The current plan of the towers of Portela shows a conventional layout of 4 modern flats which could be extended by taking the one beside. The more private squared meters the contractors got, the more profit they made and better they sell the flats. Being only focused on economy, its noted a lack of care and commitment for public spaces.
The proposal is based on the open building principle of support/infill, first preconized by Habraken and the SAR research group back in the 1970s. The infill are the houses built with the wooden prototype system. The main motivation to separate the units is to create open spaces between them. There are some practical consequences which have been overlooked: the amount of surfaces to be isolated; the spatial quality of the in-between spaces: will they be used as expected, as spaces that foster social interaction?
ReplyDeleteThe sociological and statistic studies regarding the inhabitants has led to the observation that the shift of residential needs can be addressed with a bold intervention of prototypical design of the whole set of apartment typologies keeping only the structural system of Portella blocks.This design methodology has influenced the decision to clean all floors from the non-structural walls and introduce a ''transmitting'' intervention of dwellings according to the proposed typologies.
ReplyDeleteThis approach applies the 4th principle of modernism according to which the separation walls are independent from the structural system giving higher adaptability to the prototypical system's application. The public space around the dwellings needed more development and diversification to achieve privacy in certain areas.
The presentation is very good and the organisation of dwelling into section modules is very well connected to the essence of prefabricated residential architecture.
This group made very good sociodemografic analysis and subsequently demonstrated in a good graphical form the concept diagram of the tower building integrating the new layout of the dwelling units. They considered to remove all not load bearing vertical elements which separate individual spaces in the building. This radical idea enables them utilize empty spaces for new adjustments of dwelling units. Their proposal combines two kinds of spaces on each flor –residential units and public spaces. The idea is spectacular but practical implementation can be very complicated. This proposal is wastage of spaces and today we can not afford to do it.
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ReplyDeleteWork started with clear analysis of the dwelling block and surroundings neighbourhood, as well as with usefull sociodemographic analyses of Portela. The exciting knowledge is the prevalent size of appartments in Portela (100-200m2), much different to Bratislava appartments (50 - 80m2) Majority of flats are in ownership. Concept proposes smaller dwelling units, exchangeable between users accordingly to their living situation, which result in the interesting but much utopian design concept , with a lot of semi-public spaces between the flats. Do the authors thought about the real utilization and requirement of such spaces? Another alternative could be the partition of 4 coincident flats to smaller, variable units, which could flexible reflect the living condition - e.g. young family with children, older parents with young couples (two housing units in one app.), rentable housing unit with separate entrance, etc.
ReplyDeleteThis project addresses the idea of a progressive dwelling as a solution for an evolving family. The proposed plants are convincing as typological studies. Nevertheless, their implementation on a several stories building shows several unresolved constructive issues and also creates some doubts in relation with the use of the outdoor spaces.
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