Tipologías: una mirada al paisajismo del cono Sur Americano

Abstract

The American Southern Cone is the southern part of the american continent shaped as an inverted cone, including Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and the South of Brazil. This paper will not include the South of Brazil as my brazilian colleagues are better prepared as myself to talk about their own territory, Although those countries present deep geographical differences, they have common features in their cultural evolution mainly due to the substitution of the indigenous population by a massive european immigration. I must state that some areas with strong presence of aboriginal population still persist in some sectors of Chile and in most of Paraguay. This was not an obstacle for the materialization of this european paradigm. This substituion started together with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, caussing and initial transformation of the original landscape. Afterwords, this action progressed in a dramatic way, especially during the 19th century with the arrival of millions and millions of new immigrants from all corners of Europe. New ways, habits and urban ideas arrived with this new population and most of their leaders elected to copy the french haussmannian model, thus changing the city shapes and, therefore, transforming again the region cultural landscape, but in a much larger scale. This adscription to the french green public space style - together with the english private garden - characterized and equalized the manmade landscapes in the whole region. I have tried to synthetize the different typologies that were materialized from the Conquest to nowadays.