The School of Architecture recently wrapped up the semester abroad program in Argentina, returning there for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Led by Gustavo Crembil, associate professor of architecture and director of the Latin American program, 14 students spent four months immersed in the culture.

Rensselaer partners with the National University of Cordoba (UNC), a very large public university, for the program. Cordoba is the second largest city in Argentina and the school has a huge presence there, Crembil said.

The program places the Rensselaer students in area that is densely populated with other students. “This gives us two things,” Crembil said. “One is to be in a very intense urban environment. And at the same time, within an environment that is very familiar to them; it’s a part of the city that’s dominated by young people, cafes, and restaurants. They are energized by being there.”

The students worked in the center of  the city that is characterized by arcades and winding passageways developed throughout the 20th century, as the city focused on strengthening its commercial downtown. Today, commerce is moving out of the city center — due to an increasing process of suburbanization and changes in the modes of distribution and consumption — leaving a lot of unoccupied space in the city core.

“They are trying to bring back residential life into this area,” Crembil said. “So we were looking into kinds of alternatives, not traditional solutions, mostly by proposing new residential compounds (so called ‘hyper-villages’) on the top of the existing building blocks and grafting into the existing circulatory and service infrastructure of the pedestrian arcade system.”

UNC hosted a public exhibition at the end of the semester to showcase the work of their students, as well as RPI’s students. They invited local business leaders and decision-makers “not to necessary build them, but actually to see ideas for how the process of the city can change,” Crembil said.

Prior to the pandemic, the School of Architecture had a well-established study abroad program for decades held in Italy, China, India, and Latin America. Rome and Latin America programs have been relaunched, while the programs in Asia are under revision and should be made available to the students as additional cultural immersion options in the near future.

View a slide show of the trip.