Clorindo Testa: Architect

Clorindo Testa: Architect

This unprecedented and comprehensive retrospective of world-renowned Argentine architect Clorindo Testa (b. 1923) covers all the periods of his career, from his early masterpieces to his current work. Testa first made his mark with his designs for the Banco Londres (1960-66) and the Biblioteca National (1961-95) in Buenos Aires--powerful urban megastructures of rough concrete that proposed a dialectical synthesis of public and private space, recalling Le Corbusier but also looking ahead to movements such as the Japanese Metabolists. Testa's architecture from the late seventies onwards acquired a more reflective human dimension, exemplified by the Altera art gallery (1983) and Testa's own beach house (1983), and by larger urban structures such as the Buenos Aires Design Center (1990) and the Colegio de Escribanos (1999). This monograph documents these and several other projects in full detail, with photographs by Hans-Jurgen Commerell, situating Testa's work in an international context for the first time.