Outstanding Architecture and Design Thesis Award

UNIDAD AMBIENTAL COMUNITARIA LA CARCOVA JOSÉ LEÓN SUAREZ - OXYMORON ARQUITECTÓNICO - SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY CENTER

The territory of the Reconquista River Basin is the second most important within the Buenos Aires suburbs in Argentina and contains a population of close to 5 million inhabitants. It has large social and environmental problems, and the largest sanitary landfills in the metropolitan area, and a significant number of informal settlements with high-density occupation. The proposal arises from the analysis of the local framework taking as data the social, environmental, infrastructure, and housing problems. As a working hypothesis, a proposal is established that seeks to generate new environmental policies for the sanitation of the territory of the Reconquista River Basin, to generate new networks of interaction between the actors of the site from an interrelated system with several interventional focuses. Repairing the environmental territory will determine the possibilities and limits of the housing and neighborhood improvement policies. The intervention in the territory tries to recover and generate new public spaces, the sanitation of the areas contaminated by organic and inorganic waste, an improvement of the conditions of the habitat worthy of the spontaneous growth neighborhoods, new connections from new openings that allow better connectivity, the recovery of the towpath on the banks of the Reconquista River and its streams, and the generation of new equipment for the enhancement of the urban space that is considered to be the organizer and structure of the city. Within the premise of articulating existing networks between different actors in the territory, the La Carcova Educational Park Project is defined as an experience of collaborative work in process and extended over time, based on the formation of a university network associated with a common goal in a specific territory with many unsatisfied basic needs. A project to expand the La Carcova Popular Library and a broader strategy for the development of the Educational Park, which allows its implementation over time, has been developed. The closeness with the referents of the target organization allows a process of participatory work, consensus building, and trust between institutional actors and neighbors. Within the organizing axis of the future La Carcova Educational Park, the Sustainable Community Center is proposed, which functions as a large participatory public space where all kinds of mass events of the inhabitants of the La Carcova neighborhood can be held, and a new recycling and production center for the neighborhood whose main objective is to recover through the treatment of garbage, generating new sources of work for the neighborhood, from the treatment of compost, bioenergy, treated water, orchards and workshops with existing cooperatives in the neighborhood. In this way, the community is provided with new resources, generated from the separation, transformation, and recycling of disused materials, promoting the expansion of the network of participants with the residents of Barrio La Carcova and educational institutions that are carrying out an experience of exchange and joint production around the development of buildings in true magnitude through collective and community construction workshops with the active intervention of students and social actors. The Sustainable Community Center houses social and production functions within the same building, mediating the characteristics of the territory, a consolidated industrial area, and the La Carcova neighborhood. It consists of a metal structure with bellows as a gap between the environment and the building, as well as a skin of parasols that allows both direct gain and sun protection. The metal structure of the roof is materialized by means of a stereometric triangular spatial mesh construction system, formed by bars and knots joined together, forming pyramidal pieces that cover the entire device. The three-dimensional structure of the ceiling makes it possible to cover large spans and house the device's two social and productive functions.