Architecture, Cultural Heritage, and Landscape. Jorge Silvetti will lecture at Fundación Proa’s auditorium

The renowned architect Jorge Silvetti will present “Architecture, Cultural Heritage, and Landscape” on Wednesday August 5th at 7 pm, at the auditorium. This is a joint endeavor of Summa+ and Fundación Proa.

“Architecture, Cultural Heritage, and Landscape” brings together a series of projects developed by the firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, located in Boston. Given the variety of cultures and historical places of high patrimonial value in which the firm has intervened, this presentation turns out to be an excellent opportunity to analyze the resources employed.

Fernando Diez, Editor in Chief of the magazine Summa+, states that “In cultural heritage projects, architectonic and urban design interventions call for a mediation between culture, landscape, and the demands of contemporary programs. Issues in which Silvetti’s work represents a point of reference worldwide.”

Jorge Silvetti
Partner, Machado and Silvetti Associates

Jorge Silvetti was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his diploma in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires and completed his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he got his Master of Architecture degree. He founded Machado and Silvetti Associates together with Rodolfo Machado in 1974. Since then, the firm has developed special expertise in Art Museums, educational institutions, and urban design and planning worldwide.

Mr. Silvetti has taught architecture in different institutions and universities. From 1995-2002, he chaired the Department of Architecture at Harvard, where he continues to teach.

In addition to his architectural practice, Mr. Silvetti has served as a juror for the Pritzker Architectural Prize since 1996, and in 2000 he became a juror for the Mies van der Rohe Prize for Latin American Architecture.

Machado and Silvetti Associates’s designs have been published in all major international professional magazines and displayed in numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Biennale di Venezia, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., the 1984 I.B.A. Exhibition in Berlin, and at the XVII Triennale di Milano.

Amongst the most recent projects of the firm, the renovation and expansion of The Getty Villa, in Malibu, California stands out. It consisted of a remodeling of the existing J. Paul Getty Museum (a re-creation of the Villa dei Papiri, a first-century Roman country house) to create a new home for the Getty’s permanent collection of antiquities of Ancient Greece and Rome. The project of Bowdoin College Museum of Art, in Maine can be highlighted as well.

Nowadays, Mr. Silvetti is working on other important projects such as: The Dartmouth College Visual Arts Center in New Hampshire; the Arts Complex and Gymnasium for Shady Hill Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachussets; New York University’s Center for Student Religious Affairs in New York; Beirut Citadel Square, Lebanon; the restoration of the great Oasis of Al Ain, in Abu Dhabi; the Master Plan for the Cultural Campus of Al Ain city, in Abu Dhabi that includes: the projects for the National Museum of Al Ain, the International Research Center for Islamic Music, the Tourist Center, and the Souks of Al Ain.

More about Jorge Silvetti: www.machado-silvetti.com