Mar Del Plata Architecture Overview

The development of the city as a season resort in early 20 century led the upper class tourists from Buenos Aires to built-up an European-inspired architecture, based mainly on the picturesque and later on the art deco styles. This gave Mar del Plata the pompous nickname of the Argentine Biarritz. During the '30s and well beyond the '40s, local architects and builders, like Auro Tiribelli, Arturo Lemmi, Alberto Córsico-Picollini and José Camusso recreated and transformed the picturesque values into a middle-class scale, marking the beginning of the so called Mar del Plata Style, consisting in small samples of the luxury-laden summer residences of the high society, built for the summer visitor as well as for the local resident.

These chalets comprised basically a stone façade, a gable roof covert with Spanish or French tiles, prominent eaves and a front porch. This gives the town some distinctive urban character among the other Argentinean cities, even if the needs of the growing mass of tourists in the '60s imposed large apartment buildings and skyscrapers as the predominant landscape downtown.