It struck me how varied the architecture is here. Rich aesthetically. This is a city of 'human scale' akin to the classical european cities such as Paris & Madrid. Yes there is a modern CBD with skyscraper office towers, but they're in a concentrated section of the city only, down along the river toward the passenger port in Puerto Madero.
The founders of the city did an excellent job of planning the layout on a grid system from the start, allowing for an abundance of parks & plazas at regular intervals.
Initially they had simple dwellings, which were replaced by single story homes, known as "p.h." style (which simply means a property that is horizontal.) They built these solid, single-story stone homes based around a communal central courtyard on narrow (single-width) blocks. There is always an internal pathway along the side of the entire length of the building for access to the multiple apartments contained. These homes are very deep & housed all 3-4 generations of the family together. The edifice usually fronts directly onto the footpath, with Mediterranean-style wooden exterior shutters on the windows, with beautiful, simple wrought-ironwork as a security layer. These houses are scattered throughout the city, many in dire need of repair, particularly their antique plumbing & wiring.
The standard building practice was for 10 foot high ceilings & the floors are always marble, often the large black&white diamond shaped tiles in heavy traffic areas. There's usually a fireplace at either end of the house & an exterior stone staircase leading from the courtyard up to a balustraded rooftop terrace. Up on the terrace is where the clothing was hung to dry in the sunshine year round. Many also have their traditional Argentine stone/brick bar-b-que grill up on the terrace with tables & chairs rather than in the courtyard. The few renovated ones are very expensive as "p.h.'s" are very much in demand. There's no off-street parking area of course from that period, so it's street parking only, 1 car length per house.
Yes they're lovely (or so they seem from the outside) & I'd love to convince 'husband' to just look inside some of the renovated p.h. homes but I think that's going to be near to impossible as he's adamant about not wanting a property without an abundance of light which then narrows the choices way down within the renovated selection :(
No comments:
Post a Comment