Description
In 2005, following the success of the earlier Quinta Monroy Residential Development in Iquique, ELEMENTAL had built 30 houses in Lo Espejo, using also an incremental approach. This project was on a much larger scale and consisted of 170 housing units in a province situated on the north-east of Santiago’s metropolitan area. The site was purchased by the residents of various informal settlements nearby who wanted to improve their living conditions without having to move farther away from the city centre – where most of them work. However, after acquiring the site, it became apparent that it had been used as an illegal landfill and, consequently, the mechanical conditions of the soil were not apt for construction. This posed the problem of having to excavate and refill the site, an operation that would increase the cost of construction fourfold. The situation was aggravated by a series of building restrictions: a 16-metre-wide margin was expropriated along the north edge of the property for the construction of a motorway; a pylon supporting high-voltage power lines prevented construction on the east side; on the south the law required the developer to widen the existing road, a condition which added yet another unexpected item to the budget. In order to fit the necessary number of houses in the substantially reduced site, ELEMENTAL proposed a vertical housing system which would minimise greatly the footprint of the project. The system would also reduce the amount of excavation and refilling necessary to make the ground suitable for construction. Rather than catering for both horizontal and vertical expansion, as in the last two projects, the houses in Renca can only grow upwards within a given structural grid of 4.5 metres front by 6 metres in depth by three storeys in height.
The basic house is a three-storey empty volume with a kitchen on ground level and a bathroom on the first floor exactly above the kitchen, the remaining area is a 28-square-metre open plan (and a three-storey void). However, the empty volume can be filled gradually by residents, and each house can eventually have three bedrooms and a total built area of 63.4 square metres – the average size of a middle-income house in Chile. This configuration also serves to guarantee three important aspects: 1. that all the hydraulic servicing is installed by specialists, 2. that a suitable structure is provided for the future development of the house and, 3. to justify the need for stairs in a house that originally has no levels; since the bathroom is strategically located above the kitchen, the stairs that lead up to the bathroom can later become the staircase of the house.
The structural and material palette in Renca is somewhat similar to the previous project. There is a concrete frame with embedded brick walls up to first floor level. A simple wood structure sits on top of the masonry walls supporting the roof and making space for an attic level. Residents do proceed to insert partitions and floors slabs, often using wood boards (plywood and chipboard). Not only is this the most inexpensive way of extending their houses, it also maintains a certain flexibility in case they need to carry out further alterations.
Undoubtedly, Renca is a very accomplished project in terms of urban and house design, a project which demonstrates the continued process of research and reflection carried out by ELEMENTAL. It could be argued, nonetheless, that the structure imposes limitations on users who can only extend their houses within the confines of an empty volume given to them at the beginning. Yet, the simple fact of conceiving a structure that permits users inexpensively to customise their dwellings according to need, income and taste is a commendable architectural achievement. More importantly, with this strategy ELEMENTAL has been able to transform social housing into an investment opportunity for the poor who, in the past, were banned from the so-called ‘property ladder’. ELEMENTAL were awarded the Silver Lion at the 2008 Venice Architectural Biennale and have received many other accolades in recognition for their work with poor communities throughout Chile. In 2016, ELEMENTAL’s director Alejandro Aravena received the Pritzker Prize and was curator of the Venice Biennale.
General view of the complex before occupation.
Row of houses before occupation.
Corner view during final construction phase.
Interior view before occupation.
Originally published in: Felipe Hernández, Beyond Modernist Masters. Contemporary Architecture in Latin America, Birkhäuser, 2009.