Research Background
This studio aims to use Ungers and Koolhaas text as a design guideline, as a theoretical and practical frame to discover new possibilities, to question history and see possible outcomes out of its original context. We will work completing the fragments using the frame proposed by Ungers and Koolhaas for Berlin tor study, renovate and transform Medellin´s city center through new site specific architecture projects.
Medellin is confined to a narrow valley, walled by mountains. After many years of social and political unrest, its city center was abandoned, and its population has been shrinking for the last 30 years, leaving behind a robust infrastructure of streets, empty buildings, and just a few permanent inhabitants.
The ambiguity of tropical cities sometimes could be reflected through the flexibilities of its community structure and social relationships. The aim of the design as a housing block in the city center of Medellin, Columbia is to create a “catalog of parts”, a framework that could insert a new order into the community that offer both order and flexibility.
architectural solution
The design was composed by 3 squared elements: housing block, SOHO office, and community courtyard, representing the essentials of life components. The blocks were elevated, leaving the ground level only columns with differentiated shapes and orientations as a framework that offers opportunities for spontaneous organizations of outdoor social and commercial activities within this tropical context, as well as a more modest way of introducing a new order into the city.
Within the housing block, each unit was framed within a linear space of multiple programs, while the other linear orientation would then be composed of the same program of different units. The 2 orthodox orders offered the opportunity for the space in the housing units to operate in both directions, achieving both the individual procession of life behaviors as well as possibilities of shared communal spaces. The occasional disruption of the rigid grid such as the elevator, the trees, the stairs and slides leading up to the roof also reinforce the idea of cross-operating space.
The office space also bears the same thought as the walls in different directions have different width that indicate a dominant order and a penetrating one in the space. The joints of walls are cut open, offering a free-circulating space that could be organized according to the will of the user. Multiple spatial devices such as curtains and sliding doors are also play an important role in this flexible system.
The office space also bears the same thought as the walls in different directions have different width that indicate a dominant order and a penetrating one in the space. The joints of walls are cut open, offering a free-circulating space that could be organized according to the will of the user. Multiple spatial devices such as curtains and sliding doors are also play an important role in this flexible system.
Living Unit
SOHO community office
urban solution
The housing units are constructed above the ground, leaving the ground level only columns with differentiated shapes and orientations as a framework that offers opportunities for spontaneous organizations of outdoor social and commercial activities within this tropical context, as well as a more modest way of introducing a new order into the city.
The horizontal white strip that the housing blocks presented forms a subtle contrast with the hilly geography of the city. The change of the blocks’ orientation forms a diverse façade that indicate the order of space.
model photography
