Description

Urbanización La Playa is located in the centre of Medellin, on a site that was left vacant by the demolition of a textile factory. This marks an important shift in the provision of social housing schemes, which had traditionally been assigned to the outskirts, away from the city centre. Often, the relocation of poor settlements on the peripheries of Latin American cities was a way of creating an image of cleanliness and homogeneity while, simultaneously, protecting the cost of land in areas where large-scale real estate investment was expected. Therefore, this project demonstrates the emergence of new architectural and planning attitudes to tackle both poverty and rapid urban growth in Colombia.

The project sits on a rectangular site of 87 x 90 metres which is surrounded by multi-storey housing on three sides (south, west and east) and by the Quebrada Santa Helena, a small river on the north side. It consists of three rectangular blocks that are parallel to La Playa Avenue on the north side. The five-storey-high blocks are grouped closer to the southern edge of the site in order to create a public space along the avenue. The public space includes a viewing platform on the northernmost corner of the site and a park on the south. In addition to this public space which opens to the street, the zigzagging blocks create two outdoor areas whose scale is smaller and, hence, are more intimate. They are conceived for the residents rather than the general public.

Initially, the apartments consist of a basic unit measuring 5 x 10.5 metres with a narrow strip of services attached to one of the longer sides (bathroom, the kitchen and a laundry area). The rest of the space is an open plan that can be divided into six different configurations according to the needs and economic capacity of each family. On the facade, each apartment has four identical windows carefullv distributed according to the six possible permutations of the plan. Apartments also have a small balcony whose position varies for each unit. The changing position of the balconies introduces dynamism to the fenestration of the 68-metre-long facades.

More than vertical circulations, the oblong stairwells are conceived as transitional spaces from public to private. Their form and proportion facilitate interaction between residents and, even, encourage alternative uses. It is not rare to find laundry hung on the stairwells or to see social gatherings spilling outside the apartments onto the generous landings. The project was an attempt at formally and spatially transforming the image of social housing; not only the actual physical appearance but, also, the way it is perceived by the public.

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