A BA Advisory Council now reviews all demo requests for properties built before 1941.
The City of Buenos Aires receives 80 demolition requests per week for old buildings, but that doesn’t mean historic properties are in jeopardy, according to information provided to Clarin by the GCBA Ministry of Urban Development. Clarin’s Pablo Novillo says the construction boom in Buenos Aires and steady stream of demo requests prompted the City to be more proactive in identifying which buildings have historical significance and need to be preserved.
The buildings in question were built before 1941, and Novillo says the City has already identified those properties in Capital Federal with cultural significance, as well as designated 50 Historic Protection Areas such as the Palermo Parks and the Casco Historico in San Telmo and Monserrat. In the last three years alone, the City government has protected more than 3,000 buildings, while the BA Legislature protected another 575 last year alone.
Legislation enacted in 2007 established the process by which the City would evaluate which buildings can and can not be demolished. Now whenever a developer submits a demo request for a property built before 1941, each request is reviewed by a Historic Affairs Advisory Council which approves or denies the request. If denied, the building is added to GCBA’s catalogue of historic preservation properties.
While that catalogue has a growing backlog, Urban Development Minister Daniel Chain says the City of Buenos Aires is close to signing an agreement with the UBA’s Architecture School to get the catalogue completely up to date. (Full Story in Spanish)
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