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2022

MCHAP.emerge

La Pesca

Natura Futura

Babahoyo, Ecuador

March 2018

PRIMARY AUTHOR

José Fernando Gómez Marmolejo

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

CLIENT

Tania

PHOTOGRAPHER

kliwadenkonovas

OBJECTIVE

What the project tries to achieve is to offer the ground floor as a hub for the inhabitants’ social and recreational lives. When the project was in process we could invite local laborers to complete the restaurant. Regarding the material the project tries to use the more local features like the wood, a long-used material in the riverside fishing town, is adopted as a recurrent unifying element that brings out the character of the city.

What is curious is that La Pesca is right in the line of the public and private sectors where the limit begins to disappear and the space begins to be an amalgam of circumstances and shared experiences. It must be kept in mind that in the underside of a building is the social life of its inhabitants; the children play and make their poetic individuals, the people flows, social interactions, or may even be invaded by people who are going to give the proper use covered by the lack of lighting. Converging factors that forced us to generate dialog and negotiations to avoid conflicts.

CONTEXT

The project is located on the ground floor of an apartment building of collective housing, ,and is adjacent to a small social area prior to arriving at the street. This is a place of community use, by law all the users of the building have a right over it, as well as urban space the local municipality also has interference. It was the sense of ownership, which promoted the need to socialize the project with the inhabitants of the property so that the project can be and reach a successful end collateral.

The location of the project and the space it shares allow it to become an urban catalyst. It is important to generate this type of space in Latin American centers, where the perception of insecurity is high. Giving light, sound and texture to an old desolate street, little by little improves the urban livability of Babahoyo.
However, it is important to consider that all community intervention must previously have a high degree of use and appropriation prior to the intervention.

PERFORMANCE

Since the main goal at the beginning was to generate interventions which respond to a local reality, a more participatory and open architecture where the city becomes lighter, more human. We could say that its performance has been successful. People really take advantage of the shadow during the day, kids play around and sometimes it becomes just a place to rest and meet with people.

We know that each project should be a gift for the city and this has not been the exception. In the government processes of social housing development, we have seen how many of the results have not integrated local architectural strategies: such as the arcade, the use of wood, open and ventilated spaces. We believe that part of the appropriation of the project is due to the fact that the community identifies with certain characteristics of the project, although they are not aware of it. La Pesca has become a social meeting point that serves the community and the city.

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