ALGECO COMPETITION aé 7e

Description

GIVING SOCIAL HOUSING A HUMAN TOUCH

And what if…. modular construction allowed us to engage with the most underprivileged sectors of society in a dynamic and proactive way, to effect real change in social housing areas?
Social housing developments have been undergoing renovation for 30 years now. Not only are we far from reaching all the sites, but these renovations barely address one of the main historical reasons for the malaise affecting social housing projects: the significant lack of amenities in the public spaces in areas with high density of social housing.

Other than “shopping malls,” often located in a cluster alongside or on the ground floor of high-rise developments , it was and still is, difficult to make good use of these urban spaces, and to install useful amenities in these locations.

What really brings a city to life are these small details that can be hard to pinpoint, which have no specific function and yet are so important. Without them, the “green spaces” of social housing developments would be virtually devoid of any social or cultural significance.

It is almost impossible to obtain local authority approval to build these elements on large urban areas because the social housing developments are being renovated (just as they were built in the first place) as part of large public sector projects. These are more focused on the big functional needs than on those small services that turn cities into enjoyable places to live.

“Places are smart if people are smart”

However, modular construction, in itself a means of providing of “temporary accommodation,” could provide us with a certain “license to take action” in these large urban settings, that in the past, before the growth of urbanization and social housing, lay within the power of residents and elected officials who wanted to improve services and amenities.

And what if… small facilities were created and not just used as temporary solutions, but rather as the first step towards a dynamic and proactive transformation of vacant urban spaces, a kind of grassroots movement demonstrating that a temporary solution can uncover a permanent need?

On a site that they will select for themselves, students should be alive to the views expressed by the people actually living there, and then draw on the adaptable nature of this modular form of construction to … create new amenities in the empty spaces of these social housing sites.

Starting today without any foundations, students should think of these projects not in terms of the project itself, but as an anchor being cast to secure a lasting solution through a temporary structure, to address the need to regenerate these urban spaces.

With this first project drawn up, the students will propose 2025 and 2030 scenarios, illustrating how, based on the demonstration of social and cultural usefulness that has been made thanks to the implementation of temporary amenities, inhabitants, elected officials and planners have gradually been able to regain the license to make and transform sterile spaces into fertile and appropriable urban spaces.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
MATERIALS TO BE SUBMITTED

Candidates must create an A0 board.
The A0 board will give their registration number, a title, a text explaining the project, several images, drawing or other illustrations.

There must be no information identifying the author of the project, otherwise the candidate will be excluded from the contest. Candidates must also provide the board and all elements featured in digital form.

SELECTION CRITERIA

• Use of components from the standard Algeco range
• Technical feasibility for industrial and economic implementation for adaptability to the market
• Typological innovation in terms of features
• Urban innovation in terms of quality of assembly
• Aesthetic innovation (if possible consider sustainability)
• Presentation of the project