OPERATION BETWEEN WALLS

Natura Futura

• Architects

Architecture as an explorer of limits and its possibilities .

Disease

The absence of public policies that regulate the ways of generating a city affects a large part of Latin America. Such a situation is the result of a lack of: reading the context and understanding that the city is a physical expression of those who inhabit it. Bearing this in mind, it is necessary to create laws that value traditional materials and local labor; for a lasting appropriation of those who occupy it and the generation of more sustainable cities.

Background and diagnosis

The project is located in the center of the city of Babahoyo, Los Ríos province, Ecuador; a coastal area, with a tropical climate, of approximately 150,0000 inhabitants. It´s peripheries have been characterized by a long tradition of brick production, where despite technological development, they have preferred the artisanal method. The project, located in an urban center block, where the local empiricism is evident, the diversity of architectural responses is palpable; between the modern and the contemporary; between the alucobond and the cement. That said, it is pertinent to take the following recipe.

Extended limits

An adult couple feels the need to rehabilitate a building that was in disuse and deterioration. Given this, the reconfiguration of its front is proposed, thinking about the possibility of a wall that would be useful, both for the city and for the interior of the building. In this way, the link between the interior and the exterior is not reduced to a physical membrane, but in its use it extends to both ends; showing itself as a limit and a useful program at the same time.

The material as a modulator

The Operation takes place on a 8m wide x 10m high front. Faced with such a situation in height, it is proposed to use the brick as a modulator of a new front. This modulation goes from the unit of the brick to the whole of the volume in an exponential way. Such strategy is interspersed between mass and void, allowing adequate natural lighting and ventilation in every single space.

The dual-use front.

Starting from a basic squared volumetry, cubes of bricks are generated along its three levels, these drawers are joined at their vertex, whose lightness is complemented by recessed glass panels. The aforementioned strategy allows the generation of bookcases, workspaces, galleries and shelves inside each floor, while on the outside it gives way to floating plant terraces, thus highlighting the forcefulness of the brick cubes and taming the urban.

Altered heights

During the process we asked ourselves the following: What would happen if, during the search for new living systems, we altered the ways of seeing the city, its limits and conventional heights? - Such questioning, resulted in windows where the view is enjoyed squatting and on tiptoe - depending on how tall or short you are. In other words, the concept of “traditional window” has been transgressed without disregarding its functionality, light, wind and view.

The Operation seeks ...

The “Operation Between Walls” aim to highlight what is lost by the city but enduring for the artisan, a way to rehabilitate a building while reflecting the idiosyncrasy of the community that generates and inhabits it.

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