Unidad vecinal portales

Unidad Vecinal Portales represents a model of city and society, thus it seems necessary to preserve it rather than demolish it. We propose to restore a neighborhood now afflicted by deterioration, impoverishment and crime re-establishing a network of connections with the city and reusing voids to provide new solutions.

Project’s main goal is to bring the neighborhood to be an urban structure rather than a set of buildings, setting relations now interrupted on spatial and social level. The project examines connections, use of public spaces, buildings. The action on these vulnerabilities has the intent to transform them in a new attractive cluster. Each new public area, as references of community life, will host specific and punctual activities generating urban connections. Also the architectural strategy intervenes on vacant apartments, providing different solutions for ground floors, used for services, and for upper floors, intended mostly as apartments. The different size of services and the restructuring of the apartments allow the inhabitants, who already live in the block structures, to expand themselves. The architectural project mainly focuses on the block structure because in this seems to converge all the problems detected in the neighborhood. We intervene specifically on one block because the building is in the area with the lowest population density but the proximity to the university highlights the capacity of the structure to be a building with great potential. From its construction till today, the block has been subjected to alterations by the inhabitants , with the privatization of public space on the ground floor and the expansion in the lodges space on the upper floors. The strategy provides for the reuse of the 27 vacant apartments, out of a total of 62, the inclusion of services nd new student accommodations. All the additions will occupy only half of the vacant floor, giving the possibility of controlled expansion to residents. For student apartments and services, a combination of windows with wood panel blinds is intended, whereas in the expansions, the façade will consist only of a treated wood sliding panels. The addition can become indoor / outdoor space or an extra room depending on the will of the dweller.