Social Housing In Ceuta / IND [Inter National

Design]

The international competition on Vanguard Social Housing (VIVA) organized by

the Spanish Ministry of Housing placed a high emphasis on the relationship of the
new architecture with the urban environment under the slogan 'We Make City'.
Addressed to disadvantaged citizens and -as expected in most social housing
projects- it had a tight budget. We decided to confront the tightness of the
budget by taking advantage of the richness of the site complexity. Ceuta is in the
north-western tip of the African continent and yet it is a European enclave, if you
zoom in into the competition site within Ceuta you find the border of Morocco
within 1km. The site in that sense at in the frontier of Europe and Africa, yet once
you are in the site you dont feel you are in a Spanish city, nor in a Moroccan, it is
at best a hybrid landscape and to an extent it feels unique in this regard. Within
100 meters the site faces perhaps the biggest informal settlement of Europe
called Barriada Principe Alfonso, a settlement characterized by hundreds of self
built structures mostly inhabited by Arab immigrants characterized by their small
scale, massiveness, cubic forms, labyrinth street patterns and intensive use of
private terraces as public spaces are scarce. Once you are in the site the sounds
of the call for prayer from nearby mosques makes you realize this is not your
classical peripheral social housing plot. It is an intense and beautiful merging
ground of cultures and environments, or perhaps to an untrained eye a rather
brutal battleground between two ways of making a city. Finally the competition
site also plays an unusual feature for social housing, with great views to the
Mediterranean Sea. The competition asked for a clearly feasible scheme within

the budget and restricted its typology to open block (slabs) as expected in most
social housing schemes. Was this the right answer for this specific condition?

Since the competition first phase asked for an urban plan for 950 units we focus
our efforts away from design and more towards a system or a pattern, in a way
continuing the explorations of spatial systems initiated by Christopher Alexander
in the PREVI project of Lima from 1969. But we restricted our patterns to
architecture and spatial elements only. The design called Vivienda de Patron
seeks to find an answer for a type of architecture that could be a link between
the European urbanism and the Arab informal settlement in the surroundings, a
pattern that combines and merges the spatial systems of both ways of making.
Therefore it is both a labyrinth and a grid, it has a small scale in its units but it is
also combined with a mega plinth for infrastructure such as parking and storage,
it uses intimate terraces for private and common use with open squares,
intimate streets and urban corner shops. The target is to build architecture
generous enough to be attractive and comfortable for ANY citizen regardless of
its social or economic background. Most of the apartments have corner living
rooms, all have long views between blocks, materials seldom used for social
housing such as marble flooring, and other practical benefits such as covered
parking places and storage for all units.