Selected Issue
Issue 9 - PREVI revisited
A Contemporary Approach to the Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda in Lima (June 2012)
In March 2012, a group of students and teachers from the chair of Josep Lluis Mateo travelled to the city of Lima (Peru) to re-discover the potential of a neighbourhood that was built between 1969 and 1975 by twenty-six architects from all over the world. Today, 40 years after its construction, PREVI is the reflection of a dynamic, consolidated, and cohesive neighbourhood that is highly relevant in the context of the current crisis. The issue presents both documents from involved protagonists (Peter Land - the urban planner, Frederick Cooper - a local architect, and Fumihiko Maki and Alfredo Pini - two of the international architects), besides a number of analytical essays.
PREVI EXPERIENCE
by Josep Lluís Mateo
The relatively little known PREVI project is important for several reasons. First of all, it was set in the context of the overall logic of the informal city. The self-constructed city, comprising houses built by their occupants, played a major role at the time, especially in that particular...
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WHAT IS PREVI?
by Tomeu Ramis
In 1965, the Peruvian Government and the United Nations invited British architect Peter Land to design a strategy for mass housing as an alternative to the massive informal settlements that were dramatically taking place in Lima during that period. In 1966, informal discussions began with the...
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EXPERIMENTAL NATURE
Interview with Peter Land
The PREVI competition established a theoretical framework that revised the functionalist urbanism established by the former CIAM according to new urban principles. Could you define those principles?
The PREVI built project itself define the new urban principles. It is a more comprehensive...
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LOCAL BACKGROUND
Interview with Frederick Cooper
When the PREVI competition was announced in 1969, there was an intense debate in Europe in relation to the former CIAM approach to the city leaded by the young members of the Team10 and some of them were invited to participate in the competition. How did that debate influence the work of the...
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GENETIC STRATEGY
Interview with Fumihiko Maki
You worked on the PREVI competition in 1969 with Kisho Kurokawa and Kiyonori Kikutake as members of the Metabolism movement. Did you consider the PREVI as a chance to develop some of the Metabolism principles?
In a retrospect, my answer is yes. But when we were approached by Peter Land...
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BIG HOPES
Interview with Alfredo Pini, Atelier 5
Various international architects who were addressing new forms of dwelling and settlement in the 1950s and 1960s were chosen for PREVI competition. Atelier 5 caused an international sensation with the Siedlung Halen settlement. Why was this topic a cause for such an international concern at the...
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THE IMPACT OF PREVI ON LIMA
by Luis Rodriguez
THE BARRIADAS OF LIMA AND PREVI
The growth of the neighbourhoods of Lima can be divided into three main periods. The beginning of the first is unclear but it continued up to the occupation of the slopes of the hill ranges of San Cosme (1946) and El Agustino (1947), three kilometres from...
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WALKWAYS, OASES AND PLAYGROUNDS - Collective spaces in the PREVI
by Marianne Baumgartner
The site of the PREVI international architecture competition was located some kilometres north of the built border of Lima in the 1960s, bounded and crossed by three important expressways. The area forms part of Peru’s long desert strip between the Andes and the South Pacific Ocean: an arid, dusty...
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LEARNING FROM PREVI
by Tomeu Ramis
After an end-of-century dominated by the iconic object as an end in itself and after a global crisis that introduced the need to bring new paradigms to architectural production, we are seeing the increasingly frequent appearance of architects and collectives who are shifting their focus towards...
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