Description

This example of city-centre low-income housing was designed in the centre of Mexico City by the firm Higuera + Sanchez, which, since 2008, took the name JSa (Javier Sanchez Arquitectura). The project is modest in size and consists of a reinterpretation of the vecindad, a very common housing typology in Mexico. The vecindad is an urban multi-family tenement with apartments arranged around a central courtyard . Initially, vecindades were subdivisions of large single-family courtyard houses . However, in response to the rapid growth of the capital in the early 20th century, vecindades began to be purpose-built as a housing option for transitory dwellers – seasonal workers, artisans, etc. – as well as for rural miarants who moved oermanentlv to the citv.

Brasil 44 is located in the historic centre of Mexico City, an area which suffered significant damage in the 1985 series of earthquakes. The project was sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (SEDUVI) and the Institute of Housing (INVI) in association with the regional government of Andalucfa. It is part of a programme that aims to reduce land speculation and to improve conditions of habitation in currently overcrowded tenements. Architects are invited to restore existing vecindades which, once completed, are sold to residents who can buy the property with subsidies given by the government.

JSa’s proposal consisted of restoring the central courtyard to its original dimensions and keeping the existing commercial outlet at the front, a bridal gown shop .Taking advantage of the high ceilings, mezzanine levels were introduced in both floors, thus converting a two-storey structure into a four-level building.

The roof was converted into a generous launderette with a small social space. Every effort was made for the building to retain the two traditional components of a vecindad: the courtyard and the zequen – an entry corridor leading from the street to the courtyard. The plans follow a simple distribution of apartments, one on each side of the courtyard with the staircase at the back between the two. Such a layout makes the courtyard the most prominent space of the building. It serves not only as a Iightwell and ventilation area for all the apartments but, also, as a social space that needs to be traversed by residents every time they enter or leave their dwellings. The bridal shop at the front of the building responds to the commercial character of the street which already has other shops of the same kind.

JSa won the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Architectural Biennale in the urban project category for the design of this project and has received multiple other commendations in Mexico. In spite of its formal simplicity and its small scale, the worth of the project lies in the subtle contribution it makes to the recuperation of a deprived area of Mexico City and the sensibility with which the firm undertook the design and restoration of a building typology, the vecindad, whose cultural value is often undermined.

 

 

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Originally published in: Felipe Hernández, Beyond Modernist Masters. Contemporary Architecture in Latin America, Birkhäuser, 2009.