Description

This large housing estate project addresses Mexico’s great need for high-quality social accommodation. Despite the relatively small area of 65 to 83 square metres per unit, the occupants have an entire house to themselves, an enormously important psychological feature within high-density structures. The estate tries to take up the traditional urban qualities of a residential area like scale, a good balance between private and public space, good distribution of commercial and public facilities, right down to the semi-public areas in front of the houses.

The overall intention is to produce an independent, fully functional, almost independent urban structure, offering the occupants, who are mainly on low incomes, all the facilities they need. The architects aimed particularly to make it possible for occupants to identify with their place, so that atmospheric qualities were to be put in the foreground: differentiated vigour for the house units through façade articulation and ‘cheerful’ paintwork, avoiding an unduly abstract and elegant appearance in favour of essentially traditional formal elements, treating the units equally so that social differences were not intelligible, creating front and back gardens and leaving enough public space for communal interaction.

The houses are linked to form double units, with enough space at the front to park a car or establish a garden. The ground floor has an all-purpose living area with built-in kitchen equipment, two smaller rooms and a washing yard. The bedrooms are upstairs. The greatest possible ‘neutrality’ for the spaces leaves considerable scope for the occupants‘ various requirements.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.