Author(s)

L. Etxepare

Abstract

The residential architecture of the 60s adopted specific features all over Europe, and it is the most faithful testimony of the developmental period undergone by the West at the start of the last third of the 20th century. We present two representative case-studies that show the character adopted by developmental architecture in a place − the Basque Country − the analysis of which proves the influence of two different contexts. The first one is located in the Spanish part of the Basque Country. It is the case of the Bidebieta twelve blocks of flats, in Donostia-San Sebastian, designed by Luis Alustiza (1964). They obey an architectural type incipient in the Basque Country at that time: the tower block. The second case is located in Bayonne, France, and it is made up of seven blocks of apartments that were designed by Marcel Breuer (1967). Both of them reflect faithfully the specific characteristics of the construction and town planning prevailing in both states at the time, clearly diverging in matters such as the housing typology, the structural systems and the prefabrication. Keywords: Basque Country, residential architecture, developmentalism, Donostia-San Sebastian, Bayonne. 1 Introduction Residential architecture of the sixties constitutes the most faithful testimony of the developmental period that Europe lived at the onset of the last third of the 20th century. The revolution experimented by the construction of subsidized collective housing involved such urban, typological and constructive innovations that the resulting architecture required more time than ever to be understood and finally to be positively valued by society.

Keywords

Basque Country, residential architecture, developmentalism,Donostia-San Sebastian, Bayonne