Apan (Hidalgo) MX
Collective Housing + INFONAVIT
Built Area: 306m2
Collaborators: Luis F. Velázquez
Instructors: Margarita Flores + Tibero Wallentin
2018 IBERO
Housing is explored as an element that repurposes relationships between territory and newly formed communities, merging ways of living across private and communal spaces in rural areas of the state of Hidalgo.
A line traces the connection between Apan (a former rural town located in the state of Hidalgo) and the production plant of a beverage industry giant in the region. From this main path, sub-lines stem and a new housing system gradually accumulates. For the development of this social housing proposal, the project is focused on the understanding of a contemporary domestic rural space, cultural authenticity, and the importance of individual appropriation of the living spaces. For this project, the reference of Hassan Fathy’s social housing, worked as a case study to recognize how architecture empowers the lives of its inhabitants when it is able to respond to their psychological, cultural, physical, and physiological needs. In addition to a living space, housing must be able to lay the path to an improved quality of life; offering the possibility to expand further and adapt to the inhabitants’ needs and trades. The approach to cultural identity through the appropriation of one’s space is fundamental to newly developed housing, promoting the social interaction among distinct households and further encouraging a relationship with the adjacent rural territory, potentially becoming a source of the families’ economy, diet, and free space. Garages become workshops, patios become playgrounds, and streets become social spaces. The line becomes the territory, and the territory extends into each household.