Productive Floating Home – La Balsanera / Natura Futura Arquitectura + Juan Carlos Bamba

Productive Floating Home – La Balsanera / Natura Futura Arquitectura + Juan Carlos Bamba

Textual content description supplied by the architects. Context. In Ecuador, a number of centuries in the past, the Babahoyo River and its floating homes turned one of many foremost gathering, storage, and resting factors on the business route for retailers and farmers between the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, utilizing a development system with larger resilience and adaptableness over time.

At present, the river is not a business waterway, lowering the variety of floating buildings from 200 to 25 and growing the chance of their extinction, regardless of being acknowledged as Intangible Heritage of Ecuador.

Throughout the previous few years, the governments have developed housing options for relocation and displacement, declaring the riverbanks as a danger zone, with out contemplating the implications on the socio-cultural dynamics primarily based on fishing, boat manufacturing, and river transportation.

The inhabitants of the remaining 25 homes really feel the necessity to protect their reference to their territory, regardless of the unhappy fundamental wants and the absence of public insurance policies that promote the care of their habitat.

The target is to suggest a mannequin of floating housing for Mr. Carlos, Mrs. Teresa, and their youngest son. A household that has been residing on the river for over 30 years and makes use of the speedy ecosystem as their foremost useful resource.

Carlos repairs picket boats, whereas Teresa prepares conventional meals, which is offered to native communities. The housing they lived in introduced a vital situation in its construction and provision of fundamental companies, stopping them from finishing up their livelihood actions in a dignified and sustainable method.

Processes and strategies. A survey is performed of their present residing areas and a listing is fabricated from the prevailing furnishings and their makes use of. Via interviews with Carlos and Teresa, the issues, wants, and doable options are additional explored, with the intention of using them.

La Balsanera proposes extending 2m on either side of the present platform (6mx7m) to reinforce the productive environments of the inhabitants. The construction consists of modular frames each 2m constructed with native wooden, forming a gable roof, creating storage areas and ample top for the enhancement of pure air flow and lighting by means of its picket lattice boundaries.

The present location of personal and social areas comparable to the lounge, eating room, kitchen, and bedrooms is preserved within the heart, whereas two strips are added to the ends; one for service and two for productive functions, the place the boat workshop, dry bathroom, laundry, bathroom, and bathe are positioned. The platform ends in the direction of the river with a productive terrace the place the potential for extending the normal meals service, social gathering, and anchoring of vacationer boats is generated.

Administration and strategy. The SAT (Sharjah Architectural Triennial) calls on structure groups to develop an exhibition that values the significance of shortage, reuse of assets, and the appreciation of ancestral strategies primarily based on nature within the World South, together with the Natura Futura studio, which in collaboration with Juan Carlos Bamba decides to make use of the assets generally utilized in ephemeral constructions and later discarded to design and construct the primary sustainable floating home in Babahoyo, Ecuador with the intention of recovering the custom of inhabiting the river.

La Balsanera explores doable floating options that get well native artisanal strategies whereas enhancing the energetic and productive participation of occupants in weak communities, the place it’s pressing to strengthen their resilience and sustainability to provoke the technology of public insurance policies that permit, for the primary time, conventional habitat on the river.