Public works: Building a Monument to Modern Buenos Aires

This paper closely reads the Obelisk in the context of the public works projects under construction at the time of Buenos Aires's fourth centennial in 1936. The projects to modernize the city, dating even from before the turn of the century, had indelibly changed its form, extending its paved arteries out and around the city limits and connecting distant parts of the city by subway. Previous writing on the Obelisk has privileged closed thinking about the monument from its viewing platform at its tip. I proposed instead a perspective that arises from below, starting with its subterranean and street-level spaces. Considering the Obelisk in the context of its contemporary monumental infrastructures and in juxtaposition to Barthes' writing on the Eiffel Tower allows for an assessment of its currency as a symbol that is sustained by the many quotidian actions that occur around it. Although there were concrete figures behind its establishment in the city, continued engagement with the monument by a host of organizations and individuals have brought it forward as a way of seeing and envisioning the future of Buenos Aires.