Project material
- Category
- Multifamily Housing
- Typology
- Non-subsidized housing
- Partner
- Arq. Santiago Mazabel, Arq. Julián Ardila, Arq. Manuela Vélez
- Year
- 2011
- Area
- 14.500 m²
- Program
- 88 apartments
- Location
- Chía, Cundinamarca
- City
- Chía, Cundinamarca
- Status
- Portfolio
Multiple strategies for sustainability
Ecohaus stands in the urban centre of Chía, on the narrow strip of savanna that runs between the eastern hills and the church of La Valvanera. The site is irregular and comes already split by a neighbouring plot that reaches Calle 12, and the climate is the one you always get up there: cold mornings, hard midday sun, afternoons that cloud over all at once. Almost every decision in the project answers to those two things — the awkward shape of the land and the cold of the savanna — before anything else.
Two blocks of pale brick open around a central park that the project's own report calls, without hedging, the heart of the complex. Parking was sunk into a half-basement so the ground floor could be given over entirely to green, social and recreational areas, and what the building takes below it gives back above: the roofs are planted and walkable, crossed by a stone path between planters and by the ventilation towers — prismatic volumes painted green and grey, with black louvres — that finish the path of the air. On one corner, a five-storey vertical garden climbs the façade beside the balconies.
Under that green layer lies a more stubborn decision. Instead of the load-bearing wall system that tends to repeat the same floor plan throughout a building, the studio drew a standard-span frame structure with precast hollow core slabs and defined a combinable "habitable module": half a unit, one, or several per home. To that it added thermal mass, passive solar gain, natural ventilation with roof-level extraction, the reuse of rainwater and greywater, and waste separation ducts running down from every kitchen.
More about the project›
In collaboration with: Arch. Santiago Mazabel, Arch. Julián Ardila and Arch. Manuela Vélez
Ecohaus arises as an act of reflection on conventional multifamily housing developments in Colombia; it is a project grounded in flexible design around good bioclimatic architecture practices and sustainability strategies.
The project stands as a formal and spatial alternative to the conventional industrialized systems used to build multifamily housing, which have consolidated a repetitive, rigid and monotonous urban landscape.
“Families are not all alike” was the premise behind the design of the housing units. The answer was a modular solution that fosters adaptability through a flexible system: the housing blocks arise from a frame structure with standard spans, allowing one or two spaces to be developed within each bay.
The possibility of joining half a module, one module or several yields homes tailored to each user's needs. The module is complemented by a duct system that carries the utilities and both natural and mechanical ventilation.
The standardization of the system lets the different apartments “plug in” anywhere in the structure, so each inhabitant can choose their preferred location. The duct system can be inspected from the corridors, easing maintenance and minimizing disruption to daily life in the units.
Through its constructive proposal, Ecohaus questions conventional building systems and proposes a prefabricated structure of hollow-core slabs which, given the modular condition, achieves a high level of industrialization and therefore of resource optimization.
Ecohaus carries sustainability as its banner, understood as the most responsible way of approaching an architecture that preserves natural resources: it interprets the conditions of the environment to formulate spatial and formal solutions consistent with the place.
Chía's climate is moderately cold, which is an advantage in the pursuit of thermal comfort and makes it possible to rely on passive bioclimatic strategies alone.
Facades, sections and architectural floor plans of the typical tower.
One module, many families
The starting point was a discomfort: complexes built with load-bearing walls force the same floor plan to repeat storey after storey, and families are not all alike. The studio's answer was structural before it was decorative. With a standard-span frame and precast slabs, the plan is no longer tied to the walls and the module appears: a single dimension that works for parking below and for sleeping above, and that can be taken in halves, singly or in groups depending on what each buyer needs. The same logic left service ducts inspectable from the corridors and made the communal spaces multipurpose. The project was prepared as editorial material and was published in Revista Escala 232, in July 2015, in an issue devoted to collective housing.
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Insolation analysis across the façades: it measures the radiation each window receives, to decide where it is worth capturing sun and where to shade.
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Breakdown of the community hall: a low volume beneath a sloping, planted roof that gives back as walkable garden the surface it occupies.
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Sun study of the two blocks between midday and six in the evening, checking that the central courtyard and the inner façades keep their light at the end of the day.
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Two ways of industrialising: above, the type plan repeated unchanged; below, the modular conception that allows half a module, one or several to be joined into different homes within the same structure.
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Greywater collection: water from showers and washing machines, along with rainwater, runs down dedicated ducts to a treatment unit and returns fit for toilets and irrigation.
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Green area compensation: the ground surface taken up by the two blocks reappears above, planted, on their own roofs.
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Where the module comes from: the 5.85 × 2.85 metres taken up by two cars are also those of a double bedroom; the same grid serves the basement and the home.
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Natural ventilation: air moving faster over the roof creates a depression that draws on the vertical ducts, and that pull carries the air out of the apartments when the windows are opened.
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Waste separation: the kitchens are designed for sorting, and the building takes each fraction — glass, organic, paper and plastics, the rest — down independent ducts to the collection point.
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The roof is one more floor in the open air: a stone path between planters and ventilation towers, with the hills of Chía behind.
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The extractors up close: the angled mouth of each tower ends the journey of the air that begins at the apartment windows, and turns a technical element into the figure you see from the park.
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The site during assembly, seen from above: the hollow core slabs arrive ready from the factory and rest on the frame; the building grows by assembly rather than by pouring.
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