The activities of Group R had to do with the promotion of architectural culture and reflection on the profession. for that They summoned representatives from the international scene “who came to Rosario before passing through Buenos Aires,” stand out. The city was different: the Parque España cultural center was under construction and The relationship between the city center and the Paraná River began to be discussed, a long metamorphosis of recovery of riverside public space.
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Ten years of debates
That a city in the interior of the country became the epicenter of calls of that magnitude quickly attracted attention.. “The thing is that the congress exceeded the capacity that we thought it would have,” Fernández acknowledges. The idea of interesting Mario Glusberg in the event and the determined support of the founder of the Art and Communication Center guaranteed the dissemination of what was happening in the city.
“We were a group of friends who got together to talk about our interests“We were not a group that came from the faculty, we had not even been colleagues together,” says Caballero. Yes, on the other hand, they shared some searches regarding the profession.
The year after the congress another series of interventions took place under the name of Group R. Among several, a talk by Emilio Maisonave, a builder of a very important era of local culture, but who due to his age was already distant from academic circles.
In 94, the congress of contemporary Spanish architecture with the presence of in 94 the other congress of contemporary Spanish architecture, with the presence of Oriol Bohigas, and the cycles of conferences that brought together Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish and Argentine emigrated professionals, organized with the participation of the municipality, the college of architects and the architecture faculties of Rosario, Córdoba and Buenos Aires.
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In total, in the ten years in which it was most active, Group R brought together about 70 renowned professionals in the history of architecture in Rosario. Why did they come to Rosario, what was attractive to them? “I don’t know,” Caballero confesses. “No institution represented us, we did not belong to the academy or the school. I think there was something new about coming and doing a first action in Rosario and then arriving in Buenos Aires,” he rehearses.
Pantarotto highlights “the treatment and camaraderie they received here. That didn’t happen anywhere else, in Rosario we gathered 500 people and in Buenos Aires barely 70.”
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With R for Rosario
The R group never had a logo or a founding letter. The name of the group arose a bit as a tribute to group R of Barcelonaa group of professionals, led by Oriol Bohigas, who in the midst of the post-civil war and under Franco’s dictatorship, organized to disseminate their concerns about contemporary art and modern architecture. Also because of Rosario’s initial.
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The truth is that his ten decades of uninterrupted work, “Rossuary began to be on the international agenda. And we also began to look at the architecture of the city,” says Sánchez Hermelo.
For Palumbo, after the first cycles of Hispanic architecture, “We began to call on references from Portuguese, Scandinavian, Dutch, and American architecture, a very interesting melting pot was created. And, as we gathered the background of who had come to Rosario, the call became more reliable for the next guests.”
The footprints
The group’s interventions lasted for ten uninterrupted years. “That, Fernández points out, settles over time and then leaves its mark. For almost a decade, the architectural discussion or debate passed through Rosario as if it were a registered trademark.. To the point that there were groups in Buenos Aires or Santa Fe that were formed based on what was happening in Rosario.”
That continuity and the contributions of those ten years in knowledge and reflection about the discipline, The members of Group R will receive a distinction this Saturday the 12th, on the penultimate day of the Buenos Aires Architecture Biennial.
For the five architects, the experience is inseparable from the Rosario of the 90s. “We were a group of friends, enthusiasts, who wanted to do things and even today from a distance we are surprised by the significance this had. We were triggers, but the entire community of architects who were formed at that time were participants in this whole movement. The city has always had good architecture, like there is good music or good painting, this found something in the culture of the city that was latent and was nourished by that. It found a fair point in Rosario,” they conclude.