The Hybrid Block as Urban Form

Abstract

[EN] In this paper we analyze the hybrid block as an urban form of synthesis, in which the open order of modern urbanism is superimposed on the closed order of traditional urbanism. In this model, proposed for the first time by Hilberseimer in his 1927 Vertical City, housing and work are not separated but overlapping on mixed-use buildings, where the dwellings are located in slabs or towers shaped as isolated volumes, whose design responds to its own internal logic, based on functional criteria (rational distribution of rooms, orientation, ventilation, sunshine, views...). Those volumes emerge from a compact built-up podium for commercial or office uses, aligned with the perimeter streets and responding to the external logic of the urban fabric. This configures an urban form in which both hybridization of architectural forms and hybridization of uses are obtained, recovering the multifunctional character of the traditional urban block, which had disappeared in functionalist urbanism. The paper examines the reasons that can explain the exclusion of this urban form from the repertoire of elements of modern urbanism, and analyzes the validity of the hybrid block, as an strategy to recompose or reinterpret the urban block, assuming high density and collective housing as a basic typology for the construction of the city.