Design of a settlement system for a post-catastrophe context, applied to the virtual case of a mega earthquake and tsunami in the city of Iquique, Chile, and focused in the development of emergency dwelling for affected families.
Year: 2015
Role: Architect
Chile is a country with a history linked to natural disasters, however it has shown that it does not have the necessary capacity (public policies, planning instruments, technological development, etc.) to prevent, react and rebuild in these scenarios. As both a challenge and an opportunity, the post-catastrophe critical condition brings into play particular coordinates of action for Architecture, a complex operating space in which it must resolve urgently, with quality, and in the most efficient way, a habitability – and we should say, a normality- violated. This project opens discussions about: a) living in conditions of vulnerability, considering the Architecture project in its capacity to constitute a system of physical and psycho-social immunity; b) the temporalities of the project, understanding it as a dynamic system; c) the minimum and the optimum in a project of these characteristics; d) transience (neither ephemeral nor permanent); e) prefabrication (its methods and scales); and finally, f) the possible management models, in order to try to resolve the complexity of the assignment.
The project is situated in the possible case of a mega-earthquake and tsunami in the city of Iquique, in the north of Chile, seeking to develop an Integral System for Transitory Settlements (ISTS), and its application in a vacant land of 12,400 m2 located in the center-south part of the urban area, to accommodate non-owner families (NOF) or homeowners at risk (HORF) who have been affected by loss of housing, and therefore require temporary housing. The project then, without neglecting the complexity of the program necessary for the management of a catastrophe of this type, will focus on the resolution of the houses and, therefore, on resolving the particular conditions of living that arise after an earthquake. The period of habitation of the transitory settlement will fluctuate between the occurrence of the seismic event and five years, considering the changes in the requirements that the settlement will present throughout this time.
