PREVI-LIMA forty years later: teachings for industrialised low-cost housing in Latin America

Abstract

The PREVI, Spanish initials for “experimental housing project”, was conceived in Lima in 1967. Among other initiatives, it launched an international architectural competition that led to the construction of a 500-unit compound based on proposals put forward by teams such as Atelier 5, Aldo van Eyck, and Iniguez de Ozono and Vazquez de Castro. The forty years that have lapsed in the interim and the ongoing transformation of the homes by their dwellers afford an opportunity to reflect on the suitability of the construction technologies proposed in the competition. At the time, the tendency was to rely on large-scale industrialisation, as can be seen in the German and Polish architects’ proposals. Nonetheless, many of the PREVI proposals opted for rationalising construction and precasting series of small elements, rather than huge threedimensional members. In the situation presently prevailing in Latin America, the viability of some of the technological proposals deployed in the PREVI might be profitably revisited.