However, they took things one step further in La Boca, and actually built the houses almost completely from materials found or discarded in the shipyard. This occurred as a result of the huge population explosion following the immigration boom at the turn of the 20th century - there just was not enough homes for all of the people in Buenos Aires.
The answer to this problem was conventillo (tenement / shared) housing. Conventillos were long houses with small rooms that opened out onto a central, outdoor, common patio. Whereas in somewhere like San Telmo, for example, conventillos were generally old, converted mansions, but in La Boca they had to be more inventive. Here the conventillos were hastily constructed from scrap corrugated metal and wood from old ships, and to spruce them up a little, the façades, doors and windows were then decorated in the famous bright color combinations with the leftover paint from the port, the tradition brought from Genoa.
