Big Lights: Housing, architecture and the cicle of production of power

Abstract

The modernization of the process of electrical power in Argentina involved public works at different levels: from the construction and expansion of nuclear reactors and thermoelectric power plants conceived as engineering-machines to the planification of the site building facilities and the permanent “permanent villages” for the employees and CEOs as well. The fullfillment of these works often required international expertise an involved the participation of local architectural studies with different professional compositions either by call or contest, whose recurrence in the area supports the hypothesis of a sui geneis specialization developed in the short period that accompanied the process. Some of the projects undertaken (production plants, temporary dwellings and permanent villas) record the architectural needs of the process as an example of the degree of the involved modernization throughout a work period that started with issuance of the preliminar consulting drafts of the El Chocón-Cerros Colorados complex in 1965 and ends with the project for the Villa Permanente Alicurá in 1978, one of the last works for the sector in co-authorship of the Llauró - Urgell Arquitectos office.