The Project of a Vertical City: Conjunto Rioja

Abstract

Conjunto Rioja (1969-1973) is built in a period in which the morphological aspect of the buildings is addressed with a view to recreating the skyline-inherent diversity in the existing city and recovering the subjective aspects of the house as a material and social representative object. This case, in which formal variations of diverse nature are investigated and exhibits characteristic elements of the innovations in architecture-applied structural engineering, accounts for the re-elaboration of ideas in relation to commitment to a vertical city, with blocks in height and with a high residential density, associated with the notion of systems architecture, as a project methodology. Its emergence must also be understood in the context of the developmental policies promoted by the Alliance for Progress program, which promote raise of the standards of housing design and the replacement of spontaneous housing with modernized housing.

The purpose of this report is to reconstruct the network of relationships between developmental policies, the ideas that circulate in the field of architectural culture, and the programmatic, formal, and constructive aspects of an emblematic case in which a celebratory aesthetic of technology is exposed.