Tavola 1

© Costantini 3 Architetti Associati . Pubblicata il 03 Novembre 2009.

Territorial Context

Tavola 2

© Costantini 3 Architetti Associati . Pubblicata il 03 Novembre 2009.

Santander (population 184.000), the capital of Cantabria, is the main centre of the region in business, administration and culture. The city is located along a bayside that embraces the Cantabric sea, making Santander’s metropolitan area quite large. The city’s area of influence spreads by sea as well as by land beyond the strict city limits into all the surrounding municipalities. About the 80% of the population lives along the coast-belt leaving the south of the Region with an extreamly low density. This has given rise to a high level of urban development pressure on Santander, not only from its stable population but also due to the population movements in the summer months. The purpose of this project is to construct restricted price housing with the corresponding services and open spaces in an attempt to cope with the increasing demand for low-cost housing due to the disproportionate prices of housing reached on the open market in the last decade in this region.

Urban Project

The project area acts as a “waiting” residual void surrounded by heterogeneous presences: to the north the residential complex of the Ibero Tanagra, imposing, compact blocks of buildings recently realized; to the east the residential district Carlos Ruiz Garcia, built up at the beginning of the twentieth century, composed by small scale buildings widespread on the territory; to the west the Campon area, an industrial complex that is changing in a tertiary complex; to the south the Penacastillo, a protected area with a high environmental value. In the urban growth of the area the railway line has acted as a barrier to the outward spread preserving his natural value. The Project has to compare itself with this context introducing new hierarchic space rules and creating a feeling of belonging to the place. To work out this concepts the project is based on: - public and private buildings organised around a sequence of spaces: public squares with commercial services and a park connected to the green system; - a sequence of public spaces that link Carlos Ruiz Garcia district with the Campon area; - a strict relationship with the ground; - a large range dwellings’ typologies in relationship with the different types of family and with the social-difficulty themes; - independence of the individual apartments, but at the same time integration with the community through the public services.

Public Spaces and Sustainable City

The project is organized along a sequence of spaces creating a close relationship among the project area, the surrounding residential quarters and the green belt. A sequence of public squares follow the network of the pedestrian and carriageable ways ,which link the site to the railway station and to the road network. Lungo questa sequenza di spazi si concentra la vita urbana con il commercio ,espressione della vita comunitaria,ed I servizi,spazi necessary per riqualificare l’intera zona. The rest of the surface the park is organized in a series of pedestrian paths linked to the surrounding green. A pedestrian and cycle crossing allow to go over the N.611 ,linking the project ways to the areas of the Pecastillo and “La Vaca” ,which would be redeveloped in a park. The city is concentrate around the public spaces reducing to the minimum its extension. The dwellings are open facing the park, living the level of the soil free and increasing the built up density to save up the territory .

Typological Strategy

In the past half century, countless housing units based on the nLDK format, have been built everywhere in Spain and Europe. Almost every dwelling that is built, wheter social or not, is designed for the specific requirements of a nuclear family with n children: the nLDK type (n bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom) with a clear hierarchy, the wife at home, the husband out all day, and a limited, inflexible concept of domestic life. The problem is that more than the 50% of the population does not have today a nuclear family with hierarchical offspring. What we propose is to introduce some movable partitions in each unit; if kitchen and bathroom are regarded as fixed cores, the remaing space can be spilt up using mobile walls. The space in the house can be vary, be trasformed from day to night. During the day, the period of maximum activity, the walls are folded back and the beds recessed . At night the space is compartmented again, with bedrooms and beds appearing for the rest period. The degree of flexibility is wide and the dwelling can also be trasformed during the years, removing or adding a room whenever the composition of the apartament changes. There are a large variety of different solutions satisfying every need. We belive our design proposal is even perhaps excessively possibilistic: for pratically the same cost the dwelling gains a greater degree of potential uses by being able to use the majority of the house area as a single space for multiple activities (work, leisure, games, etc..).

Dwellings

To get better the quality of small scale dwellings is necessary to pay attention on both the internal space articulation and the quality of the exterior spaces seen as extents of the dwelling itself. The design of the buildings has been based on standardization and cheapness principles through the adoption of a structural rational mesh and gathering the technical zones (bathroom and kitchen). Great attention is turned on the typological variety, trying to meet the different exigencies imposed by the modern ways of living. The balcony buildings have many common spaces at their disposal but they don’t guarantee a good level of privacy. To solve this problem the breadth of the balcony has been redoubled living a void by the windows of the apartments. The dwellings are enriched by common spaces and public services deeply agreeable, which get better the quality of living encouraging relationships and socialization.