Carlos Thays
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| Carlos (Charles) Thays | |
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| Born | August 20, 1849 Paris, France |
| Died | January 31, 1934 Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Carlos Thays (August 20, 1849 – January 31, 1934) was a French-Argentine landscape architect.
[edit] Biography
Carlos Thays was born Charles Thays in Paris, France in 1849, and was a landscape architect, a disciple of the famous French landscape architect Édouard André. Carlos Thays arrived to Argentina in 1889, and became so enamored with the young country that he decided to spend the rest of his life there. Not long after moving to Argentina he began working as a landscape architect principally in Buenos Aires, and was named Director of Parks and Walkways for the city of Buenos Aires in 1891. This position gave him much power over the design of the city's open spaces, and his legacy is still strongly felt in the city's open spaces today.
Major projects included tree-planting along streets, remodeling and designing public plazas and walkways as well as designing completely new parks and expanding older ones. Major parks and plazas particularly influenced by Thays in the city of Buenos Aires are the parks Centenario, Lezama, Patricios, Barrancas de Belgrano and the plazas Constitución, Congreso, and Mayo. Thays' French background is reflected in many of his designs--it is for good reason that Buenos Aires parks and plazas are sometimes compared to similar designs in Paris.
In 1896 He designed the Parque San Martin.
One of Thays' largest undertakings was the Bosques de Palermo, a sweeping area of open land covering several square kilometers filled with thousands of trees, flowers, many fountains, and monuments in the barrio of Palermo. Another pet project of his was the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden, which was completed in 1898.
Thays worked most extensively in Buenos Aires precisely at a period in the city's history where it was growing extremely fast as a result of immigration, especially from Spain and Italy. It is often noted that had Thays not insisted on high standards of design and frequent open spaces, many of the city's current open spaces would probably not be so. While Thays worked heavily in Buenos Aires, through the years he also worked on many civic projects in other areas of Argentina and Uruguay.
Thays died in Buenos Aires in 1934.
