Alberti´s Andalusian walls, as well as the whitewashed adobe houses of certain villages in central Chile, inspired the dwellings erected on the banks of the Mapocho.
It is a joint project of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the City Council of Lo Barnechea, and the Fundación Agricola y Cultural La Dehesa, united in an effort to erradicate the slums located along the riverbank in the commune of Lo Barnechea, at the northeast end of Santiago.
One of the worst blots in contemporary cities are these fragments of urban destitution in the form of slums deprived of minimally acceptable conditions of dignity and sanitation. Traditionally, housing developments at this level have privileged quantity over quality. As the 21st century dawned, we felt that the longstanding dilemma between esthetic aspirations of social commitment – as though they were antagonistic and mutually exclusive notions – could not be allowed to continue to exist in architecture. Culture and beauty, as much as access to a decent dwelling, are everyone´s right.
Whith a density of 350 persons per hectare, the project involved three – story houses built of brick and concrete, painted white and with an area of 60 sq.m. each. The corners of each block, as well as the long building on the south side of the proyect, are composed of single – level apartments with the same area as the houses.
In this urban project we sought to recover the collective nature of the city, rejecting excessive individualism. We felt that one way to revitalize the surrondings is to reconsider the basic significative of the front as the limit between private and collective space. In the nearness of house fronts, we belive, is where the day-to-day poetry of continuity arises: the neighbors, the street, the neighborhood, the square, the successes and the errors of the city life.
