The Rodolfo Machado & Jorge Silvetti Collection

Background

Rodolfo Machado was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1942 and is a citizen of the United States, where he has resided since 1968. Rodolfo received his Diploma in Architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1967. During the academic year 1967-68 he studied urban design at the Centre de Recherche d’Urbanisme, in Paris, France, and in 1971 he received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jorge Silvetti was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he received his diploma in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires in 1966. He continued his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Master of Architecture degree in 1969 and pursuing postgraduate work in the area of architectural theory and criticism until 1973. Jorge formed a practice with Rodolfo Machado in 1974, formally incorporated in 1985.

Practice

Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti’s architectural and urban design work includes proposals of diverse scale and nature: from houses to art museums, educational institutions, and urban design and planning projects worldwide (their work is situated in the cities of Berlin, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Palermo, Frankfurt, Pamplona, Rome, Seoul, Singapore, Venice, Vienna, and major cities in the United States). Their work has been extensively published in international professional journals and has been displayed in numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Most notably, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Biennale di Venezia, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., the 1984 I.B.A. Exhibition in Berlin, and at the XVII Triennale di Milano. Four monographs have been published about their architectural practice: Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti: Buildings for Cities (1990), Casas 40: Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti (1995), Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti (1995), and The Work of Machado and Silvetti = La Obra de Machado and Silvetti (2018). Among their early seminal writings are “A Taxonomy of Environmental Significant Practices” by Rodolfo Machado (University of California at Berkeley, 1970); and “The Beauty of Shadows” by Jorge Silvetti (Oppositions 9, 1977).

Teaching

Rodolfo Machado taught at Carnegie-Mellon University and at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he chaired the Department of Architecture from 1978 until 1986 when he became a member of the Harvard University faculty as a Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design. He chaired the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD from 2004 to 2009. He was Jean Labatut Professor of Urbanism at Princeton University, Thomas Jefferson Professor in Architecture at the University of Virginia, Bishop Professor of Architecture at Yale University, and Smith Professor of Architecture at Rice University. Jorge Silvetti has taught architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University since 1975, where he was appointed Professor of Architecture in Design and Design Theory in 1983. He is now the Nelson Robinson, Jr. Professor in Architecture Emeritus. He was Director of the Master of Architecture program from 1985 to 1989 and was named Nelson Robinson, Jr. Professor of Architecture in 1990. From 1995 to 2002 he chaired the Department of Architecture at Harvard, where he continues to teach. He has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie-Mellon University, the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, the University of Palermo, Sicily, and Nihon University, Tokyo.