Somewhat by coincidence I ended up going to La Plata. My flight from Buenos Aires was the next day and I found Buenos Aires itself not that interesting on my previous day’s exploration to warrant one more day of sightseeing. Given I had a spare day left I figured I might as well take a look at another building of Le Corbusier’s oeuvre, Casa Curutchet.

I had been to two inscribed sites before: his buildings in the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart and the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno, Tokyo. Both failed to impress. I would not want to live in either of his buildings in Stuttgart, the hallways narrow, grey a predominant color and the furniture off putting. The museum, meanwhile, makes art look bad, grew quickly too small for its collection and fails at simple things such as providing adequate restrooms for visitors or a proper entry and ticket area.

Don’t call me a Le Corbusier fan. Indeed, you can go to the forum and you will find a heated discussion between me and meltwaterfalls on the subject at the time of the inscription. I still stand by most of what I wrote. But I had to revise my opinion upward after seeing the marvelous and breathtaking Casa Curutchet in La Plata.

When I entered the building it quickly came together: Plenty of space, a full grown tree in the middle of the building, nested layers, a huge sun protected terrace/balcony, great furniture as well as the signature spiral stair case and the ramp. The building also works on a practical level, i.e. I would love to live there. The kitchen is nice as are the bath rooms. Finally, the building has a distinct Latin-American touch. I felt reminded of Casa Luis Barragan in Mexico City due to the use of wood and the predominant white colors.

I thought a little bit about why I enjoyed this building so much more than the other two. Obviously, my expectations were low, but I don’t think that’s the reason. To me it comes down to:

• Constraints: Unlike the other two buildings I saw, Casa Curutchet is not a stand alone one. It has neighboring buildings to the left, right, and back, so the space available was limited. Also, the urban plan of La Plata was fixed and the design had to fit the surroundings. An artist having free reigns will not always yield the better result.
• Amancio Williams: The supervision of the construction was done by a Argentinian architect, Amancio Williams. I do think that he deserves credit for taking Le Corbusier’s vision and implementing it. The timeless furniture was done by him. And several of the small innovations were approved by Le Corbusier, but proposed by him, e.g. the use of wood for the floors and rails.

Looking at the two points makes you wonder, if Le Corbusier’s success wasn’t a detriment to the quality of work he delivered. Maybe, he should have always outsourced the task of implementing his visions into actual buildings to a second architect taking care of those pesky details. Maybe, he should have always been constrained to tiny plots of land in an existing urban plan instead of the green fields most of his buildings were constructed on.

In a way Casa Curutchet also shows the pitfalls of a serial nomination. It seems a bit unjust to label this as Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre exclusively, seeing Amancio Williams played a key part in making this great.

Getting There

• Weißenhofsiedlung: Bus or walk from Stuttgart city center. It’s a bit of a climb.
• National Museum of Western Art: In walking distance of Ueno Station.
• La Plata: Connected by bus from Buenos Aires (1,5h).

Notes

• La Plata itself is yet again a tentative site for Argentina due to it being the first planned city in South America. After walking from the bus station to Casa Curugnet and being nearly run over repeatedly, I have a hard time seeing the great planning efforts.
• The collection of the National Museum of Western Art is rather poor I have to say.