Living the collective

Description

INTRODUCTION

reTH!NKING team sis delighted to introduce the new competition Living the Collective, a competition which pretends to create a collective space, where the domestic space is as important as the urban space. How can a city adapt to new times? History changes, families grow up, human being evolves and with it everything around it. However, cities remains as they are and grow up in its outskirts., leaving buildings and neighborhoods frozen in time. We do not suggest that everything must be destroyed to leave space for the new, but we must improve and not make the same mistakes. This do not pretend to be a formula or a solution, but an approach to a diagnosis and a treatment for living problems, which, as main part of cities, can suppose the needed change.

An architect thinks the space according to the people, according to the use and of course the location. As we have said before, the city is largely composed of houses, so, isn’t this the most important sector when it comes to tackling the problem of sustainability in the city? Architects can not approach the city as a single thing, it is a set of elements and we can face them on a smaller scale to be able to improve it on a large scale. Each city is different, in each part of the world cities have been created in different ways, growing and evolving in different ways according to the economy, society or tradition.

Due to this, we understand that one of the most important project solutions is the understanding of the future as a variable to be taken into account. The problem of the ecology is a territorial problem, and the bigger problem of the city is the house. From the house you build the city and the city configures the territory, although in many cases, he opposite occurs: it configures the territory through the city, and housing is the remnant of an urban design that has not been thought on a human scale.

The territory is a support that establishes models of cities that have been progressing. If we make a rigid, single and serial housing we limit the area to families with similar characteristics. The city should not be conditioned to a type of person, but to be plural.

LOCATION

The place of intervention proposed for this contest is Hornachuelos city center. This municipality is located in the western part of the province of Cordoba, Spain.

Hornachuelos is located between two ravines on top of one of the mountains of Sierra Morena, in the Natural Park of Sierra de Hornachuelos, taking part of the massif of Sierra Morena. This location makes the topography as a very important aspect in the development of the Town.

INTERVENTION AREA

The area of action comprises a global area of multiple plots, creating a large urbanization where some plots are already built and most of them are not.

The contest aims to give a global image to all new constructions creating a continuity between all of them, focusing especially on giving a good solution to particular plots and the open spaces that are generated. The proposal, despite having to comply with the current regulations, should have a reflection of future guidelines for the growth of the municipality in a sustainable way, involving urban, social and environmental improvements in the global scale of Hornachuelos.

As it can be seen in the lower plan, we can distinguish the plots already built or private plots from the others. The plots 2 and 3 can have a maximum height of 3 storeys (including ground floor). All other plots will have a maximum of 2 storeys. These provisions are those set within the town planning regulations of Hornachuelos.