The vertical garden at Mansion Brescia. A museum and contemplation garden for Peruvian 20th century architecture

The Vertical Garden at Mansion Brescia can be seen as the final step of a research started a couples of years ago on the Peruvian Modern Movement of the 20th century. What started as a simple research of how the Modern Movement was introduced in Peru, was developed into a research on what was written about the country’s modern architecture, a bibliographical research which at the time was incomplete, as there wasn’t a complete guide on modern architecture but only monographic works on a couple of architects or themes. Nowadays, five years later, some specialised books have appeared, and some projects for websites and online archives which complete what existed at the time are now available on the Internet. With the construction boom the country has been living since the early 2000s, the architectural heritage of the 20th century has been at risk of demolition in order to make space for new buildings. Peruvian cities for the European point of view are pretty new, they consist of a historical centre dating from the mid 1500s, which in many cases hasn’t been preserved as they should, mostly because of the interventions made by architects since the late 19th century; and the biggest part of the city, which as in many parts of the world started expanding since the 1920s, but in the specific case of Peru, reached a critical point in the 1980s due to the internal immigration from the poorest parts of the country started in the late 1950s. The urban city (compared to the marginal city composed of barracks and favelas) was composed mostly by semidetached houses of one or two floors which where built starting from the 1940s. As the original owners of those houses passed away, they were sold in order to build multifamily dwellings in the first years of the 21st century. Many interesting buildings dating from the mid-century have been destroyed and new buildings will appear on their site because there is no national conscience on the architectural heritage, neither for the Colonial architecture, nor for the Republican (19th century) and even less for the modern architecture of the 20th century. The idea of this work is to introduce the European public to Peruvian architecture, and most importantly to contribute to create a conscience on the Peruvian public on its own architectural heritage. Thus, combining both the historical research, and what has been learned at this faculty, the resulting product proposes a small museum dedicated to Peruvian architecture of the 20th century, and a vertical garden for contemplation with socialising activities in order to invite the general public to discover and reflect on our own heritage.