Urban experimental spaces
Introduction
The Experimental Housing Project (acronym: PREVI), was a social housing program developed between 1965 and 1976, during the government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, it is located in the current district of Los Olivos in the city of Lima, Peru.
It focused on migrants from the Peruvian mountains in order to avoid the disorderly development of self-built and unplanned neighborhoods. It stands out for having brought together a series of internationally renowned architects (including two Pritzker Prize winners) and national architects who competed with their housing modules from the launch of the project in 1965 until the delivery of the homes in 1978.
The competition proposed the exploration of the following themes related to affordable housing: rationalization, modulation, progressive growth, flexibility and function. It aims for low-rise, high-density housing, capable of accommodating four to six people in a first stage; and eight to ten people in a second, within a general neighborhood plan, with pedestrian priority.
It was conceived differently from contemporary institutional housing projects, which in those years usually inherited and responded to post-war problems and became a precedent for social and progressive housing that will respond, over time, to the needs of its inhabitants and create heterogeneous neighborhoods. These circumstances gave rise to various urban situations, which currently enrich not only the housing environment, but also the public spaces of the neighborhood and its surrounding areas.[1].
History
In 1965, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry began a series of consultations to explore new ways to control the flow of migrants arriving in the city and prevent the spread of self-construction projects in the peripheral neighborhoods of Lima.
The State and the United Nations Development Program - UNDP called on the English architect Peter Land to advise social housing policies through the Housing Bank of Peru. From this call emerged the initial form of PREVI with its three pilot projects, which attempted to address the housing problem from complementary perspectives. The proposals were presented to the UNDP in 1966 and were approved in 1967.
A space in the then district of San Martín de Porres, which was previously occupied by the Naranjal and Aznapuquio haciendas, was chosen as a place for the project, where housing could be provided to people with limited resources (migrants from the interior of the country), who wanted to build their own home. Work began in 1968, with the intention of carrying out three pilot projects in three years.