Architect and archivist. She designed the three buildings for the Antorchas Foundation in Buenos Aires. She carried out the assessment, adaptive reuse proposal, budget, and equipment study for the completion and commissioning of the National Library in Buenos Aires. She also served as Director of the ARCA Center (Civil Association for the Archive of Contemporary Argentine Architecture) between 1998 and 2002.
Martha Levisman studied at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires between 1952 and 1958, when classes were still held at the Manzana de las Luces. She began her architecture studies with a group of five close friends, including Beatriz Goldestein, Nely Cueitel, and Nora Monreal. As she explained, she had the opportunity to study during a period of transition, with a curriculum and faculty that initially adhered to the Beaux-Arts system, only to experience the full emergence of modernism in Buenos Aires during her final years. This modernism was evident in César Janello's Vision course, Tomás Maldonado's lectures advocating for a comprehensive design program, the formation of the oam group, and the emergence of its members at the school. This culminated in actions like "pico y pala" (pick and shovel), through which they sought to signal the end of the Beaux-Arts model by staging the destruction of the building. Her professors included not only Manolo Borthagaray and Francisco Bullrich, but also pioneering female architects like Odilia Suárez and Enriqueta Méoli.
She was so deeply influenced by the modernists, especially Borthagaray, that she nearly left her studies in Buenos Aires to move to Rosario—where the professor had started a new architecture school—to finish her degree. However, around that time, she met her future partner, husband, and father of her three children, Gerardo Clusellas (1929–1973), a member of the oam group, and ultimately decided not to move.
In 1957, she approached César Janello, interested in his course: "When I went to see him, he told me: join the department, but I don't want you to be my student, I want you to be my teaching assistant." Around the same time, she also became a teaching assistant for Wladimiro Acosta's architecture course, thanks to her friend Justo Solsona, who was already teaching there. She remained in this position until she became pregnant: "Wladimiro told me: don't even think about coming to my class with that belly, so I left."
Her relationship with the university was intermittent, disrupted—as was often the case—by the country's political instability. She served as head teaching assistant for Introduction to Architecture and first-year studio in the department led by architect Alfredo Ibarlucía between 1963 and 1966. She was an Adjunct Professor of Building Construction for first- and second-year courses in the department of Architect Mario Tempone between 1972 and 1974. With the return of democracy, she returned to FADU in 1984 as a Full Professor attached to the Academic Secretariat, in charge of Cultural Events, and between 1989 and 1991, she was a Full Professor attached to the Dean's Office, responsible for research and exhibitions related to the "Historical Memory of FADU."
Between 1998 and 2002, she served as Director of the ARCA-FADU Center, the Civil Association for the Archive of Contemporary Argentine Architecture, which was established in 1982 with the donation of architect Alejandro Bustillo's document collection. In 2002, the agreement with UBA ended, and since 2012, the Bustillo and Bullrich archives have been donated to the Library of the Torcuato Di Tella University.
She pursued continuing education in two main areas. The first was historic preservation: in 1987, she studied at the Getty Conservation Institute and the Institute of Conservation and Restoration in Churubusco, Mexico, where she conducted research for the establishment of the Workshop for the Restoration of Argentine Colonial Painting. Later, in 1995, she received a grant from the Antorchas Foundation to study at the Scuola di Restauro at La Sapienza University in Rome. Her second area of expertise was archival science. She studied at Columbia University and, in 1990, proposed a model for establishing an architectural drawings archive for the City of Buenos Aires. This work led her to participate in international conferences of the ICAM, International Confederation of Architectural Museums, in various cities: New York in 1996, Edinburgh in 1998, Rio de Janeiro in 2000, Vienna in 2002, Venice in 2004, and Paris in 2006.
In 1989, at the request of the Argentine Presidency, with the support of library science specialist Dr. Zelia Zaher and under the auspices of UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor Zaragoza, she was commissioned to complete the National Library. To do so, she conducted an assessment, developed an adaptive reuse proposal, prepared a budget, and conducted equipment studies for the building's completion and commissioning. This required redrafting lost plans and making adjustments to the original design. However, she was ultimately unable to supervise the construction as initially planned.
Levisman had previously participated in the design competition in collaboration with Justo Solsona, but personal reasons ultimately forced her to withdraw. As a practicing architect involved in design and construction, she began her career in partnership with her husband, Gerardo Clusellas. Their primary client was the Allende & Brea law firm, a professional relationship she maintained even after his death.
She considered the three institutional projects she undertook for the Antorchas Foundation to be the most significant of her career, serving as pioneering examples of restoration, preservation, and adaptive reuse in Buenos Aires. Between 1984 and 1985, she completed the first of these: the Antorchas Headquarters, housed in an 1850 Mihanovich family residence and warehouse in the San Telmo neighborhood.
All structural elements were disassembled and repaired, windows and doors were stripped and repainted, offices were furnished, and the encaustic cement tiles were remade using the original patterns; the building consistently provided elements of its historic past to guide the reproduction.
The second project was the TAREA Foundation, completed in 1987. Located in the Barracas neighborhood, it was a workshop for restoring Argentine colonial paintings housed in a building originally constructed as an industrial workshop and warehouse in 1926. This was the first historical painting restoration center in South America. The model for this project aimed to emulate the efficiency of institutions like the Getty or the Accademia in Venice. The Antorchas Board of Directors committed significant effort to achieve optimal results, consulting specialists from Europe and the Americas and sending Martha to study spatial and equipment specifications at the Getty in Los Angeles and the Churubusco Center in Mexico. The third project, completed in 1991, was the expansion of the Antorchas Foundation headquarters, primarily designed to house a photographic archive.
In the 1970s, she formed a friendship with architect Alejandro Bustillo (1889–1982), who bequeathed his archive to her during his lifetime. From this collection, Levisman curated her first exhibition in 1982 at "La Escuelita de los Arquitectos," titled Alejandro Bustillo, Architect. This was the foundational archive that led to the creation of ARCA. She continued to work with these materials, organizing exhibitions and cataloging them, as well as publishing two books on his work: Bustillo: Un Proyecto de Arquitectura Nacional (2007) and Bustillo en Patagonia (2010). In 1989, she curated the exhibition Homenaje a Le Corbusier, 60 años después (Homage to Le Corbusier, 60 Years Later) at FADU, with contributions from Jorge F. Liernur, Anahí Ballent, and Pablo Pschepiurca, among others.
Her most recent exhibition was Diseño Argentine de Autor: Sillas (Argentine Designer Chairs), featuring chairs designed and produced in Argentina between 1932 and 1955, showcased at the PROA Foundation in 2013. Related to this exploration of the origins of modern industrial design in Argentina, by early 2015 she had prepared a book documenting the history of the studios, groups, and companies that shaped the country's modern design—a work we hope to see published soon.
She passed away in Buenos Aires in 2022.
* Text by Zaida Muxí, courtesy of Un Día | Una Arquitecta
This article was written by Zaida Muxí. The translation is powered by AI.
