Virginio Colombo

Virginio Colombo (1885–1927) was a prolific Italian architect later active in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Born in 1885 in Milan, Italy, Colombo studied architecture in the Brera Academy under Giuseppe Sommaruga, the city's leading exponent of the Art Nouveau style. A fellow student, Antonio Sant'Elia, later became the number one advocate of Futurism in Italian architecture. During the early part of the 20th century there were many immigrant Italian architects working in Buenos Aires including Francesco Tamburini, who designed the Teatro Colón, Vittorio Meano, who designed the Argentine National Congress, Mario Palanti, who designed the Palacio Barolo, Francisco Gianotti who designed the Confitería El Molino, and Juan Antonio Buschiazzo who made alterations to the Centro Cultural Recoleta and designed the Italian Hospital. Of these architects, Colombo was one of the most active and creative.

He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1906, along with two other Italian architects, Aquiles de Lazzari and Mario Baroffio Covati, with a contract to carry out the decoration of the Palacio de Justicia (the Law Courts). Soon after his arrival in Buenos Aires he became director of a studio and later set up his own, working mainly on projects for private clients, usually wealthy compatriots in business, industry or real estate who bought land for the construction of apartment buildings and shops for rental. These entrepreneurs liked architecture that optimized land use and that was stylistically what some might consider ostentatious and extravagant. Perhaps his most important public work was the designing of two pavilions (Public Celebrations and Postal Service) for the Exposición Internacional del Centenario (1910), for which he was awarded a Gold Medal.

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