Material quality in organic architecture. The building for the Faculty of Architecture of Mendoza by Enrico Tedeschi

Alongside the theoretical flourishing of an organicist architectural trend around the concept of space, promoted since the mid-1940s by some Italian architects, a parallel line of research developed the path of biostructures as support systems integrated into the envelope. In Argentina, both sides had experimentation channels during the 1950s, and a case that uniquely condenses the maturity of those proposals is the building of the Mendoza Faculty of Architecture, designed by Italian architect Enrico Tedeschi between 1960 and 1964. The project explores systematicity, constructive rationality and organicity, rejecting material neutrality in favour of the exploration of a tactile field in which the limits of space are perceived blurred by effects of shadows, transparencies and dynamism accompanying a soft naturalistic mimesis. © 2020 Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra. All rights reserved.