Housing, architecture and city in Bolivia from the case of Brazil: study of housing production in the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz de la Sierra between 1964 and 1987

Abstract

This research project proposes to study the housing production promoted by public policies in Bolivia between 1964 and 1987 - from the beginning of the military dictatorship to the end of the Consejo Nacional de Vivienda (CONAVI) - in the urban center of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Our main reference is the Brazilian housing production to the same period, because with the dissolution of the Fundação da Casa Popular (1946 - 1964), is structured in the same year the Sistema Financeiro da Habitação with funds from the Banco Nacional de Habitação and the promotion of the Companhias de Habitação (COHAB), which promoted housing production marked by a technicist and standardized conception. However, the quality of the projects prior to this period - between 1937 and 1964 - is very differentiated because the authors have appropriated a modern ideology in which the relationship between social housing and architecture is much richer, which can be proved by the quotations in the international review from that period. In the Bolivian case, the proposal's economic diversification plan "Bohan", from 1942, allows an articulation of cities nationwide, with consequent rapid urban development from the main urban centers, especially in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. However, until 1964, housing policies exhibited insignificant results in relation to the housing demand in the country. From the creation of the Consejo Nacional de Vivienda (CONAVI) in 1964, the State proposes to develop a policy for social housing on a national scale, including the promotion of private housing production. Unlike Brazil, state production in Bolivia during this period was not massive, but based on the organizations' "mutuales" in cooperative form, which may have resulted in a set of projects with special quality, differentiating the Bolivian case of housing production in Latin America in that period. (AU)