About this talk

Running time: 29 minutes

Miguel Roca, in 14 years of professional practice before 1982, produced over 100 projects, half of them built, the majority in his native Argentina, in the city of Cordoba where he teaches at the National University and where he is Secretary of Public Works for the City Council.

For him, public space is the raw material and basic setting for the life of a city, as evidenced in his transformation of Cordoba. Hitherto a typical Spanish colonial town laid out on an orthogonal grid with central square, cathedral, town hall and river, the centre has been turned by Roca into shaded pedestrian malls, the historic buildings celebrated by projecting their shadows in marble onto the paving in front of them. He has converted the sluggish river into a formal park and he has made visual and physical links between the centre and other restyled urban features - squares, cultural centres, etc. He has given the city a language, an image, a coherence.

The innovative quality of his architecture is equally striking, as can be seen in the branches he has built for the Bank of Cordoba.

Please note that a transcript of this talk is available - please contact us for further details.