Clorindo Testa, architect

This unprecedented, 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) -- both in Buenos Aires -- powerful urban megastructures of rough concrete that proposed a dialectical synthesis of public and private space, recalling Le Corbusier and looking ahead to such sixties futuristic movements as the Japanese Metabolists. After this period, Testa's architecture from the late seventies onwards begins to acquire a more reflective, poetically human dimension, exemplified by the Altera Art Gallery (1983) and Testa's own beach house (1983), as well as by larger urban structures such as the Buenos Aires Design Center (1990) and the Colegio de Escribanos (1999). This architectural monograph documents all the aforementioned works -- as well as several other projects -- in full detail, in a richly illustrated format featuring photographs by Hans-Jurgen Commerell, and places Testa's essential work in an international context for the first time.