Before the tours: how was life in the first house designed by Pelli

The legacy of Caesar Pelli will always be marked by the towering towers that his studio has designed around the world, but not all his works were as impressive. In 1949, at the exit of the University of Tucumán, the architect designed for his in-laws a small house located in the town of Campo Quijano, in Salta, which already bore witness to the desire innovate of Pelli.

Lawyer Augusto Mogrovejo was one of many residents of this house during his 70 years of history. La Salta told him MDZ some curiosities of the house, and a tribute to the architect who was left truncated.

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"I really loved living there, it was a very quiet neighborhood, besides knowing that this house had its charm," said Augusto, who has lived on the property for about two years. About the house itself, he said that the distinctive touch was given by its interior walls, many of which did not reach the ceiling.

"Many of the walls of the house do not reach the ceiling, they divide the rooms, but they were cut about half a meter before," he recalled. The roof, with double glazing on the outside, contained inside a wire mesh and plaster ceiling, which was good for the summer, but not so much for the winter. "It was very difficult to heat," said his former tenant.

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The house was declared municipal heritage and was about to be the scene of a tribute to the great architect. "From the province, they contacted me – even though I was a tenant – to find out if they could use the house to pay tribute to Pelli," Augusto said. At that time, Salta was looking for Cordoba to do a job on San Bernardo Hill, but when that idea fell, the tribute also disappeared.

During the 70 years of its existence, the house designed by Pelli for his in-laws, the Spanish philosopher Clemente Hernando Balmori and the writer Dorothy Ling of Hernando, has undergone many changes and modifications. The most radical was the addition of a spacious gallery by an owner who had a company dedicated to the sale of iron. Elapsed time is also reflected in the technology that can be observed today in the building, which now has a solar hot water tank.

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Pelli died yesterday at the age of 92. The whole world remembers him for his monumental works scattered all over the world, which is all the more impressive as his first project was aimed at a house that, until today, was inhabited by different families.