Plot by Plot

PLOT BY PLOT development currently accounts for a very high percentage of housing construction in Medellín, yet it is one of the least discussed of architectural actions. Terraced residential blocks that are now consumer assets due to the property market, the economic conditions that drive this market and the decline in housing standards deriving from the implementation of prevailing legislation are circumstances that touch on architecture and which distance the architect from the housing scenario, leaving reflection on dwellings and their spatial quality as secondary issues.

This state of affairs, the result of the shortage of urban plots and of rampant land speculation, leads to properties once occupied by single families being replaced by low-quality apartment blocks. This process of increased population density in the city is reflected in the San Joaquín neighbourhood in Commune 11 (Laureles-Estadio) on the Medellín River, described in the new territorial planning programme as the area of highest housing density, which lies in the flatlands of the Aburrá Valley.

The land here has been the site of considerable housing development in the history of architecture in Medellín due to its topography and the infrastructure in place. As a result, it represents an opportunity to overlap various layers of the city’s history, to consider Medellín’s housing problem from the perspective of the freelance architect and to take a different approach by dealing with the housing on offer for people in middle-income brackets (strata 3, 4 and 5), whose basic needs are covered. Housing for these people is a crucial factor in urban life and fundamental to the demand for formal dwellings, alongside the evident problems of self-build and informal homes.

mics and think about the city in the way that they see it and live in it? Why not think about a city in constant motion?