Architecture of Argentina

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The Architecture of Argentina can be said to start at the beginning of the Spanish colonisation, though it was in the 18th century that the cities of the country reached their splendour. Cities like Córdoba, Salta, Mendoza, Rosario and also Buenos Aires conserved most their historical colonial patrimony in spite of their urban growth.

The simplicity of the Rioplatense baroque style can be clearly appreciated in Buenos Aires, in the works of Italian architects such as André Blanqui and Antonio Masella, in the churches of San Ignacio, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral and the Cabildo.

Italian and French influences increased after the declaration of independence at the beginning of the 19th century, though the academic style persisted until the first decades of the 20th century. Attempts of renovation took place during the second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, when the European tendencies penetrated into the country, reflected in several buildings of Buenos Aires, such as the Iglesia Santa Felicitam by Ernesto Bunge; the Palace of Justice, the National Congress, and the Colón Theatre, all of them by Víctor Meano.

The architecture of the second half of the 20th century continued reproducing French neoclassic models, such as the headquarters of the Banco Nacional de Buenos Aires built by Alejandro Bustillo, and the Museo Hispanoamericano de Buenos Aires|Museo Hispanoamericano of Martín Noel. However, since the 1930s the influence of Le Corbusier and the European rationalism consolidated in a group of young architects of the University of Tucumán, among whom Amacio Williams stands out. The construction of skyscrapers proliferated in Buenos Aires until the 1950s, when a new generation started rejecting their "brutality", and tried to find an architectonic identity.

This search for identity is reflected in the Banco de Londres building finished in 1967 by Diego Peralta Ramos, Alfredo Agostini, Clorindo Testa and Santiago Sánchez Elía. In the following decades, the new generations of architects incorporate vanguardist styles, and new technics.

In the last years of the 20th century important buildings of high technology have been erected by Argentine architects in the country, such as the Le Parc Tower by Mario Álvarez and the Torre Fortabat by Sánchez Elía, and around the world, most notably the Petronas Towers by César Pelli.