Vivienda Social

This house in Mexico by Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura features a modular and prefabricated building system, based on panels made with bamboo oldhamii.

Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura, Producción Social de Vivienda, elevation
In February 2016 the National Housing Commission, CONAVI (for its acronym in Spanish), renewed its operating rules for providing federal subsidies. New regulations established that the use of traditional materials and constructive systems such as bamboo, straw, bajareque, palm, carrizo and wood, is considered precarious, denying access to federal funds to self-construction practices with these materials. Therefore, the first housing exercise, carried out jointly with the community of Tepetzintan through five workshops of technical training and participatory design, was discarded to receive government support, making it difficult for residents to self-construct it.

 

Given this scenario, together with Indigenous Cooperatives, Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura decided to make a second housing exercise that avoid using local bamboo species as structural elements. This second exercise preserves the modular and prefabricated building system based on panels made with bamboo oldhamii. The construction system uses only three elements (two trusses and a panel with its variants); these elements are pre-fabricated and assembled once the structural frames have been finished, which significantly reduces site construction time. Also, the approximate assembly time is one week, reducing labor costs for a low budget project.

Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura, Producción Social de Vivienda: Sierra Nororiental de Puebla, 2016
Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura, Producción Social de Vivienda: Sierra Nororiental de Puebla, 2016
Once installed, bamboo panels are coated with ixtle (local tissue used to make coffee sacks) and a thin layer of mortar. Once the base structure has been placed, the beams and subsequently the ecolam sheet are fixed. This last one is a product made from food-grade aluminum waste, which gives thermal, acoustic and antibacterial properties. In addition to local materials, which allow the villagers to contribute in kind and labor to reduce the cost of their homes, the project has an optimum environmental performance. In the case of water, rainwater harvesting is used, as well as wetlands for reuse of gray water and biodigestor for sewage treatment. As for the climate, basic bioclimatic strategies were implemented to combat the region high temperatures.
Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura, Producción Social de Vivienda: Sierra Nororiental de Puebla, 2016
Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura, Producción Social de Vivienda: Sierra Nororiental de Puebla, 2016

Producción Social de Vivienda: Sierra Nororiental de Puebla
Program: single family house
Architect: Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura
Collaborators: Unión de Cooperativas Tosepan Titataniske
Area: 60 sqm
Completion: 2016

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