Stepsīn Slabs
Low-cost housing in Temuco/Chile
Authors: Ralf Pasel, Frederik Künzel pasel.künzel architects, Architects, Rotterdam/Niederlande
Project
Against the background of the massive migration of the rural population into the urban conurbations of Latin American cities, our project deals with illegal housing agglomerations in Chile. STEPS N’ SLABS is not only an urban strategy. It is also a tangible architectural answer to the question of sustainable, low-cost housing. Starting with providing basic infrastructure as fresh water, a sewage system and electricity to the area, it goes as far as accomplishing an architectural design that makes life possible in a secure social environment. During a long and intensive design process over the past couple of years pasel.künzel architects was able to introduce a strategical master plan concerning the transformation of a shanty town into a legal neighbourhood. The transformation takes place in three phases comprising 414 houses, a community centre and a primary school. By now the first 150 units are on site and will be completed in 2008.
The urban concept builds up from basic service units providing infrastructure, to dwellings, to clusters of several houses and finally results in micro-neighbourhoods, comprising about 20 to 30 dwellings each. The density of our three storey high buildings allows for as well semi-public spaces that can easily be controlled by the inhabitants, as for private outdoor space that can be used to grow vegetables etc.
Due to the small distance between the units, the owners can easily extend their houses themselves, by filling in the gap to the adjacent dwelling. This participatory principle actually incorporates the very traditional concept of ‘auto-construction’, which is familiar to the inhabitants. The ground-bound nature of the project allows each dwelling to have its front door on ground level and therefore have an individual address to the public realm. Moreover, the ground floor space between two initial service units can be used as living space, a workspace, a garage or even a small shop.
Infrastructure is essential! In order to guarantee the accessibility of fresh water, sewage and electricity, the principal element of the design is a 1,20m wide and 8,00m long volume, which satisfies those basic needs. This ‘technical shelter’ works like the spine of the building. It holds all (technical) facilities of the house like ducting and wiring, bathroom, kitchen and even the stairs. It was part of our strategy to take into account that the house will grow and change in size permanently. As architects we will only provide the minimum house, whereas our clients can continue building their home (auto-construction). In this setting it takes a little effort to upgrade the initial ‘starter house’ of 30m2 to a fully-fledged home of about 90m2.
CV
Ralf Pasel (Germany, 1970) is principal architect of pasel.künzel architects. He works with Frederik Künzel since 2004 after having worked with Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners, Rotterdam (KCAP) and David Mikhail, London. He studied Architecture at the Ecole d’ Architecture de Paris/France and at the Technical University of Dresden/Germany where he graduated in 1998 with Honors Cum Laude. Between 1999 and 2004 he was responsible project architect at KCAP for two large scale housing developments in Venlo and Rotterdam/The Netherlands and an office building in Haarlem. In 2004 he was visiting professor at the Universidad Catolica de Santiago de Chile and at the Universidad Central at Santiago de Chile. Ralf Pasel is presently teaching at the Technical University in Delft.
Frederik Künzel (Germany, 1971) is principal architect of pasel.künzel architects. He works with Ralf Pasel since 2004 after having worked with Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners (KCAP), where he mainly worked on housing projects and at the Kaisersrot research project that was done in cooperation with the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. Before he worked as an architect in Germany and was an assistant at the CAD Institute at the University of Kaiserslautern/Germany. He studied architecture at the University of Kaiserslautern/Germany. In 2004 he was visiting professor at the Universidad Catolica de Santiago de Chile and at the Universidad Central at Santiago de Chile. Frederik Künzel is presently teaching at the Technical University in Delft/The Netherlands.
In 2004, pasel.künzel architects was founded on the principle that there is no urbanism without detail, and no detail without urbanism, and that everything in between is architecture.
