Arcadia. Agro-urban cooperative

After analysing the neighbourhood of the villas, their virtues and weaknesses are identified. Urban growth and speculation have destroyed its ecosystem, affecting social relations and biodiversity. It is proposed to recover its agricultural activity through a productive cooperative that reinforces community values. The project combines traditional passive solutions with innovative materials, to create energy-efficient buildings, integrating local air and climate, as primary materials of the project, with the intention of reducing costs, time and the carbon footprint of construction.

After an exhaustive analysis of the context, the virtues and weaknesses of the neighborhood of the villas are identified. The neighbourhood of the villas is a stronghold of the productive system of Valladolid in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Urbanization and population growth have destroyed this ecosystem capacity, relegating the land on the banks of the Pisuerga to a speculative and environmentally corrosive use. Therefore, the growth of the city and urban speculation threaten the social relations and biodiversity that the neighbourhood still preserves. It aims to recover its old agricultural activity in a way that promotes and reinforces the values of the new community. Thus appears the idea of generating a productive cooperative that, in addition to supplying people, gives them a sense of belonging, something very important to live in community. The project draws the present from its agricultural memory, reformulating the traditional farm model and articulating it in the place through irrigation ditches and farmland. The quintanas or farms industrialize their construction process, with the intention of reducing costs, time and the carbon footprint of construction. In contrast to these outdated and hegemonic models, Arcadia seeks in scientific principles and in the revision of construction materials an energetic activation of surfaces in coordination with volumes and air circulation regimes. Building passive thermal machines whose idea of satisfaction and environmental comfort requires the inclusion of air and natural climate as primary materials of the project, it is precisely air and climate that is modeled and designed and it is at this point that we identify today a radical change with respect to vernacular models and modern typologies.