Alternative Housing project Ciudad Alegria - Montenegro Colombia
This project re-defined me what was the role of an architect in a community. Whilst I worked as a collaborator I had the opportunity to live and know the project inside out. It took place after a devastating earthquake in Armenia- Colombia. The possibilities of delivering a house project for the communities affected and applying the tradition of rammed earth as light earth construction, was the beauty of the project. The idea was to provide a house that was more than a “box of 4 walls” which has been a well-known feature of social housing in Colombia. This project was breaking barriers from the traditional construction to provide a powerful solution, full of excitement and alternative components. The terraced housing project consisted of 425 units that were delivered in a “basket structure” concept, in a trapezoidal individual footprint within a radiant urbanist proposal. The 2 storey houses were designed to have progressive development according to the economic needs of the future owners. The structure was a supporting skeleton of treated bamboo, with an infill of soil from the site, fibre and clay. The wall mixtures were lab tested and injected into the wall frames. The roof was finished with a geotextile membrane and a mix of lightweight earth with a flat nest of fibre. The roof design was a vault shape and was included for two reasons: to allow the easy runoff for rainwater and to create a zone of ventilation to help maintain a comfortable average temperature within the house. I had the great opportunity to be involved as a junior architect from the conception stage to the construction stage dealing with suppliers, materials and the organisation of logistics supporting the project manager and site architect. This was a very strong and emotionally experience, where the community was involved and challenges and rewards at all levels were a given and take on the day to day basis.