Architecture as fluid technology. The housing blocks by Corporación de la Vivienda of Chile

ABSTRACT

In a general sense, architecture and technology articulate two modes of evaluation of objects and built environments; however, are there conditions that allow us to consider architectural works as technologies? This paper explores this possibility by analyzing bibliographic, documentary, and planimetric information on housing blocks developed by the state agency, Corporación de la Vivienda (CORVI), between 1953 and 1974. Using Process Tracing as a method of analysis, milestones were identified that showed the ways in which the design and production of this typology were influenced by a regime of values based on the idea of rationalization, and that the heterogeneity of its cases showed flexibility and adaptation to the ways of calculating and realizing this value. The conclusions address the causality observed between value and typology in this case, and suggest that this behavior expresses a technological condition of architecture.

RESUMO

Em um sentido geral, a arquitetura e a tecnologia articulam dois modos de avaliação de objetos e ambientes construídos, mas existem condições que nos permitem considerar as obras arquitetônicas como tecnologias? Este artigo explora essa possibilidade por meio da análise de informações bibliográficas, documentais e planimétricas sobre edifícios residenciais desenvolvidos pela agência estatal Corporación de la Vivienda (CORVI) entre 1953 e 1974. Usando o traçado de processos como método de análise, foram identificados marcos que mostraram as maneiras pelas quais o projeto e a produção dessa tipologia foram influenciados por um regime de valores baseado na ideia de racionalização e que a heterogeneidade de seus casos mostrou flexibilidade e adaptação às maneiras pelas quais esse valor foi calculado e realizado. As conclusões abordam a causalidade observada entre valor e tipologia nesse caso e sugerem que esse comportamento expressa uma condição tecnológica da arquitetura.

RESUMEN

En un sentido general, la arquitectura y la tecnología articulan dos modos de evaluación de los objetos y de los entornos construidos, sin embargo, ¿hay condiciones que permitan considerar a las obras de arquitectura como tecnologías? El presente trabajo explora esa posibilidad analizando la información bibliográfica, documental y planimétrica de los edificios residenciales desarrollados por la agencia estatal, Corporación de la Vivienda (CORVI), entre 1953 y 1974. Utilizando el trazado de procesos como método de análisis, se identificaron hitos que dieron cuenta de los modos en que el diseño y la producción de esta tipología eran incididos por un régimen de valores basado en la idea de racionalización y que, la heterogeneidad de sus casos, mostraba flexibilidad y adecuación a las formas de cálculo y realización de este valor. Las conclusiones abordan la causalidad observada entre valor y tipología en este caso, y sugieren que este comportamiento expresa una condición tecnológica de la arquitectura.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing
• building tipologies
• Corporación de la Vivienda
• sociology of architecture
• urban sociology

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

• Habitação
• tipologias de edifícios
• Corporación de la Vivienda
• sociologia da arquitetura
• sociologia urbana

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Vivienda
• tipologías de edificaciones
• Corporación de la Vivienda
• sociología de la arquitectura
• sociología Urbana

1. Introduction

Low-rise housing blocks were a type of residential building designed and constructed in Chile, starting in the first quarter of the twentieth century, by the state entities responsible for developing and implementing housing policies in the country. They are described by architect Fernando Pérez as “longitudinal bodies in which housing units are systematically arranged” (2017, 83). Their use, as an alternative to semi-detached dwellings and rowhouses for social housing, addressed the need to explore ways to increase residential density in buildings and the availability of materials such as steel and concrete profiles in the local market, an opportunity seized by the younger generation of architects to test the postulates and ideas of modern European architecture (Molina B. 2013).

Pérez argues that low-rise housing blocks “manifest both the search for a new urban density, as well as a rationality in the orientation and internal arrangement of dwellings” (2017, 83) so that, like other types of works and buildings, they express and mobilize conventions and practical values in a society, articulating themselves as a political form of it. In this regard, the Social Studies of Science and Technology literature has long considered these competencies of objects, however, works of architecture have not been given the same treatment due to the reluctance to approach them as technological objects as this would undermine their uniqueness (Blok and Farias 2016; Yaneva 2017).

Taking the above into consideration, this research looks into whether, when observing the effect of values other than that of singularity, it is possible to note behaviors different from those associated with architecture in buildings or groups of buildings. For example, does architecture behave like technology if the framework by which it is evaluated as a singular work is changed to one oriented, for example, towards productive rationality or mass production? In this sense, in the face of contingencies of mass production (de Laet and Mol 2000; Redfield 2016), do the elements characteristic of technological fluidity, such as adaptability and interpretive flexibility, describe a technological condition of architecture, different from that required in singularity?

This perspective to analyze the facts of architecture allows us to discuss the relationship between the singularization of the work and the processes of standardization and massification of the typology according to the material strategies of societies. This contributes to the debate on the role played by residential building types in social housing policies, both in relation to the spatial, programmatic, and material arrangements experienced by their designs as they participate in biopolitical and societal processes in an agential manner (Bustos Peñafiel 2021; Fuentes Hernández 2015), and in relation to the adequacy of their technical processes to the demands of a constant incremental production (Vergara Vidal 2020).

In order to do this, the methodological approach of the research is based on the process tracing technique, which allows making inferences about the diachronic behavior of a case from the identification of milestones organized in a coherent way to a set of causal elements identified in the case, which helps to formulate an interpretation of the observed process and/or a new working hypothesis (Beach and Brun Pedersen 2019; Mahoney 2012). The chosen case was a type of residential architecture, the Chilean low-rise housing blocks, which was observed through the rationalization milestones of its design, expressed in the different models and series that articulated it as a typological set. The working hypothesis is that rationalization, as a convention and practical value characteristic of the local phase of industrial modernity, has a causal relationship with the evolution of Chilean low-rise housing blocks to the extent that it justifies their appearance, changes, and development as a type of architecture and, in turn, as a type of residential technology.

The information considered for the application of this approach came from the compilation and planimetric analysis of the 31 building designs mentioned in the text, which were identified from an extensive bibliographic and documentary review, and were obtained from local archives and the Ministry of Housing (MINVU). Further information was obtained from the database of the National Cadastre of Social Condominiums, also carried out by MINVU, and from an in-depth interview with the architect Orlando Sepúlveda, who participated directly in the process of rationalization and regionalization of CORVI's low-rise housing blocks designs.

Seeking to answer the questions posed, the following text addresses the design milestones of the low-rise housing blocks, observed through the prism of rationalization value, and presents them as a process comprised of four moments: their emergence and organization as a mode of rationalized design, their articulation as a mode of calculation and production, their results as a mode of regularity and mass production, and their governance as an object of maintenance and intervention.

Following the previous analysis, the effects of the premise of rationalization in the designs of low-rise housing blocks are discussed, considering, above all, the elements that allow us to verify when it has ceased to operate, taking with it the projectual idea that mobilized the housing blocks and their mode of spatial technicality. The conclusions address and argue the causal relationship observed between value and typology and suggest that the fluid behavior of the latter can be considered as a type of technological behavior of architecture.

2. Low-rise housing blocks and rationalized design

The first low-rise housing blocks were built as housing solutions to support the operation of factories, railroad workshops, and mining sites, and were developed and built by the state-owned Caja del Seguro Obrero. These included the San Eugenio Complex Santiago (1936), the Aníbal Pinto Complex Antofagasta (1939), Vicuña Mackenna Arica (1940), Patricio Lynch Iquique (1941) and Tocopilla Carlos Condell (1942). At the same time, companies interested in having a labor force close to their factories and worksites developed housing complexes such as the Colectivo Chollin Schwager (1943) or the Colectivo Fábrica de Leche Santiago (1942), while the Caja de Empleados Particulares y Periodistas, an agency focused on the working middle class, also developed its own projects in the complexes Lord Cochrane (1943) and San Pablo (1945), in Santiago (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Colectivo San Eugenio (left) and Colectivo Central de Leche (right). Caja de Empleados Particulares, 1936–1945.

The architectural ideas that inspired these projects came from modern architecture, especially the proposals of Walter Gropius, the CIAMs, and Le Corbusier. Gropius, in particular, was very influential with regard to the optimal height of residential buildings and the rationalization of housing, aspects that linked density modes and the value of urban land, which were relevant given the economic restrictions that these projects had when buying land and materials. For Gropius, one of the sociological elements to consider for basic urban housing consisted of “establishing, in high-rise housing blocks, large domestic organizations for the urban industrial population” (Medina 2019, 131), which required rationalizing its design and production, not as a result of making reason and economy equivalent, but as a way of organizing by means of a regime of values, premises of economic, psychological, and social order.

These orientations were adapted to the local reality, adapting their form, density, materiality, and costs to the possibilities allowed by the economy and the socio-technical framework of Chilean society at that time. Gropius assumes that the architect acts as an organizer of the modern construction sector and its demands on industry. The lightweight building material, thermally and acoustically insulating, flat and non-deformable panels; the light and flexible partition walls; the standardized metal windows; the continuous cladding of the interior volume; the calorimeter and mechanical ventilation of living spaces, among other elements, were proposed as demands from the architectural design to the industry and, apparently, it worked that way in other latitudes (Medina 2019). However, in the Chilean case this is reversed, it is the mining industry that prevails in the demand for materials and, with it, the engineering that places the orders.

By 1930, the trend was to build with iron profiles, which were not produced by the national industry and were therefore imported from France, England, Germany or the United States, the countries where the engineers who requested them came from. The metal profiles facilitated the introduction of various concrete and industrial brick techniques, as alternatives to wood and adobe, used in colonial times. However, these new materials were not accompanied by modern ideas but by neoclassical ones, so it was more difficult to promote the design of modern collective buildings than their materiality, just as it was difficult for construction processes to become industrialized, which limited the initial expansion of low-rise housing blocks.

However, by 1945, the rectangular and extended volumes of the low-rise housing blocks had displayed and served as a test of a handful of modern ideas that were then integrated into the new housing policies, such as the efficiency of calculation, and the massiveness of production. In turn, the originality of the formal solutions and their effects on the arrangement of their immediate urban environment promoted the role of architecture in the planning of housing policies and made it possible to consolidate low-rise housing blocks as a typology of conventional use within them. In the same way, the rationalization of design was applied to housing units, influencing their sizes, programs, types of movement, among other aspects that gave rise to their modular planning. This was concretized in the design practices of the Caja de la Habitación Popular, which followed the work of the Caja del Seguro Obrero, and developed its own models of collective housing by 1945.

To design its blocks, the Caja de la Habitación used two types of semi-detached dwellings, the one-story type 81, and the two-story type 125, and replicated them horizontally and vertically to organize buildings of twelve dwellings on three floors (Block type 81) and four floors (Block type 125 Duplex) (Figure 2). Unlike previous blocks, types 81 and 125 Duplex were not singular works, but models to be replicated in various cities, such as Santiago, Valparaíso, Rancagua, and Concepción.

Figure 2. Tipology 81 (left) and Typology 125 Duplex (right). Caja de la Habitación 1945–1953.

Although the housing blocks built did not surpass 77, mostly of type 81, the Caja de la Habitación low-rise housing blocks were a first step towards a standardization of design that enunciated a type of industrial production of architecture in the direction expected by the conventions of the modern school (Guillén 2006). They also moved in the opposite direction to Walter Gropius’ idea that the ten- and twelve-story high-rise building was a more rational option compared to the “medium-rise residential building (…) (which was) inferior socially, psychologically and, in part, also economically” (Medina 2019, 145). The conditions that framed the Chilean technological and economic context of the time did not allow the planning of social housing buildings above ten stories, so the conventions were pragmatically adapted in modular models of four and five stories, by the Corporación de la Vivienda (CORVI).

CORVI followed the technical methods of the Caja de la Habitación, organizing design teams that consolidated the compact module, the result of the vertical aggregation of semi-detached dwelling units, which was understood as a typological model on which it was possible to act rationally and progressively, implying the revision and variation of the model from time to time, adapting it to the contingent needs of the housing problem. Used as an artifactual form, the modules could be grouped in various ways, facilitating the organization of large complexes. CORVI made strides in this direction with a new type of standardized module, consisting of two semi-detached dwellings, which were vertically aggregated around a central stairwell. It was designed in four (400) and five-story versions (500) and built in pairs, reaching 129 blocks built in Santiago and Concepción with a higher proportion of the 500 typology.

At this point CORVI’s architects consolidated a modular design of residential buildings. Each building module consists of four floors; the differences lie in the number of apartments per floor and in the role played by stairs and corridors in their composition. Model 401, for example, has stairs and corridors that connect, using a “T” shape, three modules of one apartment per floor. Model 1002, on the other hand, compacts the staircase and dispenses with the corridor; it is an isolated building with three apartments per floor, while model 1003 simply imitates 401 by using larger apartments (Figure 3). At the same time, the CORVI teams developed another series of housing blocks. The 1002 consisted of an isolated module of two semi-detached dwellings, vertically aggregated on four floors and a stairwell; the 1006 consisted of two semi-detached modules, and the 1007 consisted of three semi-detached modules (1007). This set of typologies reached 571 units built until 1966, in Santiago, Valparaíso, Concepción, and Rancagua (Figure 4).

Figure 3. Housing Blocks Typology 401 (left) and Typology 1003 (right). CORVI 1953–1960.

Figure 4. Housing Blocks Typology 1003 (above left), Typology 1006 (above right) and Typology 1007 (down), CORVI 1953–1960.

This broad series of models based on the same compositional operation, first developed in typologies 81 and 125, expresses not only how this type of building underwent a generative design, but also how it moved away from modern European formal conventions, due to the requirements of adaptation to its own economic, technical, and legal environment. This consolidated a vernacular form of low-rise housing blocks of increasing standardization and modular composition, but which still did not meet one of the main premises of industrial modernity, mass production, at least for the local scale.

3. A mode of calculation and production

Undoubtedly, a step in this direction was a shift in the idea of rationalization which, as has been noted, was part of the modern premises of collective housing. The application of this notion to new series of low-rise housing blocks also consolidated their technical sense, as an agency through which other phenomena were mobilized through their design. For the CORVI teams, the logic of rationalization had a strong practical justification, where the role of the referents was given mainly by the ways in which they had solved problems of architectural forms, and which were worth following. Architect Orlando Sepúlveda, Ph.D., illustrates how the teams worked before the period in which this orientation was implemented:

(…) With that the group of architects were told, “take as a referent these two settlements that have been successful”, let's say in Santiago. Then the plans of those two settlements were analyzed, and the architects drew conclusions and deduced an architectural scheme from there. “Here the structure of these dwellings has to be of such type”, and they even included in the architectural scheme the solution of the standards. For example, they defined the size of the closets, the bathroom fittings and whether a bidet was to be installed. That was where, for example, the size of the master bedroom was determined, the children's bedroom, the size of the kitchen, whether it would have a balcony or not, whether it would have a service loggia and how big it would be. All of that. More or less, everything was defined in the architectural scheme. And it was a proposal made by the architects. (Interviews with O. Sepúlveda M., Ph.D., October 2018)

However, the arrival of architect Héctor Valdés Phillips as vice-president of CORVI led to a change in the orientation of the design:

CORVI began to adopt a way of doing residential projects (…) for reasons of operational speed they would say, “look, do a project that is being requested for such and such Caja¹, where one hundred and fifty houses are needed. Use this project as a guideline, the number 114 which was done in Irarrázaval and is very much in line with the standards. Then, the person or the group saw that project, analyzed it and did not apply it as it was, but had it as a reference, and made an architectural scheme according to the approach that the group had (…) Once they had clear ideas they went to the boss and said: “hey, you told us to use it as a referent, but it did not solve well these aspects and others, so we improved it and the house is now a bit bigger”. “How much bigger?” “Just a bit more, but we had to move the master bedroom”, “Ah, ok”. That was very frequent (…) I didn't have the clarity that Héctor Valdés incorporated, who said: “not only typologies, but also the first typological projects, which are going to take CORVI's experience as a synthesis, are going to be rationalized”. (Interview with O. Sepúlveda M., Ph.D., November 2018)

The effect of these design rationalization guidelines that Valdés imposed on the CORVI teams was not a standardization process as such, but the articulation of a rationalized order based on the calculation of material rations, which implied the need for a mode of coordination between the design and the construction process, which did not exist until then and made it possible to limit spending to the rations of the material used. Sepúlveda indicates that, for Valdés, rationalized meant:

That there should be no leftovers, remnants or waste, so that one hundred percent is used. And that it refers in general to all the materials that are needed for housing, that is, not only the prefabricated modulated ones, but also those that are not prefabricated modulated, such as the rebar structure and cement. (Interview with O. Sepúlveda, November 2018)

This placed a demanding restriction on the design teams, as they had to integrate into the projects’ development aspects of calculation of standardized production materials that were not harmonized with each other. In fact, the measurement of volumes was done outside the design teams, in the cost sub-department:

There you had mostly engineers and builders who measured volumes and determined unit prices. Square meter of parquet: this much, square meters of brick masonry: this much. Cubic meter of simple concrete: this much. Reinforced concrete: this much, cubic meters. And they had tables, so what they did was measure the volumes and apply the unit price studies. They were very exact; they were very good. (…) They followed the project guidelines (…) What we were normally asked to do was to always try to provide alternatives, that is, for example, the partition walls will be lined on the inside with asbestos cement. Then it was changed to fiber cement. But it could also be half-by-ten pine paneling, let's say. At that time fiber cement competed with wood paneling; drywall came in a bit later. (Interview with O. Sepúlveda, November 2018)

The material decisions observed are related to the structure that mobilizes and shapes the work. In the case of CORVI, this structure differentiates the rationalization processes from the concretization processes. The former is approached from a logic of specialization, which is expressed in the organization of different sub-departments in charge of different aspects of design. The latter are placed outside the CORVI structure and are governed by contracts oriented by the plans of each project in which the design, not the work, is concretized.

Many times, the architects made the specification and didn’t go into detail, so the construction company would say:

• – “Well, the flooring ok, but there is a problem with the dust covers.”

• – “But why? If the specification says that the floor is parquet or decking, why do you ask for a one-by-two (inches) dust cover?

• – “Because it doesn’t say how it should be attached.”

• – “But it says it should be fixed with a two and a half nail.”

• – “Yes, but it doesn’t say how far apart the nails should be. How far apart should I put the nails? I put the dust caps with one nail and that’s it. Or do you want me to put the nails at one meter, or at fifty centimeters apart? So tell me.”

• – “No, the nails should be at fifty centimeters apart.”

• – “Ah, ok, but that’s extra work then.”

  So the CORVI experience said: “Ok, a specification should be made.” But it is also said that the execution of the works must be in accordance with the general ordinance of constructions and urbanization, and if there are articles there, the works have to be done according to the rules of the art. It did not say how, but that was a discussion between the construction company and the technical inspection. Those were the extra works that took place. (Interview with O. Sepúlveda, October 2018).

What can be extracted from Sepulveda's account, and from other documents of the time (CORVI 1969; 1972a), is that there was no requirement to the suppliers regarding the dimensions of the materials they sold, but rather an adaptation of the housing design to what was already present in the market, so that the design exercises operated on the basis of what already existed and in coherence with the materials industry. The adjustment practices of this model are centered on the construction process, where CORVI supervisors play a central role, ensuring and negotiating that the premise of avoiding surplus materials is fulfilled.

The above offers us a scheme in which CORVI design teams must operate considering different communities of practice. On the one hand, the industries, which operate with their own standards of dimensions and material composition; on the other hand, the construction community, which operates under the logic of saving working time and quality of materials in order to increase their profit; and finally, the communities of practice of the clients and/or users who aspire and/or are willing to accept a certain quality of materials as good enough, to which are added the local and national governments who push for volumes of works according to housing needs and/or according to local demands (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Rationalized Housing Typologies, CORVI 1964–1972.

4. A mode of regularity and mass production

The result of the CORVI rationalization process was the final adaptation of a type of low-rise housing design based on the calculation of space and materiality for the purpose of mass production. The compositional relationship between these two premises determined the layout and dimensions of the sleeping, living, toilet, storage, and kitchen programs, which resulted in dwelling units with a morphology as rectangular as the buildings that contained them, linking programmatic and typological standardization (Figure 2).

The document “Tipología de viviendas racionalizadas 1966–1972” (CORVI 1972a), produced at the end of this period, establishes for each prototype the materials to be used in walls, partitions, roofing, flooring, doors, and windows, which allows us to verify that although there are a certain number of materials that are common to the whole set, there are also choices that are specific to each prototype and its eventual location (Table 1).

Table 1. Material specifications of CORVI rationalized housing prototypes 1965–1972.

Type	Tipology	Year	Specifications					Presence of Asbestos
			Walls	Partition	Roofing	Flooring	Doors and Windows
Mid-rise housing blocks – 1966–1970	1010	1965	Brick masonry, reinforced concrete	Plasterboard, brick	Asbestos cement	Tile, vinyl asbestos	Wood, metal	Yes
	1020	1965	Brick masonry, reinforced concrete	Plasterboard, brick	Asbestos cement	Tile, vinyl asbestos	Wood, metal	Yes
Mid-rise housing blocks – 1971–1972	1011	1972	Brick masonry, reinforced concrete	Plasterboard, brick	Asbestos cement	Asbestos cement vinyl	Wood, metal	Yes
	1021	1971	Brick masonry, reinforced concrete	Plasterboard, brick masonry, wood, asbestos cement	Asbestos cement or galvanized iron	Tile, vinyl asbestos	Wood, metal	Yes
	1040	1972	Reinforced Concrete	Plasterboard covered with asbestos cement	Asbestos cement	Tile, vinyl asbestos	Wood, metal	Yes
	1050	1972	Reinforced Concrete	Plasterboard covered with cardboard, asbestos cement	Rooftop deck tiles	Tile, vinyl asbestos	Wood, aluminum	Yes

Note: Compiled by the author from “Tipologías de viviendas racionalizadas 1966–1972,” by CORVI, 1972.

In the case in question, the rationalized housing typologies of the Corporación de la Vivienda (CORVI) do not articulate their forms and programs in an arbitrary manner. On the contrary, they arise from the need to expand the production capacity of social housing in the country and, therefore, are carefully adapted to various criteria that ensure ease of production, adequate replicability, and a socially massive effect. The production boom of the 1010 and 1020 models in the country (CORVI 1969, 1972a) makes this clear (Table 2).

Table 2. Works contracted during the period 1970–1971 according to Region and CORVI Housing Block Typology.

ZONE		Mid-rise housing block typology – 1966–1971			No. of buildings
Regions	Year	1010	1020	Special typologies built only once	1010	1020
Santiago Metropolitan Area	1970	240	0	0	15	0
TOTAL 1970	240	0	0	15	0
Regions	Year	1010	1020	Special typologies built only once	1010	1020
Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá	1971	208	158	0	13	10
Antofagasta	1971	48	16	0	3	1
Atacama and Coquimbo	1971		224	0	0	14
Valparaíso	1971	1232	1450	110	77	91
Santiago Metropolitan Area	1971	6288	2076	87	393	130
O'Higgins	1971	336	320	236	21	20
Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía (north)	1971	816	621	0	51	39
La Araucanía (south)	1971	0	270	0	0	17
Los Ríos and Los Lagos (north)	1971	0	368	0	0	23
TOTAL 1971		8928	5503	433	558	345
TOTAL 1970–1971		9168	5503	433	573	345

Note: From “CORVI, en el centro de la producción,” by CORVI, 1972, Revista AUCA_ 23, 44

Sepúlveda has argued that these models, conceived for the central zone, were quickly required for the northern, southern, and southernmost zones of the country. This brought about adjustments in their coverings and in the materials of walls and roofs, which relates the flexibility of the typology with the fluidity that allows it to be placed in diverse climatic situations. Furthermore, its standardization lies in the fact that its structural components and the programmatic layout of its floorplans do not change, which is the reason for the practicality of its design.

Its interpretative flexibility was possible to appreciate when reconstructing with digital models each of the typologies and, in particular, models 1010 and 1020, from the indications and dimensions present in “Tipologías de viviendas racionalizadas 1966-1972” (CORVI 1972a), as these did not fit well. It was clear then that it was not a document with a practicality similar to a construction plan, its information was not useful to concretize the models, but the imprecision could not be taken as a gesture of technical negligence. The instructions were good enough to organize a programmatic and structural idea, the digital models could be made, but they required adaptation, the typologies were open so that their concretization could solve situated problems, either in a concrete or virtual location (Figure 3).

Finally, the goodness of the rationalized designs had to be tested on their ease of production in comparison with the previous typologies developed by CORVI and, in particular, with the 400 and 500 types they had used as references. The result was encouraging. CORVI's production between 1966 and 1973 was 902 units. Between 1974 and 1979 another 563 housing blocks were built, but not all of them corresponded to rationalized typologies. To these we must add the designs made between 1972 and 1973, which are called regionalized typologies and which follow the same design lines of the rationalized typologies, giving more surface area to the housing units and adapting the materials and roofs to the rainy climates of the south of the country, such as the 1012, 1022, and 1042, which clearly indicate the original types of which they are a continuity. Notwithstanding the above, by 1972 a new batch of designs adapted the rationalized designs to the regional markets of materials in the four climatic zones of the country, which, without altering the logic of the aggregation of semi-detached units, used square (3502 and 3503) or H-shaped (3101) forms, rather than rectangular, and metal stairwells exposed to the weather, saving the use of concrete (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Housing Blocks Typology 3101 (left), Typology 3502 (center) and Typology 3503 (right), CORVI 1972–1973.

5. A mode of governance

In the Chilean case, the experience of the rationalized low-rise housing blocks brought with it an increase in the production of mass-produced units and groups of buildings compared to the production figures of previous designs. Rationalized housing blocks were located in the 44 largest cities in the country, generating a significant cultural impact associated with the typological notion of the block that emerged from the arrangement of its forms. The rationalization of their design had achieved an efficient expenditure of materials and reached a satisfactory solution for the housing programs, consolidating the three-bedroom, one-bathroom model present since types 81 and 125. At the same time, the modular characteristics would contribute to their interpretative flexibility, not only in their various original locations but also when, after 50 years of use, some of their owners began to add modules to the original structure of the dwellings, independently of the formal harmony of the buildings.

This practice of aggregation, justified in the rights granted by the individual ownership of the apartments and used as an affirmation of them, has been quite common in low-rise housing blocks built in the period after the rationalized designs of 1972, and very rarely seen in low-rise housing blocks prior to that date. The new modules, which expand the surface area of the dwellings in eclectic and heterogeneous ways, are common in CORVI Models 3101, 3502, and 3503, even in some Type 1010 buildings, but are massively present in the different block models and complexes that will replicate the H-shape of CORVI Model 3101, first as typology H56 and then as Block Type C (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Housing Blocks Tipologies 3503 (left), 1010 and 3101 (right) modified by aggregation of housing modules.

This type of interventions goes in the opposite direction of the conventions and orientations of the original architectural design of the buildings. In some cases they complement them but, in general, they are not standardized, symmetrical or rationalized, since those are not the orientations of those who request them and they only have in common a certain idea of modularity, which is merely operative, leaving aside any typological idea and emphasizing the idea of a singularity of the housing unit, not of the building, although, by default, it also alters it.

In the case of rationalized housing blocks, finding such practices was surprising, although scarce, as mentioned above. After having directly observed a hundred of these buildings in different cities, it was possible to verify changes in roofs, windows, aggregation of protections in the fenestrations, among other alterations that can be considered superficial and associated to the second type of practices described. However, the presence of cases of aggregations in buildings of typology 1010 reinforces the fact that this typology also had spaces for a reinterpretation by the owners of the housing units (Costas and Torrent 2018).

What is significant about this type of modification is that the addition of new modules to the housing units requires an understanding of the structure of the building, a functional project for the part to be added, and a justification for the alteration of the original harmony of the work and/or the whole of which it is a part. It requires both intentionality and understanding of the order that is being altered and, in the cases observed, a better understanding of the built object than of the fact of architecture, since the regime of values and conventions of the latter, although they would not stop the alterations, would strongly regulate them (Yaneva 2005).

A second type of practices of adaptation and intervention of the buildings was related to the implementation of a public policy of maintenance and repair arising from the application of the Real Estate Co-ownership Law (19.537) of 1997, which led to the re-categorization of residential buildings according to the ownership of the housing units present in them (Bustos Peñafiel 2021). These practices altered the aesthetic identity of the buildings as a whole (Figure 8). Such categorization generated legal entities called Condominiums and a subcategory within these where all collective typologies were included, which categorizes them as Social Condominiums and defines them as “those constructions or lands under the co-ownership regime, in which with the objective of facilitating the administration and neighborhood organization, the need to define a limit on the number of dwellings that make up the co-ownership is established, not being able to exceed 150 units per condominium” (MINVU 2014, 21–22).

Figure 8. Housing Blocks Tipologies 500 and 1020, CORVI, under maintenance and repair.

This conceptual operation facilitated and motivated the creation of a National Cadastre of Social Condominiums, the results of which were used to develop investment programs through which the Ministry of Housing could make improvements in the facades, ducts, and roofs of the buildings, if the owners of their housing units organized as a Community of Co-ownership, acting as beneficiaries of the public expenditure. Considering that the number of houses in these buildings (358,040) exceeded the housing deficit calculated for the country, repairing them was more efficient for public spending than building that number of dwellings again. In this process, massive production and rationalization of spending are recovered, but the typological notion and its order of sets is lost.

6. Discussion

So far, we have tried to describe the processes through which the premise of rationalization became a reality in the designs of Chilean low-rise housing blocks, influencing their material composition, spatial arrangements, and modes of articulation. If the premise of rationalization was a practical value within Chilean industrial modernity, it was because of its strong proximity to a Taylorist sense of functional efficiency that, constituted as a global social convention, integrated architecture as a repertoire of its operation (Guillén 2006).

The different milestones observed, recorded for each series of housing block models, describe the rationalization of residential design as a methodical process through which the state crews sought to progressively reduce production costs as a function of the increase in the number of units, and to achieve a model of formal versatility that would make it possible to adapt low-rise residential buildings to different climatic and topological realities. To this end, they experimented with different strategies in the materials used, in the synergic arrangement of programs, circulations and installations, and in the modularity of the housing units, which constitute three dimensions in which the rationalization process could be traced.

The final milestone of this design process are CORVI's rationalized housing typologies, both because they are nominally identified with the practical value sought to be promoted, because they are the ones that best achieve the objective of increasing unit production and compositional versatility by consolidating a modular format, and because the designs subsequent to the regionalized versions will not give continuity to any of these elements, coinciding with the installation of the neoliberal cycle in Chilean capitalism. As a result, the state design will be dismantled and taken over by construction companies, which will develop their own ways of standardization and cost savings, in order to increase their profits, which constitutes a different orientation to rationalization and will lead to the fact that the designs of low-rise social housing buildings will cease to be considered as collective housing, and will start to be conventionally referred to as blocks and, finally, as co-ownerships.

However, by observing the above over time and comparing the different solutions that were given around the modularization of buildings and housing units, it was possible to notice that, along with these, the circulation systems also changed to form an inner core, organized around the stairwell. What in the first models was composed of a module of concrete stairs, external to the residential volume and leading to galleries that allowed access to dwellings arranged in extension, was later consolidated as a module that joined two symmetrical residential modules, articulating the interior space of the housing blocks. In both cases, this constituted a common space of central arrangement and solid materiality, which articulated the collective aspect as a secondary effect of rationalization, a mode of adaptation that responds to the practical value of the sociality of the buildings (Vergara Vidal 2021).

Figure 9. Housing Blocks Tipologies 1010, 3101, and 3503, CORVI, refurbished.

This space becomes precarious in the models after the rationalized ones, which strip the circulation elements of materiality and program plurality, reducing them to a metal stairwell, open and exposed to the weather, not structurally linked to the residential modules. This variation suggests that the common space also constituted a practical value, orienting the designs according to a type of social relationship sought through the non-residential components of the architecture.

The deterioration of this component, operated without changing the premise of rationalization of construction costs in CORVI models 3101, 3502, and 3503, and without changing their designation as collective housing, denotes a bifurcation between the communal and the collective aspects, and a new way in which the typology of buildings shows fluidity because, by deteriorating the communal aspect, it allows the transition from collective to individualized layout modes, from extended to modular residential volumes, and from rationalization of state spending to the optimization of private profit.

Considering that the behavior of common spaces in the observed buildings proves to be independent of the rationalization of their housing units, it is possible to suggest a new hypothesis in which the designs have a guiding framework that links them to values of a global modernity, such as rationalization, and components that adapt to the contingencies of national political conventions, such as reducing common property spaces to give prominence to individual property spaces, typical of neoliberalism. This corroborates the use of residential architectural designs, and the consequent works, as a type of technos or agency of contingent projects and societal values, which justify their fluid behavior in adaptations that do not substantially alter the typological form of these buildings.

The above is useful to note that not only the premise of design rationalization and the required adaptations for their concretization condition the fluidity of low-rise social housing buildings, but also the demands on their performance as residential devices that emerge from social contingencies. All this could have been noticed as a normal project evolution if the exercise of the National Cadastre of Social Condominiums had not recognized the group of these buildings as a typology before the State, subsuming its variants in a single population of similar residential devices and, therefore, as a type of residential technology.

7. Conclusions. When architectures behave as technologies

The study of the technological behavior of architectural works allows us to evaluate the processes of adjustment of values and social conventions, embodied, in this case, in the low-rise housing blocks designed, built, and consolidated in Chile as an architectural typology linked to low-income social housing. What has been observed in the previous pages suggests, precisely, that the variations within this typology of buildings were guided by values associated with the cycles of modernity and local capitalism, such as rationalization and efficiency; and by values associated with the pragmatic adaptation of the typology.

Thus, the development of the typology is framed in a regime of values that organizes, at the same time, a regime of calculations and tests that serve the adjustment of the typological, formal, social, and material facts to the order that it enunciates. The elements of similarity between the different typological facts that, in this case, correspond to the types of designs mentioned, denote the regularity of the order and the conventionality of its adjustments that can be recognized in the regular modes of standardization, modularity, and sociality observed. When these change, as happens in model types 3101, 3502, and 3503, it indicates that the testing regimes and calculations have changed according to new values, displacing the previous ones and altering the regularity of the typological facts, as occurs with the post-1978 social housing blocks up to the present day.

This behavior responds to a different regime from that of architectural works, from which singularity and grandeur are expected as the basis of their practical justification and, due to the presence of values such as standardization and modularity, it seems close to that which governs technical objects and/or technologies (Simondon 2007). The set of architectures, designs, and buildings observed in this research, is organized according to a serial logic that denotes changes in its typological regularity, articulating a sort of evolutionary mechanics as a language of expression. What mobilizes this mechanics, as we have seen, is to advance in increasingly rationalized buildings, for which they become progressively more standardized and modular, more “adaptable, flexible and responsive” to the climatic, topological, and political contingencies of their sites, behaving as a fluid technology (de Laet and Mol 2000, 225–226; Redfield 2016). This would indicate that, under certain conditions of observation, as with a set of cases that respond to a typological order, architecture acquires behaviors similar to those of technologies, answering the initial research question affirmatively.

Given the above, it is possible to consider that this hypothesis of analysis is applicable to the different modes of existence of typologies, to those more epistemological, such as designs and plans, and to those more concrete, such as built cases and complexes. In the same way, following this line of analysis implies not changing the perspective of technological analysis when addressing the practices of adaptation of typologies, i.e. their modes of standardization, modularity, and sociality. If they are analyzed as technological adaptations, the changes in the dimensions, shapes, and materiality of the walkways show, for example, a progressive precarization of the common spaces of the buildings at the end of the CORVI modernist cycle, which is then consolidated in the neoliberal cycle.

In relation to what has been observed, the typological modes of existence seem to be well suited to a technological analysis perspective of architecture. Changes within a typology are similar to changes in technologies and, in this sense, they behave similarly in time and space, expanding the possible cases that can be compared with them. In this sense, they constitute a fluid resource of architecture in that not only can their changes be analyzed and characterized, but also the practical operations that constitute them can be compared with other objects or technologies with similar interests. This broadens the resources of architecture analysis and can also be useful for comparisons between countries or regions.

Acknowledgements

I am gratefull to Fernando Alvear Atlagich for the translation from Spanish to English and the comments to the early versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [grant number, Fondecyt N° 11200480].

Notes on contributors

Jorge E. Vergara-Vidal

Jorge E. Vergara-Vidal is an associate professor in the Department of Territorial Planning and Management, School of Architecture, Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana (UTEM), Chile. He received both his undergraduate degree and Master's in Sociology from Universidad de Chile, and his doctorate in Sociology from Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile. His research interests are in the field of sociology of architecture and urban planning in Chile and South America. His current research is focused on the sociology of the standardization of social housing and collective living.

Notes

1 The Cajas de previsión y seguridad social were a series of public and private organizations in Chile between 1924 and 1980, responsible for paying pensions to retired workers, administering the contributions of active workers, and providing social security benefits to their members. They operated as a pay-as-you-go system, and among the various investment activities of the funds they managed was the construction of housing for their affiliated workers, both active and retired.