Day 17

Center Village / 5468796 Architecture 

Hello people,

Hope you're having beautiful dreams. 

I know it's  3 am again

But bear with me because Today's project has a plot twist. 

The project takes place in the central park neighborhood in Winnipeg, Canada. This place is known as the starting point for immigrants and refugees. It's culturally diverse and holds affordable and social houses. The neighborhood life condition is very low, because of the low income and high rate of crime. 

I think you understood the social and cultural context of the place. 

Well, Let's get into the project. 

The need for social housing has led the priest of the church to start a cooperative company, where they partnered with another company to build this project.

Originally, the site was to build six single houses, but for the company to afford it, the units should be raised to accommodate 25 families. 

The architect's major challenge was how to balance the high-density apartments while still keeping most of the ground floor for public space. Their strategy was to create narrow house units through diverse room modules and stack them vertically. At the time they created two public spaces - courtyard and alley-. 

Well, the plot twist is that this design resulted in low-conditioned interior spaces, as one resident reported " It's like living in a small box, there is not enough space for circulation". The courtyard and the alleys that were designed in no direct sightings are now spaces for people to drink, pick up fights, and use drugs. 

In this project, we see that the architects didn't understand the needs of the community, nor the social context and got stuck chasing how to build more small spaces

" There is nothing worse than answering 

well the wrong questions " 

Alejandro Aravena

References: 

Archdaily

theguardian