De Bentham a Le Corbusier: Vigilancia y disciplina en la vivienda social moderna latinoamericana. El Complejo habitacional Pedregulho, Río de Janeiro, Brasil (1947-1958)

Plaza, P. (2011) De Bentham a Le Corbusier: Vigilancia y disciplina en la vivienda social moderna latinoamericana. El Complejo habitacional Pedregulho, Río de Janeiro, Brasil (1947-1958). Atenea. Revista de Ciencia, Arte y Literatura (504). pp. 111-130. ISSN 0716-1840

Abstract/Summary

This paper explores the relationship between the institutions of power that commissioned the first projects of modern social housing in Latin America, its architecture and inhabitants. The Pedregulho Housing Complex is an exemplary case study, built between 1947 and 1952 in Brazil. The new architecture of the modern social housing projects in Latin American was conceived as a vehicle for "social transformation". For this aim, the relationship between power, architecture and tenants is established in "panoptic" terms, with clear references to forms of imprisonment proposed since the Enlightenment as studied by the philosopher Michel Foucault (such as Bentham's Panopticon) and that will resonate with Le Corbusier's ideas for the new modern city.