Amancio Williams Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Amancio Williams (1913-1989) was an Argentine architect whose work joined modern architecture with engineering and research. His best-known building, the Bridge House in Mar del Plata, built for his father, the composer Alberto Williams, spans a stream on a single concrete arch. Many of his most ambitious ideas, from hospitals of thin concrete shells to an airport on the River Plate, remained projects, but they made him a reference for generations of architects.

Engineering, aviation and architecture

Williams was born in Buenos Aires in 1913, the son of the composer Alberto Williams. He studied engineering, trained as a pilot and only later turned to architecture, graduating from the University of Buenos Aires in 1941.

The Bridge House

The Casa sobre el Arroyo in Mar del Plata (1943-1946) lifts a long, glazed box over a stream on a curved concrete slab, so that the house becomes the bridge and the landscape runs beneath it. It was declared a national historic monument and has been the subject of restoration efforts.

Le Corbusier and the projects

Williams admired Le Corbusier and directed the construction of the Curutchet House in La Plata, Le Corbusier’s only building in Latin America. His own projects included hospitals for Corrientes, a hall for visual and sound performance, an airport over the River Plate and a vaulted shell structure he developed over decades.

Archive and legacy

He died in Buenos Aires in 1989. His archive is held by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, which has published new studies of his work.