The Mar del Plata style (, or ) is a vernacular architectural style very popular during the decades between 1935 and 1950 mainly in the Argentine resort city of Mar del Plata, but extended to nearby coastal towns like Miramar and Necochea. Origins The style is also often associated in Argentina with the californiano ("Californian"), another vernacular type of house close connected with the American Mission Revival style. Mar del Plata style's features, however, are more related to the older, Mar del Plata's picturesque architecture, an eclectic style already popular among the upper-class people who used to spend summertime in this resort city between 1885 and 1945, and to the American Craftsman style. The precursor of the style was the Italian-born architectural engineer Alula Baldassarini, who popularized the use of stone on the frontispieces in 1925. Some of this early examples were labeled chalet inglés ("English chalet"), a type of bungalow or cottage which flourished between 1925 and 1935. Baldassarini also developed a cladding technique known as bastón roto ("'broken stick"), which consisted in rectangular stone bricks irregularly arranged on vertical and horizontal joints. At the beginning of the 20th century, the upward social mobility was quite more dynamic in Mar del Plata than in Buenos Aires itself, paving the road for a strong middle class, based on tourist services, the building industry and a prosperous commerce. It was during this time that a new urban profile was born in the city, not by a process in which guidelines were designed by technocrats, but by a "democratic" one. By the decade of 1940, the construction sector was regarded as the main industry of Mar del Plata. This is the environment in which the Mar del Plata style emerged. The chalet marplatense became the materialization of the middle-class ideals, and it is at crossroads between the upper-class summer picturesque residences and the domestic scale, regarding both its social and architectural syncretism. The houses also developed among the immigrants a sense of belonging to their new country. The rise of the style broke the hegemony of Buenos Aires within Argentina's architectural scene. Features The chalets were at first the production of builders with a great experience in the building of eclectic style mansions for summer, but without the skills of a real technician. Nonetheless, the first generation of architects and architectural engineers from Mar del Plata, led by young professionals like Auro