By Léa Namer

In 1949 the construction of the Sexto Panteón, an underground necropolis containing 150,000 burial plots, was launched. This monumental brutalist-style cemetery is the first and largest experimentation of modern architecture applied to the funerary field, and yet it remains relatively unknown. Ítala Fulvia Villa (1913–1991), the project’s architect, was one of Argentina’s first female architects and urban planners, a pioneer of South American modernism who also contributed to Le Corbusier’s master plan for Buenos Aires. In Chacarita Moderna – The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires, French architect Léa Namer rediscovers the necropolis through an in-depth investigation and feminist re-reading of this unique site and its creator.