Diagnóstico y evaluación de las viviendas en el patrimonio arquitectónico de Mendoza, Argentina

This article presents the analysis and assessment of a specific portion of the architectural production in Mendoza: houses with a great historical value within the metropolitan area of Mendoza, Argentina. As source material, we considered previous research studies, which have enabled us to understand the historical evolution and the different kinds of buildings around the region, as well as some primary information from a project on the architectural heritage of the metropolitan area of Mendoza, recently finished. The analysis and evaluation of the architectural features, possibilities and limits of this set of housing contributes proposing guidelines and in designing strategies which guide the conservation and valorization of this heritage. Regrettably, these architectural master pieces have been lost during the last decade, due to a depreciation of their cultural value and strong pressures from the real estate market. For these reasons, fewer and fewer buildings of this type are kept in place. Historical research has granted an interpretation framework of all the architectural assets which have been classified, allowing us to draw an explanatory diagram of the particular evolution of these constructions: the houses. If History enables us to reconstruct “what it was”, then patrimony enables us to analyze “what remains” at present, as a piecemeal testimony of the historical memory in relation to the different forms of living within a certain social and cultural development of a city and its location in the Northern oasis of Mendoza, in the Center-West of Argentina