Description of project by SUMA Arquitectos
Unfortunately, most core housing projects consist of one-story detached units or two-story townhouses that cannot, due to their modest framework, develop into dense, true mixed-use districts that generate jobs and attract residents from other parts of the city. In addition, the simplicity of their architecture makes them uninteresting to citizens from other neighborhoods. The result is that these areas turn into large, stigmatized, and segregated bedroom communities that are only accessed by people who live there.
More recently, dense complexes of “self-built housing” have been developed as a result of the squatting of half-finished, high-rise buildings located in central urban areas, which offers an interesting possibility. What if we build these large skeletons on purpose and make them architecturally interesting, so they can develop progressively as vital and popular urban districts, even if they are located on the urban outskirts?
This project develops conceptual urban and architectural prototypes for such a possibility in a humid tropical context. Tropi/Co/Re buildings are large enough to allow the ground floors to be liberated for commercial establishments, while the top floors allow for residential occupancies of different styles and sizes. The structures are made of vertical bamboo trusses, with light-weight floor slabs that extend as eaves and balconies. Two-layered metallic roofs in the form of gigantic folded plates handle solar radiation at the top layer, while the bottom layer captures rainwater. The ventilated space in between insulates thermally the interior. The prototype can be scaled in different ways, both horizontally and vertically, to allow for variety in housing typologies. The architecture of the buildings themselves is also striking enough to guarantee sustained interest.
At the urban scale, the buildings are organized in urban blocks of 100m x 100m, which would conform a reasonably walkable grid. The disposition of the buildings in each block can also vary, sometimes providing open space in the middle, sometimes in the borders. This could differentiate more residential blocks from those more decidedly commercial.
With temperatures ranging between 27 ° and 32° and a relative humidity above 60% all year round, the architecture of the tropics should question conventional construction practices and investigate alternative material systems. And perhaps, look back more carefully at the core elements of an architecture of the tropics. It is no accident that Gottfried Semper was attracted to a Caribbean Hut as a model to critically revise the values of architectural production of his time.
The streets between the blocks should conform regional connections that integrate the zone to the rest of the city. These elements -a walkable urban grid, structure (core), roof and enclosure- should express the nature of the tropics and engage with its condition in a way that is appropriate across the tropical belt, where vegetation grows vigorously throughout the year, torrential rains are a regular occurrence, heat and humidity are constant, and a pungent sun constantly hits buildings and people. In sum, it suggests a town that can, to borrow a phrase from Gabriel GarcíaMárquez, “float in the heat.”
