When Pablo Güiraldes was working towards his master’s degree in architecture in the late 1990s at Maryland, he was a teaching assistant in an ARCH 400 series course with Brian Kelly. It was around that time that he met architect Bob Allies, who came to Maryland to teach a 600/611 studio as a Kea Distinguished Professor. Allies was principal of a young design firm, Allies and Morrison, and had put together an impressive roster of projects, including the British Embassy in Dublin and a garden at the Tate. Interactions in the Great Space and a lecture by Allies provided inspiration for Güiraldes in guiding his own students. “His architecture blended new and old in a balanced way; very good details and a love of the craft of architecture,” says Güiraldes. “It still does.”
Twenty years later, Güiraldes is finding himself in the professor’s shoes, returning to his alma mater as the 57th Kea Distinguished Professor and lending his wisdom and expertise in multi-cultural urbanism to graduate students in ARCH 700. A native of Argentina, Güiraldes came to Maryland for his own graduate degree in 1996, his wife and three young children in tow. He stayed in the U.S. for seven years, teaching courses at Maryland and working at Torti Gallas before returning to Argentina in 2004. He has worked with a host of clients to inform sustainably-rich, innovative designs throughout the Americas, from walking communities and hotels to the Glaciarium Patagonia Ice Museum in Santa Cruz, Argentina. He served as the National Director for Argentina’s Urban Development and Secretariat of Housing and Habitat for the Ministry of Interior, Public Works and Housing and is currently the general director of urban regeneration for the City of Buenos Aires. Below, Güiraldes talks about the challenges of housing in Argentina, how revitalization and preservation go hand-in-hand and the challenges facing today’s graduates:
You have a long history with housing development in Argentina, starting with single-family house design after college and, more recently, serving as the National Director for Urban Development and Secretariat of Housing and Habitat for the Ministry of Interior, Public Works and Housing, where you sought to improve the state of Argentina’s public housing. What is the housing environment in Argentina like today? What was happening in Argentina, what is still happening, is if you want to do suburban development, you build a gated community. And my commitment was not to participate in that. I didn’t want to build houses or design anything in a gated community. It’s very hard because developers often don’t see how they can create the value if they don’t have those components. On one hand, I was a professional designing the project and on the other I was arguing all the time with them. And it doesn’t help to say, well in America there really aren’t any gated places. So, I started having that debate in the open, writing about it and, at some point, I started teaching about at Torcuato di Tella University in the School of Urban Economics. We need to come up with a way to do mixed income, mixed use, mixed dense development in important places in the cities, because we cannot continue doing it the way we are.
I met a couple of people who had very interesting development projects in some cities and who were open to some experimentation, to trying new things. I was able to design a couple of projects that are mixed income that are being built right now. But the way suburban development is designed and combined [is in] these segmented, gated sections that separate the rich from everyone else. You wouldn’t put a 3,000 square-foot mixed-income housing unit next to a rich person’s house; that’s the way it makes sense in the proforma. But maybe if they lived in downtown Buenos Aires they wouldn’t mind, because the buildings were built a long time ago; they might not even notice. It’s very hard to emulate the layering of a good city in an instant.
Your current professional position is the general director of urban regeneration for the City of Buenos Aires, mainly with respect to historic areas of the city. How do you approach urban regeneration, which is often associated with “new,” in a way that preserves the historic built environment? We work with many different agencies that are involved in preservation, but our office has the professionals with the skills and money to do the actual work. Together, we decide and prioritize which buildings and areas are being renovated. We primarily conduct exterior renovation, mostly public buildings or private ones that are part of a historic street or neighborhood; it’s a facelift in a way, whether its improving building facades or replacing lighting. The way we see regeneration is bringing a neighborhood or street to life. We know there is a will and vocation of people who live there and work there who will be willing partners in creating a better neighborhood, but they don’t have the money to do the renewal. So, we identify these opportunities throughout the city, which is almost the size of D.C., but with a population almost five times as high. Buenos Aires is home to a lot of cultures and social components and we strive to be democratic and inclusive; we work in poor neighborhoods and wealthier neighborhoods. We speak with the businesses and community to identify the components that will be the best investments. Maybe its sidewalks or a shared street, or a combination of building renewal and public space.
What does it look like when its successful? Well, the neighborhood comes to life, security improves, sales in shops go up. We have a department in the city that measures how much more activity is taking place, if new shops are being opened and if real estate is improving. It’s hard to keep track of because there are a lot of factors that can influence that. But in general, it’s a combination of outcomes. It’s a holistic approach but it involves a lot of planning and prioritization.
What’s your biggest challenge? There are a lot of empty buildings in the city, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods. They have a lot of character to them and a lot of potential to welcome people of lower income whose only other option is to rent far away or live in the slums. So, if we could reuse all of those old buildings, we could combine our urban renewal strategy of revitalization of facades and urban space with something happening within the existing fabric. That’s a much harder exercise. But there is a limit to what you can do with urban renewal if you can only work with what’s happening between buildings and not in them. If you can start bringing back some of those buildings, it would have a great economic and social outcome.
You and Professor Matt Bell are leading students this semester on site proposals for two complex sites—one in Largo, Maryland, and one in San Fernando, Argentina. What do you hope students take away from the experience? I think the curiosity they’ve developed for the place and the culture is a great result. The sites have strange and complicated urban structures so the students have to identify the potential, difficulties and promise of the place. I think they have a good understanding of the social and economic problems, at least in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. And, I think, in large part due to Matt Bell’s teaching, they are gaining very strong skills in actual urban design, where they are pulling together different pieces of urban fabric in a coherent way that has some spatial quality. I think the design studio has been recognized for a long time to be one of the best teaching environments. I think architects knew that, then forgot about it, and now we know it again.
What’s something unexpected or surprising that you have encountered teaching this semester? I think their insights are great—they’ve really got it. I think because it’s a very thorough process, they have represented and presented in a very organized way. I don’t think anyone has created a report like this for San Fernando in a long time. I learned a lot from the site by looking at their analysis and I live 20 blocks away from it so I should know it by now!
What’s a challenge that today’s architecture students face entering the profession that you did not see when you were entering practice? Well, it’s a mixed bag, because on the one hand they have many more tools and technology at their disposal for creation and documentation. The stuff they have now, for us would have been a miracle; it’s a blessing. But they face a much more complicated world, environmentally, I would say. The recent agreement of what man is doing to nature, and that we now know, is that we can’t do the crazy things we were doing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when architects ruled the world and could destroy cities and create them from scratch. I don’t think we’re going to do that anymore. There’s a universal agreement that we’re going to work with nature and be more socially aware, more inclusive. Teamwork is very important, as is creativity; not just in design but in presenting ideas, pulling together teams and addressing issues. The agendas are much clearer, but the challenges are much bigger. The basic skills of architects will be more in demand than ever, as long as we continue to work with other experts and be adaptable.