The Best University Proposals for Social Housing in Latin America and Spain in 2017

At the end of September, we invited our Spanish-speaking readers to send us their social housing proposals completed at a university level. Social housing is still a challenge for much of Latin America and although every year hundreds of architecture students work on projects that reflect their concerns in the social housing field, its visibility is very low and its materialization is null. At a time when the Global South has pursued its own responses to its own problems, the university response on social housing should be taken into account by the State, both of whom are interested in the common good.

Out of 116 proposals received from Spain and 11 Latin American countries, this selection of 20 ideas represents the different challenges and state of the problems in social housing. While some approach Colombia’s post-conflict scenario for rural inhabitants, some propose answers to the insertion of social housing in already densified areas, to which the beneficiaries tend to be relegated by the value of land and housing. Other ideas point to the reconversion of infrastructure, modulation, the integration of indigenous peoples and natural disasters.

We believe that the selection not only highlights the efforts of students and academics to address contingent problems but will also open up the discussion about social housing, often relegated only as a one-dimensional problem when in reality, poverty is multidimensional.

Integrated, sustainable rural settlement model, Yopal, Colombia

Authors: Daniel Vanegas, Tatiana Cantor
Location: Yopal, Colombia
Instituion: Universidad Piloto de Colombia
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: This project seeks sustainable alternatives for rural settlements, taking advantage of the historic opportunity of the end of an armed conflict, and with the agrarian reform and land restitution. The Colombian Orinoquia is a territory of high potential. The national government is allocating resources and legal tools to the development of agricultural projects that will turn this region into the food pantry of the future.

The government seeks strategies and projects that achieve the reduction of areas destined for the food and economic subsistence of the local peasant family, based on the allocation logic of the Family Agricultural Units (UAF). In this way, an integrated improvement of the existing mobility infrastructure is proposed, plus the creation of new intermodal mobility routes and networks at the regional and municipal levels, meeting the infrastructure deficits. The proposal also seeks to protect and improve the productive qualities of the soil through the execution of a productive agricultural model based on intensive, organic and associated agriculture of the products.

As a housing solution, the Rural Dignified Housing Units (UVDR) are proposed as the architectural aspect of the project. They reinterpret the cultural qualities of the typical rural peasant housing in a healthy, sustainable and economic housing model. The proposal includes rationality, simplicity, and symmetry as key concepts to facilitate development and self-construction. These units take advantage of the common elements of agricultural activities and the common and natural materials of the sector – coal ash and slag, sawdust and rice husk, quicklime and grey cement- which are used as the structural constructive elements, for example in the spongy walls of cellular concrete. These walls have thermal inertia qualities adapted to the climate of the region, a large bearing capacity, a relative weight and very low production costs compared to traditional commercial products.

People could live here (Art 45)

Authors: Marcos Gómara
Location: Barcelona, España
Institution: UPC-ETSAB (España) + FADU UdelaR (Uruguay)
Initiative: Intercambio en 5° año

Summary: This project is a government tool to facilitate access to housing and promote the economic and social development of citizens while improving urban quality. The proposal seeks to rehabilitate abandoned buildings, in order of the degree of protection, to allocate them to social housing. This allows an evolutionary progression of the redevelopment and recuperation of the historical center of the city, the formalization of the projects so they can be included in public competitions and promote the recognition of young national or international talents.

The housing and urban amenities network, together with its work towards the transformation of vacant lots, try to sew together the historic center to provide greater continuity in the territory. This is intended not only to improve urban quality but also to be an impetus for future transformations.

Adaptable housing_the integrated lot

Author: Sofía Cordero Brümmer
Location: Santiago, Chile
Instituion: Pontificia Universidad Católica
Teachers: Rodrigo Tapia, Cristián Robertson
Initiative: Quinto año

Summary: This proposal is the result of a university assignment that sought social housing projects on 9×18 meter lots in La Faena neighborhood, Peñalolén (Chile). Brümmer’s project proposes to generate adaptable housing for workshops and other productive activities which spill out into the public space. The private space extends towards the sidewalk as part of the interior courtyard.

The project enhances constant visibility from the home to the street, thus ensuring vigilance and security. The overall plan, when joined with other blocks, generates spaces for access that extends to the footpath and the public-private space. The blocks are arranged as “brackets”, located at the ends of the living rooms and bedrooms, and in the center, a corridor connects to the wet rooms and services. These are located facing each other, creating courtyards that go from the most public to the most private. Since there is always a bracket joint with another, in a mirrored way, there are no “dead” dividing walls, the front walls towards the street are always inhabited.

AIRO

Authors: Stefano Airaudo y Julián Rosenfeld
Location: Rosario, Argentina
Institution: Facultad de Arquitectura, Planeamiento y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario
Initiative: Cuarto año

Summary: This proposal aimed to recognize and exercise mechanisms of multiple compositions, that is, to address simultaneously the composition as a whole and the cells that comprise it. The chosen theme is a set of collective housing that forms part of an urban restructuring plan that the Planning Secretariat of the Municipality of Rosario (Argentina) organized for the Pichincha neighborhood.

With the aim of city-making, the main premise was to establish ways of intervening in the block by establishing transitions between the public space of the street and the private space of the whole block. Adding on to the project’s focus on the definition of the whole compared to that of the cell level is the need to redefine housing as an open and flexible spatial structure. As a result, the proposal allows for reflection on different ways of living and their spatial elements.

Social Housing Canoa-Ecuador

Author: Pedro Vázquez
Location: Cuenca, Ecuador
Institution: Universidad del Azuay
Initiative: Cuarto año

Summary: This intervention in the Canoa (Ecuador) community seeks to restore and improve the living conditions of the population that was affected by the 7.6 magnitude earthquake in 2016, which left 90% of buildings destroyed. It proposes using the empty lots for emergency housing that can vary in size to adapt to the conditions of the lot with 5 different housing design options.

These homes have the capacity to expand and fit together to form larger social housing complexes, restoring the urban fabric. Likewise, the project proposes the construction to be carried out with local materials: bamboo cane and wood. This decision would allow it to be part of a production process with the local inhabitants of the area and thereby stimulate the local economy.

Collective housing

Image © Celina Pittaro + Camila Nicolet + Mailena Fahy

Author: Celina Pittaro, Camila Nicolet, Mailena Fahy
Location: Rosario, Argentina
Institution: Facultad de Arquitectura, Planeamiento y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario
Initiative: Tercer Año

Summary: This housing complex takes advantage of the relationship that exists between community spaces. The final volume of the project arises as the result of altering full and empty spaces so that the houses can benefit from natural light and fresh air, as well as a great privacy between them and towards the outside.

The units are comprised of three models, 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms of 80, 96 and 112 m2 respectively. These units are encased in each other and form modules that alternate to form the final set. In turn, each module has a green terrace which is shared by the inhabitants of it.

The complex is designed from the horizontal circulation generated by the internal courtyards, which are connected to each other to form the central patio, where the secondary courtyards converge. In this way, the open space acquires the same importance as the covered space.

Social urbanism in a post-conflict framework

Author: David Puin Neira
Location: Tunja, Colombia
Institution: Universidad Santo Tomás
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: In order to position architecture as a catalyst tool for the cultural qualities of Toribio, this architectural proposal creates a model of social housing that revolves around indigenous customs.

In its development, it took into account vernacular construction systems and techniques and knowledge of contemporary architecture. This gave shape to a module capable of transforming as per the different needs that displaced families may have that, who this project intends to cater for. The project seeks to respond with simplicity to specific problems; its materiality, structure, and functioning are the synthesis of the tools and conditions that are present in the territory.

BIG-BANG collective housing set – exploded block

Authors: Liza Breuer; Ana Segura
Location: Córdoba, Argentina
Institution: Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
Initiative: Tercer año Arquitectura 3C

Summary: Latin America is experiencing a process of urbanization that brings with it risks and opportunities for the integrated and sustainable development of this region. Stopping the immediate urban expansion and planning effectively is nothing more than ensuring decent housing for the growing population. Valuing urban heritage, enhancing activity in public spaces, and taking advantage of land use within urban areas, are just some of the key and critical resources we have to encourage.

With this objective in mind, the project worked in Barrio General Paz de Córdoba (Argentina), a candidate area for renovation with relative population densification, and above it collective housing at height as a means to facilitate the proposal. The project is proposed as a transformation tool. It is also intended as an applicable initiative, capable of being reformulated within its context thus forming a set of five buildings on Sarmiento street, independent but consecutive to each other. Through its gradient of common spaces, its typological mixture, and the link on the ground floor with the General Paz Park, it was proposed to generate multiple adjustments while taking into account the appropriation of existing and innovative local material technologies.

Multi-family density

Image © Diego Lacazette + Sebastián Hermosilla + Jesús Chuquipoma

Author: Diego Lacazette Chau, Sebastián Hermosilla Berríos, Jesús Chuquipoma Quiliche
Location: Santiago, Chile
Institution: Universidad Central de Chile
Initiative: Tercer Año

Summary: Transformations in the pericentre of Santiago have resulted in the relocation of many family groups to the peripheries, away from the city and labor areas, favoring the arrival of individualistic ways of inhabiting.

Within this framework, a prototype for densification of the pericentre is proposed which is capable of adapting to ever-changing scalar diversity: low-rise sets, various story sets, traditional families, polynuclear families, large family groups, foreign communities, etc. For this, we think of the tower as an extension in height of the neighborhood and/or the corridors of houses, which are capable of housing the relational complexities of the city at ground level. The project proposes “semi-detached houses” at height, expandable and organized around important common spaces: “a large corridor” -the elevated street-, and “meeting spaces per floor” -the squares-. It is a way of reinterpreting the old “modern” housing projects.

The house proposes an interior space without walls which can be reprogrammed according to the needs of its inhabitants. It is organized by a virtual programmatic wall that we have called the macro furniture. This plays with the idea of the expiration of the concept of “enclosure”, proposing new readings around the concept of privacy and its possible permeabilities.

Transformable spaces in residential areas

Author: Marco Febre Jara
Location: Lima, Perú
Institution: Universidad Ricardo Palma
Initiative: Quinto Año

Summary: Currently there is an important and innate factor of human nature that is not taken into account in architecture, that is, evolution. Given that people are dynamic, progressive and adaptable, new spaces should satisfy these characteristics. Therefore a “transformable architecture” points towards a better management of space, leaving aside the rigidity of architecture and allowing man to adapt it according to his current and future needs.

The project is located in one of the districts with the greatest urban expansion in recent years, so there was a great need for a housing proposal that anticipates this constant growth of families.

There are 5 types of housing modules which vary by the number of bedrooms. Each one of these is implemented as an extendible structure mechanism that allows adding a bedroom or enlarging the social space. In the same way, the modules are placed heterogeneously allowing a greater interaction between different types of families. Likewise, they connect through semi-public spaces that cross-cut some levels of the building.

Housing complex Lomas de Penco

Author: Yuri Chamblas
Location: Chillán, Chile
Institution: Universidad del Bío-Bío
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: In Chile after the earthquake and tsunami of February 27, 2010, in the city of Penco, the first post-disaster camp in the country sheltered 51 families. The camp had problems with overcrowding and poor habitability of the emergency housing due to prolonged use over time (4 years). An external problem derived from social housing as a housing response, where it generally operates a reductionist logic: moving away and shrinking, generating a physically, spatially and socially segregated solution.

The project saw an opportunity with a type of subsidy that sought to revert socio-spatial segregation, favoring social integration, reducing social inequalities, generating equipped neighborhoods and territorially integrated cities. The subsidy is DS 116 Social Integration Project, which combines subsidy DS 1 for middle-class families and subsidy DS 49 for vulnerable families.

This housing complex is configured as a social support, inserted within a network of opportunities, betting on the socioeconomic development of the community and the environment where it is inserted. It deals with the public urban scale, the semi-public community scale and the private family scale through a progressive single-family house, satisfying the spatial and shelter needs of families.

Habitat Bay

Author: Indira Melo, Elizabeth Monga
Location: Quito, Ecuador
Institution: Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Initiative: Cuarto Año

Summary: The earthquake of April 2016 on the coast of Ecuador was the main motivation for this project. It constitutes the mass design of social housing in Bahía de Caráquez – Manabí. The design started from the typology of “patio house” and the adaptation of the “ballon frame” structure. Thus, the principles and vernacular materials of the region are rescued with the importance of an open and airy house through the patio and the use of wood intact. The versatility of the development of the house and the mass grouping obtains an orderly and differentiated morphology according to the use.

One of the main challenges of the project was the site since it has a cross lookout. For this reason, the mass design has a direct connection to it. This is done through an embedded path in the middle of the project, allowing the trade façade to be oriented directly towards it. The house consists of two main modules in the form of L this helps users to obtain housing in an L also obtain a source of economic development in the other module.

Shelter system

Author: Alan Miuliz, José Ongaro
Location: Córdoba, Argentina
Institution: Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: This shelter system was designed in response to the poor quality of social housing in Córdoba, seeking to improve them without increasing the budget that is currently allocated for its construction. It was designed as a shelter that would be removable and mountable on the terraces, which are underutilized, residual spaces in the city. It is a strategy towards the redensification.

In the current context, the accelerated growth of Córdoba in recent years, the rapid pace of urbanization and the lack of accessibility to land, have caused a permanent threat of inadequate consumption of both natural rural land of productive value, and landscape-environmental value.

The design of this project seeks to reduce this deficit, based on a series of elements, such as industrialization, rationalization, the best use of existing urban land and installed urban capacity, thinking of the redensification of the city in the immediate future. Thus, instead of developing a finished house, we believe that the conditions of our context offer a flexible solution in the form of an intelligent constructive system, composed of structural tubes, that are light, fast and economical.

Urban Eco-resilient Perimetral

Authors: Eliezer Torres Sánchez, Alberto Castillejos Albores, José Camposeco Coutiño, Karen Vázquez Villatoro
Adviser: Manuel López Hidalgo
Location: Tuxtla Gutiérrez, México
Institution: Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas
Initiative: Quinto Año

Summary: The Perimetral has been one of the ten finalist projects at the national level in the fifth FIVS contest organized by INFONAVIT in Mexico, which addressed the issue of density.

The objective of the project is to respond to the need for housing in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas, focusing on the low-income population sector. It also seeks to stop the destruction of ecological heritage, where housing is currently invading the Ecological Reserve ” Sumidero Canyon National Park “, which adjoins the urban edge. The project is for the periphery of the North-East area of the city, where there is still adequate infrastructure and where the value of the land is more accessible.

Perimetral seeks to generate social fabric and discourage the consumption of natural areas, generate the correct urban-ecological hybridization and act on the edges of the city as a priority. The efficient use of the land for housing is fundamental as is the restoration, preservation, and increase of green areas; economic sustainability and employment through different commercial and service uses in housing complexes; discourage the use of the automobile to provide greater pedestrian areas and public space for its inhabitants.

The housing complex prototype and progressive social housing for Manabí and Esmeraldas

Author: Accel Alexis Apolo Andino
Location: Guayaquil, Ecuador
Institution: Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil
Initiative: Quinto Año

Summary: In accordance with the guidelines, the prototype housing plan for the housing complex and progressive social housing for Manabí and Esmeraldas, the project is carried out on 12 hectares.

In order to rationalise the investment of resources, the adopted solution offers the possibility of building the housing unit in two or four stages, the first one being the urbanisable area that will allow to lodge all of it temporarily and including the first phase of the equipment. They will also operate several transport routes such as: the main, secondary, tertiary and pedestrian routes; which will be surrounded by vegetation.

The project seeks to put in value (and at the same time in crisis) the traditional model of emergency housing, the “Mediagua”, recognising its historical role in helping families affected by catastrophes and the wide dissemination and popularity of their constructive system, which is linked to the intervention of the “individual” citizen. Housing, more than satisfy the needs of the user and be of a social nature, must conceive a hybrid progressive sense, which will allow giving its own long-term economic support.

Empalmar

Image © Luciano Civitate + Juan Bidart + Ignacio Bianchini

Author: Luciano Civitate, Juan Bidart, Ignacio Bianchini
Location: Córdoba, Argentina
Institution: Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: The project is designed for the vacant land at the metallurgical Rome in Cordoba which is located in an area with multiple social problems. We take advantage of this resource to connect the neighborhoods located on each side of the land, currently separated by the physical barrier of the walls of the metallurgical and the social barrier generated by the roads of the FFCC.

Within the railway premises, there is an urban park that serves as a union between the surrounding sectors with a sports, recreation and leisure center. Two ways of inhabiting are proposed, the first one we call inhabiting by implosion, the more introverted option, and the second, inhabited by an explosion, a more extroverted proposal.

The inhabitants need flexible spaces, unstable and capable of conceiving overlapping uses. These houses are adapted to multiple users and requirements, they can grow, decrease and mutate. The houses are capable of generating their own ecosystem by recovering rainwater and a vegetable bellows. They allow cross ventilation, have panels and solar collectors achieving less dependence on artificial climate conditioning systems. The courtyards become the anteroom of each house.

Housing complex San Joaquín

Image © Bianca Apolinario + Guido Salinas +Fernanda Mozó

Author: Bianca Apolinario, Guido Salinas, Fernanda Mozó
Location: Santiago, Chile
Institution: Universidad de Chile
Initiative: Cuarto Año

Summary: The San Joaquín Housing Complex is a medium density housing project located in the district of San Joaquín (Santiago), between Santa Rosa street and La Legua town. It is housing for social integration that covers different types of users and, therefore, different types of housing that vary between single family, seniors, a young couple, new family, students, and singles, all within the range of 33 to 72 square meters.

Within the complex, the relationships with the edges of the urban level and the height of the surroundings are taken into account. An interior walkway is created that joins the housing blocks through the vertical circulation hall in each. It creates a secondary circulation that joins the blocks with the edges and social zones. In addition, an interior street is generated with the adjoining land, creating a sector of parking lots and services. The complex also has commercial premises that respond to the hierarchy of Santa Rosa Street, neighborhood amenities for the whole, such as, for example, laundries, multipurpose rooms, offices, garbage rooms, and warehouses.

Housing complex Mi Ruca

Authors: Benjamin Ewertz, Claudio Pizarro, Charlotte Van Doesburg, Nicol Henríquez
Location: Santiago, Chile
Institution: Universidad de Chile
Initiative: Cuarto Año

Summary: The arrival of the Mapuche culture in the city in recent decades has generated a growing demand for a housing solution that responds to the lifestyle to which these groups are traditionally accustomed. The proposal located in Puente Alto, gives a housing solution to a committee of 40 Mapuche families, which generates a new milestone for the life, concentration, and dissemination of the Mapuche culture.

Composed of 4 types of housing, the proposal is adapted to the different needs presented by the different family groups (workshop housing – family housing 4p – family housing 5p and housing 3ra), grouping them harmoniously within the group, which also includes a neighbourhood headquarters that establishes the link between the city and the complex.

The spatiality of the housing is developed around the Mapuche worldview, in the importance of the kitchen, the life in the community and in the close relation with the environment. A “progressive” house with internal growth is proposed, enabling the transformation of interior spatiality without affecting the relationship between the context and the formal expression of the whole.

CHUKLLA: Alternative solution to high Andean housing in Peru

Authors: Edgar Torres Romani, Edgar Revolledo Vicerrel, Yajnaira Rodriguez Castañeda, Virginia Garrido Mendoza, Percy Carrasco Santos, Betzy Quispitupa Tapia, Ricardo Obregón Huaman
Adviser: Viviana Shigyo Kobayashi
Location: Lima, Perú
Institution: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería
Initiative: Quinto Año

Summary: High rates of mortality and economic losses are registered annually in the high Andean areas of Peru due to sudden changes in temperature and frost, seriously affecting thousands of people and preventing their development and considerably reducing their quality of life.

We propose an accessible and safe housing unit that associates the community, the state, and the academy, in order to reduce the vulnerability indexes to sudden changes in temperatures and frosts, emphasizing internal thermal comfort and productive capacity and responsible family consumption. Applying bioclimatic and earthquake-resistant strategies in design, using local materials to reduce production costs and improve communal ties of work and cooperation. This contributes significantly to the achievement of the sustainable development objective of Peru.

Our solution addresses the problem of rural housing from four aspects; (i) A design that optimises resources and maximises the quality of the building. (ii) Optimum use of clean energies and water resources (iii) Use of materials from the area and reduction of production costs (iv) Infrastructure contributes to the improvement of the productive capacity of the family.

Habitámosis

Author: Angelis Centofanti
Thesis supervise: Sorocaima Romero
Institution: Universidad de Oriente (Venezuela)
Initiative: Proyecto de Título / PFC / Tesis de Grado

Summary: Habitámosis is translated into the transformation of social behaviors through social inclusion in the architectural development of multipurpose spaces. It applies to a modular, adaptable, transportable system of self-assembly and progressive growth, which serve spaces of a residential, educational, and welfare nature with the conceptualization of an industrialized model that adapts to any bioclimatic environment. Its modulation arises through the selection of materials of national production whose standard measures are applied in the resizing of the elements that make the modular prototype with the minimum waste of materials

This proposal offers its users the possibility of the progressive growth of its spaces, with the addition of several modules in any of its architectural typologies. This promotes the inclusion and improvement of both the individual (from the housing point of view) and the collective in the residential area. The development of this system is generated in workshops, far from the plantation, facilitating the construction of these at the hand of the communities.

This system has been developed for its application throughout Venezuela, with an adaptable response to both the problems of the most affected communities and the climatic and topographic environments where they are located. The basic modular prototype has been evaluated structurally and seismologically, with a weight of 4 tons supporting seven times its weight.