Villa Verde Housing
Constitución, Chile · 2013
Photo · Photos by ELEMENTAL
A key precedent for incremental social housing, demonstrating how a half-built framework allows residents to expand their homes over time within a structured gabled envelope.
- What we like about this project
- The open voids feature pre-installed horizontal timber beams to facilitate the future construction of a second floor.
Materials
- wood-siding
- corrugated-metal
- timber-framing
- concrete
Visual identifiers
- incremental-housing
- half-house
- gabled-roofline
- red-wood-siding
- flexible-void
Style tags
- incremental
- pragmatic
- socially-driven
Visual tags
- social-housing
- modular-design
- incremental-growth
- affordable-housing
- suburban
- Geometry
- A repeating row of gabled volumes where each unit consists of a built half (clad in red vertical siding) and an open, unbuilt half framed by a continuous roofline and white party walls.
- Facade system
- Vertical board-and-batten style wood siding with simple punched double-hung windows.
- Structural guess
- Lightweight timber framing on concrete slab foundations with party walls acting as structural dividers.
- Spatial scale
- Two-story modular housing units scaled to a standard residential neighborhood context.
- Lighting
- Bright, direct daylight casting sharp shadows under the open roof structures and highlighting the texture of the vertical siding.
- Atmosphere
- Bright, optimistic, and community-focused, showing children playing in front of the adaptable structures.
- Environmental context
- Suburban residential street edge with unpaved dirt yards and young trees planted along the sidewalk.
- Spatial experience
- The streetscape alternates between solid domestic facades and deep, sheltered voids that offer flexible space for future expansion or outdoor domestic activities.
- Composition rhythm
- A strict A-B-A-B rhythm of solid red gables and open white-walled voids under a continuous zigzag roofline.
- Style reading
- Pragmatic social modernism
- Program
- Social housing development
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture
- Materials
- wood-siding, corrugated-metal, timber-framing, concrete
- Visual identifiers
- incremental-housing, half-house, gabled-roofline, red-wood-siding, flexible-void
- Style tags
- incremental, pragmatic, socially-driven
- Visual tags
- social-housing, modular-design, incremental-growth, affordable-housing, suburban
- Geometry
- A repeating row of gabled volumes where each unit consists of a built half (clad in red vertical siding) and an open, unbuilt half framed by a continuous roofline and white party walls.
- Facade system
- Vertical board-and-batten style wood siding with simple punched double-hung windows.
- Structural guess
- Lightweight timber framing on concrete slab foundations with party walls acting as structural dividers.
- Spatial scale
- Two-story modular housing units scaled to a standard residential neighborhood context.
- Lighting
- Bright, direct daylight casting sharp shadows under the open roof structures and highlighting the texture of the vertical siding.
- Atmosphere
- Bright, optimistic, and community-focused, showing children playing in front of the adaptable structures.
- Environmental context
- Suburban residential street edge with unpaved dirt yards and young trees planted along the sidewalk.
- Spatial experience
- The streetscape alternates between solid domestic facades and deep, sheltered voids that offer flexible space for future expansion or outdoor domestic activities.
- Composition rhythm
- A strict A-B-A-B rhythm of solid red gables and open white-walled voids under a continuous zigzag roofline.
- Style reading
- Pragmatic social modernism
- Program
- Social housing development
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture