Floralis Genérica, Steel sculpture in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Floralis Genérica is a sculpture in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Buenos Aires, Argentina, made from polished stainless steel. The six petals rise about 20 meters above the ground and rest on a central stem anchored in a shallow reflecting pool.
Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano designed the flower and donated it to the city in 2002 as a symbol of hope and renewal. The mechanical system comes from aerospace engineering and was implemented by a local industrial company.
Catalano named it from "flora" and "genus": a flower standing for every flower in the world. The plaque on the low wall quotes his line that at night it will slowly gather its petals to sleep under a sky with or without stars. The four nights it stayed open were 25 May, 21 September, 24 and 31 December.
The sculpture rises from a reflecting pool 44 m across in the four-hectare Plaza de las Naciones Unidas park, on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta. Paths circle the pool at varying distances, giving changing views of the petals. The hydromechanical opening and closing mechanism was disabled after the 2023–2025 restoration, so the flower now stays permanently open.
The petals were closed for good after the 2023–2025 restoration: the hydromechanical system that opened and closed them was disabled because it had been out of service for years and had no safe operating guarantee. Two petals collapsed in the storm of 17 December 2023; each weighs about 3.5 tonnes and was repaired in Baradero, returning by barge down the Paraná and the Río de la Plata.
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