El "hameau" vertical de Le CorbusierUna alternativa residencial al bloque lineal

Abstract

The vertical " hameau" of Le Corbusier is a prototype of collective housing, developed as a plastic alternative to“Unité d’habitation de grandeur conforme", perhaps his most synthetic work. The residential tower is generated from urbandoctrine of 7V theory through the shape of one of the elementary forms: the cylindrical volume. The towers keep capacity,shape and dimensions unchanged in any urban environments where they are inserted: the unbuilt urban projects in his laststage in Europe. Far from being a genuine type, is based in other previous constructions; the children's summer campssponsored by the Fiat factory in the 30s, and some residential experiments by French architect Auguste Bossu erected bythose years in the city of Saint-Etienne. The article describes the relationship between these structures and the cylindricalvillages for singles and analyzes the peculiarities of their formal structure and the dynamic of their internal organization inorder to check how those constructions were adapted by Le Corbusier for the constitution of a new collective type dwellingwhich still remains in the shadow of his most famous projects.