultural and historical characteristics of architecture (the elements of the traditional Latin American courtyard house) can be rewritten using Corbusier's five points of modern architecture. Dr. Curutchet's house is also one of the very few buildings that Corbusier built attached to pre-existing buildings and perfectly responding to a historical context. With this house Corbusier proved, more than with any of his other projects, that modern architecture could in fact be in a harmonious dialogue with traditional architecture.
The house was restored from 1986 to 1988 during the centennial of Le Corbusier's birth and declared a national landmark by Argentina's Commission on National Landmarks. It currently houses the Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
professional association of architects, the Colegio de Arquitectos, and is open to the public for tours.
See also
- Carpenter Center for the Visual ArtsCarpenter Center for the Visual ArtsThe Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building actually built by Le Corbusier in the United States, and one of only two in the Americas...
, Le Corbusier's sole other building in the Americas.