Mónica Bertolino

Territoy, place, context, resources;
economy of means, challenge to creativity.


Economy of means and use of resources have represented a true fate for our work and experiences in a context crossed by a constant ups and downs.

They certainly carry a permanent challenge to wit; and this prompts us to think that innovation does not lie in what is “strange” or overlooked, but maybe on the different ways we can look at what we usually see, at what surround us.

Thus, understanding and deeply interpreting the complex context, developing comprehensive perception, critical reflection and taking advantage of reality, it becomes strategies to promote processes that allow us to face these challenges.

I understand architecture as a Phenomenon of time, place and context, as well as personal restlessness.

As a phenomenon of time, I refer to Time throughout history and “epochal” Time, that promotes common standards and values. I share the fact that as Latin Americans we are defined more by geography and territory than by history. But the history of our territories, with their marks and scars, opens a unique debate about our own and other’s validation of our cultural production, which has been based on hegemonic models that have defined what is credited and what is not, and where precisely the incidence of our Territory in that production has been absent. The notion of the centre and periphery of the world has accompanied us.

Learning Farm in Capilla del Monte. Sierras de Córdoba. 2008
Pabellón de dulces y pan, Pabellon of animal farm. Concrete structures, that safeguard native vegetation setting aa section which general perimeter resolves with water ditches and a reservoir that it's included in a forestal fire plan of the area. Photo: Carlos Barrado.


As a phenomenon of place and context, I refer to the physical and political, economic and socio-cultural. That is, what frames us and largely determines the problems to be faced, the ways of acting, the ways of buildings; and that also, from our perspective as an architecture studio, operates as a source of reflection and inspiration; that both limits us and stimulates potential searches.

As a personal phenomenon, -as a studio- I refer to the particular concerns that go through Time and Place. To a particular view, we cast upon them.


Territory and Context

Writers and artists offer us views on the territory and context. Provocative and inspiring: the “vastness” and “horizontal vertigo” with which Jorge Luis Borges refers to the Pampa; or the unfathomable condition “outside the anthropometric scope” mentioned by Alejo Carpentier; or the “generous exuberance” and “the land with the origin perfume” of which Juan José Saer speaks. All are qualities of a common identity, not exempt from diversities, where the notions of nature, matter, time, space, beauty, show traits of belonging.

But this Territory, which was also “of utopias and promises”, is also one of “inequalities and imbalances”. In our singular context, we inhabit an “unfinished” landscape, which is built in a slow time of successive crises and stagnations, where spasmodic and equally unfinished gambling episodes appear that many times become ruins before they even existed; as abandoned and empty fragments of old and “fictitious” riches.

This complex panorama forces us to rethink the keys and values on which we act and produce the supports for living in our American/ Latin American continent.

The “crisis”, the “scarcity”, the “unfinished”, the “imbalances”, the “economy” and consequent limitations, among others, alert us to the need to place value on our resources and means, both material and human, seeking better equations to conjugate them. It is from these reflections that we say -as architects- that we are interested in producing being conscious of the territory and context that contains and commit us; in the time that represents us; looking for poetry and opportunities in what surround us, to the sway of fluctuations and constant crises.

Thus, we share the concern of investigating the current production of and from our latitudes, in the planes of thinking, doing, teaching… to enrich the debate and create a fertile climate for the construction of our discourses.

It is in this framework of thought, of experiences and concerns, that we have sought to develop our work with simple technologies, materials and construction methods related to our productive environment, to the available workforce so frequently untrained by the lack of workflow, respecting the memory of the hands and adjusting to low budgets and limitations.

This implied thinking of strategies capable of facing and reverting as a value to the conditions and possibilities of the management, production and construction context of the local work.

Looking, perceiving, and adding value to what surrounds us, forms part of a process in this sense. Seeking to find the keys of beauty, of poetry, following the context; we often say that we seek beauty like dowsing; delving into reality. Perhaps a non-canonical beauty, but one that is glimpsed in the potential of the day to day and affordable.

I quote some work that represents and trigger the reflections expressed. Works in the city and nature with different themes and scales, in which we appealed to maximize resources and available means.

Carekeeper's House. Capilla del Monte. Walls material from demolition, local stone and concrete, exposed concrete structure.

In the City, urban strategies and interventions of various scales. Professional and academic works of participation and social projection where we sought to contribute to the system of public spaces. 

Within the framework of the Municipal management of Cordoba of the mayor Ruben A. Marti, between 1992 and 1999, we participated and promoted a Program for the Creation and Recovery of Public Spaces and an urban green system. Our strategy consisted of conquering Public Space by rescuing empty spaces, remnants of the city’s layout, spontaneous garbage dumps and converting them into spaces for collective living.

With very low budgets, in many of the small interventions, we reused existing and surplus materials from other works, which were available in the Municipal deposit. The recycling and reuse of materials, in this case, had a playful sense related to the purpose of creating spaces for games and sports. But it constitutes a very interesting and necessary field of exploration, with references at a regional and global scale.

1 Repeatable pedestrian walkway. Las Varillas, Córdoba. 2005
The idea of a repeatable metal basket is made of bent iron, with a structural core of iron profiles.

Pedestrian walkway- Ciudad Las Varillas. Within the proposed general strategy which contemplated regulatory aspects, recovery of public spaces and enhancement of heritage buildings, we built this pedestrian walkway to cross a water channel that runs through the city. It materialized in soft iron rods, building a repeated metal basket along the canal. This walkway, as well as pergolas made with the same resource and language, were part of exploration still in force on this material -bent iron- that encompassed objects and structures that incorporate both the concept of “unfinished” as a value and the unconventional use of this material. This technique was also proposed in recent works such as the Headquarters of the Student Federation of the National University of Cordoba (UNC) 2018.




Students' House. Homage to the University Reform of 1918.
Metal pavilion, free plan; Structure of normal profiles and bent iron work. (2018)

Work in public spaces had its transfer to the academic plane, through Social Projection Programs, where we sought to contribute to improving the quality of collective spaces in a destitute neighbourhood, thus strengthening the link between University, city, society and reality. This was achieved through participatory strategies that maximized the use of the material and human resources in the neighbourhood.


For the Botanical Garden of Cordoba (1996-1999) the proposal included the recovery of the land of an old spontaneous garbage dump, to link the natural reserves between a stream and the River Suquia, that runs through the city, forming the “Parque del Infiernillo-Jardin Botanico” as a new link in the urban green system. Conceptually, we understood that architecture had to become the support of a sensory experience through which one could appreciate the natural, the cultivated and the built landscape. A “poverty aesthetic” was proposed as a strategy capable of facing and reverting as a value the conditions and possibilities of management, production and construction context of the local work. Thus, we decided to reduce resources by integrating them into a construction strategy of local technology; where the details bet on the character of the resistant structure and expression of the materials. Natural stone, bare concrete -with board formwork- that exalts its plastic qualities, simple metallic structure and laminated glass for the greenhouse. Natural light becomes a variable of complexity for space and form. A natural ravine was used to propose a water mirror, which receives the building, and as it incorporates aquatic flora and fauna, serves as a regulator of temperature.

Cordoba Botanical Garden. Exhibition halls, Greenhouse, walkway



Córdoba Botanical Garden - Laboratory (1999), herbarium and library building, local stone walls, exposed concrete with slab formwork.

The aim was to associate structure, morphology and language and to value local technologies and means, thinking about the reality and context of belonging


The works in the mountain landscape of Cordoba represented once again the opportunity to re-look and perceive natural context and its singularities and to explore new construction technics with local and recycled materials and local labour.

The Proposal in “44” in Capilla del Monte, consisted of a landscape and architectural intervention with educational, recreational and service programs, within a tourist complex already intervened, belonging to a gas station union. In the technical offices, workshop and warehouses, we decided to reuse the remains of demolitions that were collected in a sector of this large property, for the walls, using formwork of tables to combine the remains of bricks, demolition, local stones and cement.


Workshop and technical offices. Capilla del Monte. Córdoba Mountains. 2005

Walls of demolition material, local stone and concrete.


At the Educational Farm, also located in the mountains, we worked integrating and helping to create a landscape with the nature of the place. We proposed two concrete structures, appealing to the interplay between light and shadow by altering the distances between beams, and leaving open spaces to allow existing trees to pass through. A water perimeter was included employing ditches to delimit this space in the crop canyon. The water contributes to the fresh rumour that is scarce in these places and becomes part of the necessary water storage to fight the fires that besiege this mountain area.



Educational Farm in Capilla del Monte. Sierras de Córdoba. 2008

Simple materials provided in an abstract structure contrast with the natural pique stick structures and the inclusion of adobe kilns. It is thus an abstract and impure whole.

In the case of houses, depending on their location, we use local stones, concrete, brick. The stones, used in various ways, in stonework or masonry or cyclopean concrete, are sometimes combined with fragments of bricks.

In all cases, we seek to improve the equation between material resources and labour. From a position of taking advantage of the minimal, not protected by the impossibility, neither suffocated in a folkloric regionalism as banal as it is inoperative, nor detained in the setback, or trapped in a discourse of poverty as a style. Rather, seduced by the “complexity and contradiction” of our contexts, in a broad sense; aware of time as age and the universal values of the culture.

Perhaps the complexity lies in the deep understanding of the different landscapes, be they social, urban, or natural; of the Landscape as a whole. And to produce the “supports” of our “situated” living.

Today, when reality challenges all the usual, in a dystopian setting foreshadowed in literary and cinematographic fiction where we go from hyper connection to hyper-borders, and the spaces of collective life are in check, it is imperative to rethink our role, and the ways to use resources with an awareness of their finitude, and seek better balances, territory, society, culture, resources, environment.




Córdoba, Argentina
(Spring 2020)