El proceso proyectual en la vivienda latinoamericana, siglos XX-XXI

This reflection article explores diverse design processes related to the Latin American single-family housing during the 20th and 21st centuries. Such a typology is one of the most constant throughout history, maintaining almost unchanged its essentials, namely, spaces where family gather together, services at different scales and resting areas. In contrast, its language and meaning has varied through types that express the spirit of the times and the spirit of place, evidencing how owners and each epoch’s power game are determinant factors for innovations. Housing helps to build and shape every region’s identity, manifesting also our culture’s mestizo nature and concepts of the landscape it occurs in. It thus reflects tensions between what is local and global, present and future. Amongst centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, flowing from the authentic to the unlimited, the constructions are close to the conceptual and formal hybridity of Latin American design, characterized by the enormous wealth that lies in its multiform physiognomies.