Architect and urbanist ahead of her time

Italia Fulvia Villa (1913 - 1991) is one the first female architects of Argentina. She graduated in 1935 from the School Of Architecture of the University of Buenos Aires which was then part of the Physical and Natural Sciences Faculty. In 1937 she participated in a European study trip with fellow graduates like future founders of Grupo Austral - an avant garde group of architects inspired by modernism - Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan. Ferrari Hardoy and Kurchan later stayed in Paris and worked in Le Corbusier’ studio, assisting him in the Buenos Aires Director Plan (1937).

Italia Fulvia Villa, from Buenos Aires, positioned herself as the Argentinian link with the Le Corbusier team and shared with her colleagues the necessary research and documents for the capital’s plans.

“Y total cada vez más hay que pensar que hay que moverse y que hacer algo y poner algo de nosotros mismos para tratar de iniciar un movimiento de reacción contra los mismos jóvenes que tienen el alma vieja, que necesitan impregnarse de conceptos “modernos” no solo en las formas artísticas sino en la misma vida! ”

Carta de Itala Fulvia Villa a Juan Kurchan y Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, 1938. Cortesia Gonzalo Fuzs.

Urbanism was for her an essential discipline and she was a student of one of the firsts Argentinian urbanists, engineer Carlos Maria Della Paolera. Maria Della Paolera worked in the State’s offices, directly implicated in the conception of the city. In 1945, his proposal elaborated with Horacio Nazar for the development of the Bajo Flores won the first prize of the VI Architecture Exhibition.