Susana Torre

Upon the death of her father when she was eight years old, the family moved to La Plata, near Buenos Aires, where she attended public schools until beginning her studies for the Dipl.

The year before her graduation Torre was selected to represent Argentina at the 1967 International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado and also won a Fellowship from the Edgar Kaufmann Jr. Foundation which enabled her to take a study trip across the US.

Upon her return to Argentina, she established the Design Department of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes in La Plata, the first of any museum in Latin America.

While still a student, Torre designed a six-story apartment building in La Plata for banker David Graiver and also built a small house for herself and her first husband, painter Alejandro Puente, in City Bell.

One of her first projects in New York, the Law Offices of art collector Harry Torczyner,[1] was selected by the American Institute of Architects as one of the seventies’ memorable spaces (AIA Journal, January 1980).

She was the first woman to gain one of the highly competitive public commissions in Columbus, IN, where her Fire Station #5 (described below) is listed in the Whitney Guide to 20th Century American Architecture: 200 Key Buildings.

Her pedagogical approach has stressed the design of buildings as a response to environmental conditions; cultural and physical context; the critical examination of spatial distribution as an embodiment of social hierarchies; sustainable materials and structure; and an esthetics that wove modern transparency and openness with visual metaphors expressive of each project's character.

Her research and writing has focused on women and gender issues, architecture in Latin America; and the presence of collective memory in public spaces.