Cabañas offers a space to park bicycles, places for recreation, or seating to enjoy the surroundings of Cuenca. It is intended to emulate the existing hollows in trees, being raised from the ground, creating a heterogeneous forest of cabins around the city of Cuenca.
Description of project by Un Estudio Propio
The proposal “Cabañas” from Un Estudio Propio won the Competition "Bosques de Cuenca 2022" in the category Public Space awarded by the City Council of Cuenca within the framework of activities of UFIL Urban Forest Innovation Lab of Cuenca. The objective of UFIL during these last four years has been to develop a business network taking advantage of the forest of Cuenca, seeking in the bioeconomy a healthy opportunity to create more resilient urban and rural environments.
The contest sought designs or prototypes inspired by local forests, with the aim of creating elements of social utility in the city of Cuenca that would also generate a positive environmental impact and thus encourage the consumption of sustainable products and services, extending their end of life for as long as possible.
Organized in five categories: Public Space, Product Design (Domestic, Packaging and Commercial Furniture) and Ecodesign; of the more than 114 proposals submitted, only 2 first prizes were awarded in Public Space and Ecodesign, leaving the rest of the categories awarded only with runner-up prizes. The First Prize in the Ecodesign category went to the Murcian designer Rafael Vinader with his proposal Circular Homes.
Cabañas is a proposal to build urban equipment for the use and utility of the citizens of Cuenca. To this end, it focuses on social sustainability and emotional durability to seek connections that endure over time beyond the object.
The proposal uses the common imaginary of the tree house to build structures in the public space that we will call “Cabañas”, linking forest and childhood.
From proposal stament:
"Our “Cabañas” complete the activities in the squares and parks of Cuenca, they go where there are no benches, where there is a lack of playgrounds, fairground stands or bicycle parking. Their behavior resembles trees, simple systems of cells whose combinations create the greatest natural diversity on planet Earth.
They are elevated off the ground, and you have to be careful when you go inside (like when you climb a tree and you have to watch where you put your foot). And they can be covered on the outside or inside with boards, as needed!
Based on the visual experience and the corporal experience of the tree house, we designed several simple modules that will be our cells to create diverse structures.
A forest reflects the heterogeneity of nature. It is from the combination of simple cells that the most complex and long-lived diversity of the planet is created, because trees are not only the largest living beings, but also the longest-lived.
Our proposal builds a heterogeneous forest of tree houses for the city of Cuenca.
It builds a own forest".
