Prefab Modular Houses and Buildings

Flooring Plans
3D Renderings
Building Course of
About ELEMENTAL Structure

A yr after the mega-fire in Viña del Mar and with solely 26% progress within the reconstruction work within the space, the ELEMENTAL workplace and native authorities started the development of a prefabricated modular housing undertaking in one of many residential neighborhoods most affected by the disaster. It’s a medium-density residential constructing with a modular metallic construction that goals to function a place to begin for different comparable modular initiatives, in response to what’s now thought of one of the crucial catastrophic occasions within the current historical past of Chile. The target, declared by each Alejandro Aravena and the mayor of town, Macarena Ripamonti, is that the know-how and administration mannequin behind this prefabricated housing undertaking function a precedent to ship speedy and definitive modular housing options in emergency situations.

The so-called mega-fire in Viña del Mar broke out on February 2, 2024, and lasted two days. Throughout that point, it lined an space of ​​almost 9.5 hectares in one of the crucial populated areas in Chile, encompassing the cities of Viña del Mar, Quilpué, Villa Alemana, and Limache (neighboring to the north of the famend port of Valparaíso). Through the occasion, which is presently attributed to human motion, 132 folks died, round 5,500 houses burned, in addition to industries, providers, and emblematic public areas such because the Botanical Backyard. The undertaking designed by ELEMENTAL (the workplace of award-winning Alejandro Aravena) is positioned in one of many residential neighborhoods most affected by the fireplace, El Olivar.

The land for this “pilot undertaking,” a public-private collaboration, was chosen and evaluated by municipal authorities together with universities within the area. The constructing designed by ELEMENTAL has 4 residences of 63m², constructed with a complete of 8 prefabricated residing modules and three prefabricated roof modules. The modules are manufactured with a metal construction, composite slabs and galvanized metal profile partitions inside a interval of 1 month. After that, they’re transported by truck and assembled in a single day, then considering 5 days of ending in optimum situations.

Flooring Plans

3D Renderings

In response to Alejandro Aravena, the incorporation of this prefabrication and meeting know-how responds to an important drawback in this kind of state of affairs: pace. In Chile, the response to emergencies attributable to pure phenomena is generally managed and financed by the central authorities, positioned within the metropolis of Santiago. In a territory that reaches 4,270 km in size, encompassing three geographic zones and all kinds of climates, the centralization of assets and energy is problematic for emergency building. The Municipality of Viña del Mar subsequently proposes this undertaking as a chance to discover the opportunity of responding domestically to the necessity for housing. As a pilot undertaking, referred to as by the municipality “Small Condominiums”, it’s projected past the development of this primary constructing, with a view to receiving new financing and persevering with with different models.

Building Course of

The set up of the modules started on January 21, 2025. At 10 p.m. on the identical day that the primary module was put in on the positioning, the development of the construction was accomplished with the set up of the roof. The design contains one condo per ground, offering a housing answer for 4 households, whose houses, beforehand homes with a patio, had been round 36 sq. meters. From an architectural viewpoint, the undertaking means a change not solely within the building know-how of native housing, but in addition in its typology. The implementation of this prototype has a complete value of 223 million Chilean pesos (about 220,000 {dollars}), financed on this first model by the Chilean Ministry of Finance.

Modular housing is introduced right here as a present various for building in Latin America. As a collective initiative and in recognition of its contextual variants, prefabricated housing, till now largely utilized in single-family second houses, might be approached as an efficient answer to among the up to date challenges of the development trade. As for design, there are already references within the area similar to iHouse Estudio in Uruguay, SET Concepts and Estudio Borrachia in Argentina, or Ensamble de Arquitectura Integral in Colombia, to show that modular building can present agility with out essentially shedding its identification.

About ELEMENTAL

ELEMENTAL is a Do Tank based in 2001, led by Pritzker Prize 2016 Alejandro Aravena and companions Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Víctor Oddó and Diego Torres. ELEMENTAL’s work stands out for participating in initiatives that vary from housing to public area, from objects to buildings, overlaying a large spectrum of pursuits. Their unbiased strategy to a given query allows the workplace to enter fields they haven’t explored earlier than, producing an authentic contribution to folks’s high quality of life.

$220,000 4 Story 4 Flats Prefabricated Modular Housing, Chile