Wei Huang
The Netherlands
One for ALL
-
A Community Prototype in Cuba
The general context is located in Havana, Cuba. Local people are used to create, recycle, build as much as they could, which is a result of lack of life resources. Thus, in the prototype a workshop is provided in order to stimulate spontaneous constructions.
A participatory process which architects provide the long-standing structure of community and afterwards residents fill in their housing units, on one hand facing the shortage of materials, on the other hand this is where flexibilities come from.
The housing units’ structure provided beforehand contains plumbing facilities for daily life demand, to make sure each unit stands on its own, prepared for residents to easily fill in walls, openings, furniture etc., to construct personal life.
In the phasing process, along with self- construction gradually finished, the demand of workshop declines, thus the prefabricated skylight cell is removed and with open space replaced. Then once housing units are almost done, people's demand of social part increases and more need for communal space. Thus, here with the collaboration of architects some voids of open yards are transformed to expansion of public streets. (Here the bending curve as example does not mean the form of expansion is fixed, which more are supposed to respond to specific community demand of residents.)
The participatory proposal of community prototype is aim to release some parts of a project to users within a smart system architects provide. Here the phasing process in different moment with either professionals or residents or both of them involved gives the whole project many potentials. This is how vernacular grows with the presence of form architectural practice.