Las Retamas Social Housing
Economy, which is a must in social housing - in this case 140 rental flats for young people - is related to repetition. The typological and constructive system of this project is therefore serial and robust. The project is composed of three pragmatic and efficient volumes in the order of the programme, which allows for the liberation of a set of collective spaces in height, some of which are semi-open and protected, which, when linked together, multiply the social value of the intervention. A central garden is the heart of the project, although it is partially open to the outside, allowing distant views. The building is concentrated in the south-east of the plot, where a taller volume is located, giving identity to the whole.
A small house is not a dimensional reduction of a larger one. Its dimensions determine a new type of housing that is essentially different from conventional 'public housing'. The homogeneous user, young people, and their singular and also homogeneous relationship with home ownership, - rent to buy -, also determines and modifies some a-critical conventionalisms that are frequently used in the construction of social housing. These are flexible houses that use mobile panels, minimising circulation spaces, concentrating the maximum possible surface area in the living-dining room and making it possible to visually link the kitchen with the dining room.
