El Edificio de altura. Una revisión de las aproximaciones desde la sociología para su estudio

Abstract

La verticalización de las ciudades chilenas es un fenómeno que concita el interés público, aunque requiere de una comprensión que excede las razones económicas y las posibilidades técnicas que llevan a la proliferación de edificios de altura. El presente trabajo revisa en la literatura sociológica el tratamiento que se ha dado a los edificios de altura, con el objetivo de encontrar ciertas claves que colaboren con el estudio actual de estas formas arquitectónicas. Las conclusiones identifican un giro epistemológico que ha permitido contar con herramientas capaces de enlazar, por una parte, los aspectos arquitectónicos, materiales y técnicos implicados en los edificios de altura, junto con el análisis sociológico de los mismo.

High density architecture as local factory of circular economy

“…The current municipal spending on waste management can be redirected to subsidize the treatment and recovery of waste, which is more profitable than current expenses. by these means, the building, in a generic sense of density, constitutes a particular way of organizing the space that condenses certain social attributes, locates activities making them feasible through its own infrastructure [13]. This is, thus, a spatial practice of applied circular economy design towards a different approach of understanding density.…”

From ascetic individualism to the dissolution of the self: A sociological approach to the religious symbolism of Chicago and New York skyscrapers

“…Now, the application of Weberian theory is complemented by the incipient Sociology of Skyscrapers. At the beginning, Sociology – and particularly Urban Sociology – was not concerned with the material and formal aspects of these buildings (Abbott, 2000: 62; Tryggestad and Georg, 2011: 182; Vergara Vidal, 2017: 4–5), but rather, with the interactions existing within urban and architectural forms. Although, yes, there were antecedents: Durkheim (2004), for example, pointed out that ‘material things play an essential role in common life’ and that architecture constitutes a ‘social phenomenon’ (p. 427); Weber announced that the morphology of building space – and the layout in cities – could affect the actions of individuals (Weber, 2005: 966); Mead spoke of the symbolic importance of material buildings (Abbott, 2000: 62); and, Halbwachs (2011), produced a considerable advance in the study of urban space (Vergara Vidal, 2017: 8), by addressing, for the first time, in The Collective Memory (2011: 185 ff), the materiality, buildings, and places of cities from the perspective of their spatial, symbolic, and memory value for their inhabitants.…”

“…Only recently has the discipline approached urban phenomena, considering buildings as objects of sociological study. This change has occurred in three successive phases in which space and building have been understood as a good, as a territory or as a technique, as a ‘place,’ and as an ‘object’ (Vergara Vidal, 2017: 4–5). Who makes ‘the decisive spatial turn’ and changes the object of study from urban communities to space itself is H.…”

“…Lefebvre (1971, 2013), who establishes that it is a ‘social relation’, a form of syntagmatic organization of social space, associated with a function (Lefebvre, 2013: 265–269). Therefore, his great contribution consists in ‘having displaced human actors (communities) from the center of the analysis and having put in their place a social relation, a non-human actor, a technical form’ (Vergara Vidal, 2017: 10).…”

“…In sum, in Chicago and New York skyscrapers, we will link architectural, material, and technical aspects of skyscrapers to sociological ones (Vergara Vidal, 2017: 1 and 14): religious, cultural – Comprehensive Sociology – economic – Jameson – technological, aesthetic, and symbolic – Mead, Halbwalchs.…”