The departure point for this proposal was to acknowledge the inherent need of affordable housing projects in the Latin American Context to be well anchored in fairly dense and well developed urban areas. Despite the fact that urbanized real estate would increase the cost of land, it guarantees its residents access to already established public services and basic infrastructure. Given this framework, the initial premise behind this project is to construct a flexible typological block that would go beyond the conventional site and service schemes and provide a hybrid between an infrastructural core and a housing unit type. This would provide the necessary critical mass for the project to exist and operate efficiently as an architectural entity within the given urban environment. The typological block operates primarily at two levels; on the one hand it gives the basics for first step housing and provides a framework for growth. On the other hand it serves as the “primary building block” which by means of repetition, summation, and multiple variations defines the overall urban morphology of the block, and in particular its public and mass private spaces. Hence it serves as the primary organizational entity across multiple scales ranging from the individual unit to the overall syntax of the project.

El punto de partida para esta propuesta de vivienda económica nace de una reflexión sobre la gran necesidad de insertar proyectos residenciales de interés social en contextos urbanos definidos que puedan proveer al usuario de diversos servicios públicos e infraestructuras básicas. Dada esta premisa, el proyecto se enfoca en construir un prototipo base, que abastece a las unidades de infraestructuras esenciales (agua, luz, etc.). Este prototipo, opera a dos escalas distintas, por un lado se vuelve el ancla que aglomera seis unidades de diversos tamaños y provee posibles sistemas de crecimiento por medio de auto construcción. Por otro lado, este bloque de seis piezas residenciales, funciona como la unidad básica, que por medio de posibles variaciones y transformaciones, sirve como instrumento para desarrollar la escala del vecindario y luego la de la cuadra urbana.