It is important to highlight the figure of Libardo Niño as a Colombian researcher, scholar, and professor, whose areas of research addressed this tradition in the context of historical analysis and architectural de- sign, alongside the vision of Aldo Rossi, who understood the city as a historical artifact and a collective work, noting in his seminal work *The Architecture of the City* (1966), he rejected the view of a city as a mere collection of functions and proposed that it evolves through collective memory, typology, and monuments. On the other hand, there was Bernardo Secchi and the urban planning of Saverio Muratori, which was a fundamental pillar of urban morphol- ogy and typological analysis. Also worth noting is Philippe Panerai of the Versailles School, who had worked on various projects related to transforming the relationship between the city and the countryside, the integration of infrastructure into cities, and urban change. Another influence was the English school, with the work of Bill Hillier and the connection between English urban planning and the concepts of urban sociologist María Mercedes Di Virgilio, which centered on how the policies and forms of spatial segregation in metropolises related to the historical transformations of the city model. It was a whole movement of thought, featuring Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown, and the indissoluble relationship between urban planning and architecture. By integrating these two approaches—the empirical and the the- oretical—it was determined, as mentioned at the beginning, to divide the study of Santiago’s founding center into the following time periods: • An initial period spanning from its founding to 1930. • A period between 1880 and 1930. • A second period, from 1930 to 1960. • A third and final period spanning from 1970 to 1986, which marks the end of the thesis's study. The drawing process produced 87 previously unpublished maps for that period and for a doctoral dissertation on the development of the city of Santiago over the last 100 years. These maps support the hypothesis that the 1:2500 scale confirmed that the urban grid of the city center had been the organizing principle for architecture and that, beginning in 1850 and, in particular, around 1930, architecture would become the organizing force behind the grid, paving the way for the 1939 Zoning Plan signed by Humieres, which safeguarded and enabled the development of an urban grid conceived with holistic growth in mind. Consequently, the city block would follow a rule or logic within Bruner’s so-called “City” and broadly confirmed the following:
“The application of certain rules, in which the primary consideration was a design logic that allowed for a shift in building typology—moving from courtyard houses and palaces to modern buildings based on a real estate logic of maximizing site use, optimizing the downtown area, and promoting mixed-use development with more than four facades thanks to shopping arcades, as well as maximizing the profitability of the first-floor space”. In 1989, just three years after defending his doctoral dissertation, Man- uel Moreno and Humberto Eliash published one of the most frequently cited maps drawn by Rosas in the book *Architecture and Modernity in Chile / 1925 – 1965, a Multiple Reality,” published by Universidad Católica de Chile. The book featured a full-page NOLI floor plan of downtown Santiago on page 99, which revealed for the first time the layout of the first floor by showing the connections between the shopping arcades. José Rosas' discovery was as follows: “Both the original block—which initially had a cross-shaped layout through which water flowed from the central irrigation canal—and the shopping arcades are located almost exactly in that spot, but offset by 6 meters to allow for a commercial space on the dividing line, and the intersection—like Matías Cousiño Street, Bombero Salas Street, etc.—is situated right on the dividing line of the cross. There is a historical layer superimposed between the flow of water and the flow of pedestrians or vehicles. He discovered that during that period there was an area of real estate interest that allowed for the construction of Bruner’s vision, “the City,” and that, furthermore, there was a commitment to strengthen the administrative center—which was fundamental, alongside the financial and commercial centers—while always preserving residential areas to ensure the city center’s long-term viability”. Over the decades, this doctoral dissertation would become the most sought-after and cited work in research on urban planning and architecture at Universidad Católica de Chile, leading to a tribute in the form of an exhi- bition at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urban Studies in 2026. !
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