Vista aérea general del conjunto de Viviendas Aluar en Puerto Madryn, Patagonia, Justo Solsona, Flora Manteola, Javier Sánchez Gómez, Josefina Santos y Rafael Viñoly, 1974. Dommus Nº588, Torino, 1978, p. 17.
The Alas III Complex in Córdoba, by Luis Rébora, Abel Ramírez and Alfredo Troilo (1974) signals an architectural proposal in which the structure and tectonics are protagonist. A series of four towers erected on apparently meager structural supports are set on a large platform -originally public- that interacted with the slope of the site and with the neighboring square, establishing continuity between the green areas. The presence of the constructive apparatus and the deployment of the structural requirement in the connection of each tower with the ground, propose a tectonic vision - beyond the expression of the architectural elements - that puts into play the constructivist connotations of the systems. The housing complexes were a privileged theme in which ideas were put into action with architecture as an infrastructure. Some were more loyal to the structuralist concept already characterized, like the Luis Piedrabuena Complex (Manteola, Sanchez Gómez, Santos, Solsona, Vinoly, 1974) in which the 2,100 houses were organized in straight blocks - defined by prefabricated panels - forming semi circles of different apertures, and connecting through the stair systems. Many others expressed the ideas by means of graphic diagrams of plotted geometries, like the Citadel I and II compounds (1970), Villa Soldatti (1972) and Rosario (1978) carried out by Estudio Staff (Goldemberg, Bielus, Wainstein- Krasuk), whose projects featured an apparent variability of the public space that reality
would soon deny. The structuralist conceptions of the urban form, based on the ideas of fabric, module and support, were also applied in several emergency villa rehousing unit projects, such as UR 02 and UR 03 designed in Rosario by Basadonna and Favaro (1972). In Patagonia, the Aluar neighborhood complex (Manteola, Sanchez Gómez, Santos, Solsona, Viñoly, 1974) was set up as a part of the city in the outskirts of Puerto Madryn 17 . This is probably the most paradigmatic case of urban concretion by means of tension between mega-shapes and discrete construction units. In a place with a harsh climate and strong winds, 750 houses were arranged with an urban unit design that transformed the conception of the city block. The base unit is a group of 40 houses consisting of two parallel linear blocks -with an interior pedestrian street- of different heights, taking advantage of the 27-meter level difference. The rear fronts of the blocks are closed to face the 120 k/h winds, while the frontal façade is more open and with sea views. On the site the parallel blocks are organized to create a large hemicycle that extends with the same geometric pattern in two adjacent wings. The construction of the neighborhood was carried out with an existing structural system, the Outinord system, giving a superlative value to the modulation and constructive systematization in the expression of a tectonic of parts.
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