Proposal for the recovery of a building as a center for the development of Urban Agriculture in the city of Santiago de Chile.
Year: 2013
Role: Architect
Team: Rodrigo Barros, Diego Manzo, ONG Cultivos Urbanos
In 2011, the Municipality of Santiago de Chile provided a building to the NGO Cultivos Urbanos. The organization was responsible for the recovery of the house and the plot, with the aim of using the space for education and dissemination of urban agriculture and also as an experimentation center open to the community. Since then, uninterrupted work has been done to transform this space into a benchmark for urban agriculture both in the Santiago district and in the country.
The preliminary project presented below aims to consolidate the use of this space for educational and demonstrative purposes, increasing its built area and incorporating all the necessary equipment so that the building has a real capacity to receive and give rise to community life. In addition to the orchard and the basic equipment for its correct operation (water harvesting, greenhouse, diversity of cultivation techniques and soil improvement, etc.), an interior space is proposed that houses a classroom and meeting room, a specialized library and dependencies, as well as an office that gives rise to the administrative tasks of the NGO. The general objective of these spaces is to broaden the spectrum of activities in the house and promote its use.
Far from pretending to be a finished project, the idea of what is proposed below is to initiate a reflection on the destination of the property and how to transform it into a contribution to the park, the commune, the city and its inhabitants.
