Surprise was the word he used Roberto Aisenson to refer to 2024 Trajectory Award of the National Arts Fund (FNA). But there are two others with “s” that enter: symbolic and significant. Because receiving the award from the architecture category in the building of the Museum of Decorative Art, the Errázuriz Palace, is also a recognition made to the measure of its history.
“My father, architect, who put the fundamental stone of this study, always pointed to me to Errázuriz Palace as the best building in the city built in the twentieth century, but in French style. ”
That memory leads him to pedal on a route to the past. A tall in a teenage place to look for a qualifier that portrays José Aisenson. “I had a teacher who talked about chemically pure elements in the National. My father was an architect who exercised the profession and period. He considered that if the architect participated in buying and selling units he was out of ethics. ”
Walk a few kilometers forward and add: “My father let me choose the race. He wanted him to be a doctor. He said that doctors were respected as professionals; Already the architects, no. I started working in the study as a cartoonist when the faculty was still going. The drawing was never my forte. What I liked was to crumble the project. ”
After received, in 1960he debuted in the chair of Ibarlucía as an assistant and “he was quite happy with that.” At the time, he also joined the Borthagaray chair: “I had a certain friendship with Manolo, our boys were friends, their theoretical brilliants attracted me.”
With 30 recently, In 1966, he won the first trip to Europe. He spent four months with his wife and, Upon returning, it impacted fully with another reality. “A few days later, the night of the long canes occurred. I ran out of work that I liked a lot and I was quite depressed several months, until it occurred to me to make another type of buildings. ”
Aisenson, awarded by the National Arts Fund in the Architecture category.He convinced a group of friends to invest. He looked for land and bought one on the street Villanueva between Teodoro García and Zavala. Esa It was his first tower And also, its first development. “I was perfectly aware that it was a type of project for the bourgeoisie. I liked bourgeois life. I would like to live there? That was my criteria. ”
In addition to Use the aspirational in your favorAisenson had “another hitch, not only from marketing but from credibility. If the architect himself lives there it means that it is good. ” But he failed to move to his first offspring because he separated from his wife.
With that building underway, two others also started in Belgrano. From there, he never stopped. Their recognizable concrete and brick buildings seen They were registered in a time. Another differential seal: instead of balcony, the units had a covered terrace.
“My dad was happy with what I did. He was an authentically liberal person. He never pressed me or had discussions for economic issues. But if We argued a lot for architecture. Until, after several towers with my firm, I said: ‘When I bring the project, you can think but I decide.’ And vice versa. I know it didn’t seem bad. I know other cases of children of architects who did not go with the father, ”he throws while pointing out Joseph’s portrait in a prominent place.
“To make a good architecture building, a good architect is needed, but also a good principal,” says Aisenson.In the following decade, the study gave An exponential leap: He went from buildings from 10/12 to 20 floors and 3000 to 12,000 m2. And he continued to grow. Just to name some of his residential or mixed projects of recent times: Le Parc Puerto Madero, Torre Bellini, Le Parcueroa Alcorta, Palacio Bellini, Palacio Roccatagliata, Puerto Pampa, La Palmera, set Los Patos, Concepción Live, Udondo and, Recently, Plata Building. Of course, he also designed all kinds of projects. And developed competitions from The creation of ASN/noise.
In the tour of his professional life (the word is not accidental: once a year he crosses the Atlantic with friends to make a cycling circuit), there are names that are cajones. Carlos Pujals, fellow studio, friend and partner. His uncle Mario Aisenson and Hugo Mitelman, both engineers. The architects José Fiszelew, María Hojman and Javier Hojman, Pablo Pschepiurca, Mario Zito, Alejandro Aisenson (another of his four children) and Rodrigo Grassi. All of them formed the team at different times of the study.
Aisenson acknowledges that nor is prepared to stop working. “I am doing a semi -secret. For me, stop coming to study is an earthquake. ” With almost 89 years (turns next month), he attends weekly meetings with his five partners (José Fiszelew, Pablo Pschepiurca, María Hojman, Alejandro Aisenson, Rodrigo Grassi) and participates in some project discussions.
“At my age, there are things that would have interested me and did not occur. How to have a sailboat, for example. That’s, I accept it. But professional, I am not an architect who has furious to architecture. I have dedicated myself to the study and do good architecture. And while we are not study No. 1, I would say WE ARE IN THE TOP Five”.
The question about what is good architecture is inevitable. “Many of the things that celebrities do not like. I went to Japan a few years ago and there is a lot of flashy but there are also well -made things, with poetry, formidable. ” As an example, he quotes a Viñoly project and the reinvidica because there is another one who does not like. “My fetish was always Aalto. I find it wonderful. And I like Renzo piano although he has his sin. ”
But the overwhelming appointment, which Aisenson calls its maxim, says: “To make a good architecture building, a good architect is needed, but also a good principal”.