TEN HOUSES: LACROZE MIGUENS PRATI

Established in Buenos Aires in 1975, the architectural partnership of Eduardo Lacroze, Jose Ignacio Miguens and Francisco Prati has undertaken to date a vast and varied range of projects－residential, commercial, institutional－in a wide array of countries in South and Central America. The firm established a practive in New York 1989.

Active in the fields of architectural, interior, and furniture design, the firm has been recognized with a number of distinguished awards, notably the Buenos Aires Biennale CAYC Gold medal and the Sofia, Bulgaria, Interarch Silver Medal, the SCA Annual Architecture Citation, and an AIA Award Commendation in 1993. It also won a number of architectural competitions, most recently the renovation and expansion of the 1906 Stanford White premises of the Argentine onsulate in New York City.

Lacroze Miguens Prati's works are published in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia; they are exhibited in museums and institutions in Buenos Aires (CAYC, Centro Cultural San Martin), Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, New Orleans (Municipal Auditorium, Armstrong Park) and Chicago (Chicago Atheneum). All three principals remain active in the academic world, teaching, lecturing, and writing (Universidad de Buenos Aires, CAYC, Royal Danish Academy, Revista Summa, Arkitekten). Summa, the doyen of Latin American professional journals, devoted a full issue on the firm; the School of Architecture of the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, included the work of Lacroze Miguens Prati in a comprehensive survey of trend-setting, Latin American architecture andthe Italian journal Abitare has prominently featured the firm in its recent review of Argentina's architectural landscape.

Although the bulk of the work is centered on larger scale housing and resort projects, the humble yet resourceful houses in this book fully represent the design attitude prevalent in the firm's architecture; they provide the best examples of how a small－but focused－practice confronts a wide range of design challenges in changing contextual conditions.