Tribute to Fina Santos

Josefa Santos, Fine for everyone, died on August 30, at the age of 93. Architect, graduated from the University of Buenos Aires in 1956, she developed her professional life linked to the MSGSSV studio. Her extensive production was recognized with a Konex Architecture Award (1982-1986) and the SCA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.

Fina was one of the founding partners from the Florida and Paraguay study, together with Justo Solsona, Flora Manteola and Javier Sanchez Gómez. “She was unbeatable as an architect.” We learned from her the art of planning, of organizing a plan according to a program,” Solsona remembers her.

They had met in the entrance course to the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, and they went through the entire degree together. After 60 years sharedFina’s absence hurts and excites. Solsona defines her as “obsessive in resolving issues,” and highlights “her ability to face problems when it is necessary to move from the plane to reality.”

In 1957, the former classmates won the First Prize in the national competition of social housing Torres in la Bocafor Banco Hipotecario, together with Ernesto Katzenstein and Gian Peani as part of the Architecture and Planning Group.

The competition vocation was already emerging when in 1962 they took 2nd place in the competition for the new National Library. By then, recent graduates Flora Manteola and Javier Sánchez Gómez were already part of the team.

“From a professional point of view Fina was a pioneer, an example for female architects. She and Odilia (Suárez),” acknowledges Manteola. And, agreeing with Solsona, she assures that “somehow she was a teacher for all in the studio.”

In fact, Fina was Manteola’s teacher at the college, an activity that she discontinued to give space to her participation in institutional politics. He was part of the Board of Directors of the Professional Council of Architecture and Urban Planning (1988-98), of the Central Society of Architects, of the SCA Jury College and of the relations commissions between the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires, and the Architecture and Urban Planning Councils, and the Civil Engineering Council.

“He knew how to face each problem, he went to the front no matter how complicated, tense or difficult it was. Clients loved her because she spoke clearly to them.from the front,” Manteola highlights of her colleague, whom she remembers as “very companionable and quite hermetic as well.”

In 2017, Néstor Otero interviewed Fina for Modern Buenos Aires (interview is available there). Going through her professional history, Fina recalled her time at a faculty “with a certain degree of conflict” due to the “change in the teaching system from one of classical architecture to one of more contemporary architecture.” And she assured: “I was very happy in college“I liked everything.”

He also remembered that, like all young studios, they had “a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of desire and perhaps at that moment there was no concern, the uncertainty of the future.” And he felt that they were like “coursemates who got together to do faculty assignments, with the eventuality of doing projects that came to us from friends, from acquaintances.”

In the back and forth with Otero, Fina reviewed some works. “We had the opportunity to work for the Municipal Bank (1968). Their president had just taken over, he wanted to do something new. He had purchased a building from a major store and hired us for the remodeling, with complete freedom of action.”

“I would say that this is where the professional activity of the group begins. The ideas that we had been having in the projects here became concrete. There arises the use of a material that we could consider unusual for a bank, building with glass bricks. From that sample the possibility of make a glass box”.

At the same time, the studio won the competition for the UIA. “We proposed a contemporary building, a glass tower that won first prize and was the first to be completed,” he recalled. It was our first work and the largest one in which we were able to realize ideas.”

The challenge was enormous: “Young people have many ideas but you have to have the opportunity to make them concrete. We intervened in the construction project with little experience in buildings of that type, it was an achievement. It made us braver in the possibility of having our own ideas and making them concrete.”.

The torre Prourban It was another milestone. “We didn’t really have the idea of ​​a curtain wall to solve the façade. In a meeting with the engineer, who really wanted to do it as an image of modernity, Solsona approaches and says ‘why don’t we do a concrete curtain wall?’ And that’s how the idea came about!

“The most interesting thing about the job is when you present a proposal and it causes astonishment. I don’t know if I like it or not, but it’s unexpected,” she considered at another time.

The marca MSGSSV had variations in the last letter. First, the “V” corresponded to the participation of Rafael Viñoly and currently it is Damián Vinson who adds it.

“Fina taught school with her tenacity, excellence and responsibility. A demanding person also with himself, capable of expressing affection in a sober but at the same time warm way,” Vinson writes.

“I remember her working, embroidering the plants in a much more integral sense than mere functionality or sizing; going to meet the function with habits, customs and understanding the scenes, as if giving life to the characters that inhabit the plane, imagining, animating the program”.

“I remember her recommending a book or a play to me and, when I come back to this, I think that when working with the plants there was in her something like a craft of staging life and activities to which architecture gives space and context”.

Carlos Salaberry, who was part of the studio for 48 years (and added an S to the acronym), also recognized Fina as one of his teachers at the presentation of the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Central Society of Architects.