the INCREMENTAL house

The Unidad Vecinal Portales is a massive housing complex just north of the main bus terminal. I don’t know the exact number of units, but it must approach 1000. It is quite a striking modernist project designed in 1950 by B.V.C.H. (Bresciani, Valdés, Castillo y Huidobro) and was constructed between 1952 and 1956. It has quite a striking variety of buildings, all originally connected through broad walkways and interior streets. In the larger blocks, housing is a variety of one and two story units. In between the blocks are units, designed like rowhouses. Each of these have a front and backyard. These were originally placed under a lot of the walkways, but over the years, these walkways have been closed off and used to create pitched roofs over the homes. It is a very strange experience to be walking along and see the walkway in front of you end in someone’s roof. One of the residents told me that it was because young kids would hang out all night being rowdy and the only wa...

While in Antofogasta, I visited a project called Salar de Carmen. It was designed by Mario Perez de Arce and Jaime Besa in 1959 and encompassed 850 homes. It was very much in the modernist tradition and while originally was a very striking project, has since been transformed into an unrecognizable project, almost blending in with the vernacular of the surrounding neighborhoods. The original design in 1961 1961 and 2008 Additions and Transformations Each of these corners were originally the same design A typical street elevation showing the variety, transformation and progress of the fabric Context today