Tucumán’s first “Garden Neighborhood”. The setting for the evolution of twentieth-century architecture and urbanism

Abstract

This article addresses the study of the first neighborhood designed and financed by the Caja Popular de Ahorros, called Barrio Jardín and located in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán. Its recipients were the province's salespeople and industrial workers, who were given access to mortgages. This was the first response from the provincial entity for a low-income sector, to face the lack of housing. The housing development, inspired by the English garden city structure, transformed and applied to the garden suburb concept, had its architectural expression in the Californian chalet. The three extensions it underwent in subsequent decades followed the trends of the Modern Movement, both in terms of urban layout and its architecture. The research adopted a qualitative methodology, viewing the problem from a historical perspective. Although work began in the context of Juan Domingo Perón's first government (1946-1952), the extensions were made between 1962 and 1973, in other political and economic circumstances. The unit of analysis is limited to the first garden neighborhood of San Miguel de Tucumán, with its different stages of expansion, but the timeline covers the 1940s, 1960s, and 1970s. The goal of this article was to look through the urban–architectural lines applied in the different stages of the Garden Neighborhood's design, where urban land occupation and architecture were the product of the prevailing principles at their times.