Design interventions aimed at adapting the climactic incompatibilities of extant Soviet-era housing in Cuba to a hot, humid climate.

Antonio Pacheco

2012-2013, M.Arch I Thesis

Proposals for Reconstructing Alamar

Project Brief 1

Introduction Conditions Assessment Schematic Design Proposed Changes2 12 16 22

2012-2013, M.Arch I Thesis

The Soviet apartment building, colloquially known as “Khurshchyovka,” represents a contested contribution to contemporary built heritage. The design and construction of this unique architectural type is predicated upon the mass-production and standardization of generic and interchangeable components that lends these structures peculiar stylistic and formal attributes. These components, coupled with various planning methodologies, massing schemes, and organizational tactics, have been disseminated across the Soviet sphere of influence, resulting in a world-wide proliferation of an architecture that is often ill-suited for many respective climates and cultures. These generic structures, in turn, numbering in the tens- to hundreds- of millions overall, are, aside from ubiquitous, built of supposedly fundamentally permanent components, making them a lasting fact of everyday life for many populations. The sordid social legacy of these apartments, both in terms of the drab and paternalistic built heritage they represent and the coercive manipulation of the domestic sphere they house within, hinders their thoughtful consideration. Khrushchyovka are unique among cultural patrimony in that their stylistic and formal attributes, the aspects of their existence that make these structures unique and special, must be systematically overcome in order for them to actively contribute to everyday life. If these fundamentally permanent components can be altered, adapted, and replaced over time, their generic quality can be harnessed towards specific and beneficial ends; their appropriation can contribute positively and proactively to built heritage around the world. It can be argued that by alleviating the climactic incompatibility of these existing structures, their

The Soviet Apartment, Introducedlongevity can be extended. Further, by liberally interpreting their existing configurations, these buildings can become a form of urban infrastructure that can be infilled, reclad, subdivided, or expanded as necessary and potentially live through many iterations, both in terms of program and formal expression. Climactic incompatibility can be addressed through a variety of simple design interventions that can simultaneously increase building passivity while encouraging social interaction and cultural production. This thesis seeks to discover and design a series of minimal interventions that, when taken in summation, can entirely re-adapt the Soviet housing type to its antithesis: a hot, humid climate. This thesis wishes to consider Soviet bloc housing and Modernist mass housing as foils for one another. Whereas Modernist mass housing represents signature attempts at housing innovation, Soviet housing can

be understood to represent a generic, one-size-fits-all approach. Though neither has been completely successful on a mass scale with regards to simultaneously housing many people while providing them with pleasant and decent living conditions, there is perhaps a synergy that could result from looking at them comparatively.

Antonio Pacheco

2 Introduction

10’5’

North

Elevation View, bloc ExteriorBalconies and bedroom windows are articulated across exterior facade.

10’5’

North

Elevation View, bloc InteriorLoggia and stair landings mark the interior facade.

10’5’

North

Plan View, Typical UnitsExisting units typically exists in two-/three- bedroom unit groups.

Section View, Typical BlocIdentical units are stacked one atop the other for the entire height of each building.

Proposals for Alamar

The eventual presence of bloc architectures in the Antillean metropolis can be attributed to the devastation wrecked by Hurricane Flora on the island of Cuba in the summer of 1963. Soviet authorities gifted Cuba, under the rule of Fidel Castro and his communist party, a series of concrete panel manufacturing plants for use in reconstruction efforts across the country. Although Soviet-inspired architecture had already begin to supplant the post-Revolutionary high Modernism of Cuba, this gesture was the definitive move towards greater industrialization of the building trades. The community of Alamar was among many new urban areas built using the new panel factories, resulting in a dormitory city on the outskirts of Havana that houses between 125,000 and 200,000 residents today. Cuba’s climate, much different than that of other Soviet spheres of influence like Kiev or Ulaanbaatar, is terribly hot during the summers, and because of its proximity to both the Gulf of Mexico and the Equator, is fiercely humid too. The annual hurricane season wreaks havoc across the Caribbean; Cuba is no exception. More importantly, a crushing embargo and crippling economic crisis known as the “Special Period” following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, resulted in a freezing of an already slowed-down and ineffective construction industry, further exacerbating an already dire housing situation in Cuba. Alamar, now a crumbling dormitory city, is packed to the gills and in need of expansion. Though increasingly small spurts of construction have occurred since the 1960s, Cuba still suffers from an enormous lack of housing, adequate or other. Havana’s inner city has borne the brunt of Cuba’s population growth over the decades, undergoing a drastic densification throughout. Here, colonial era buildings, originally built close together and with high ceilings to respond to Cuba’s sweltering climate, have been vertically subdivided and infilled. Where 12- to 18- foot ceiling heights were once the norm, lofted apartments called barbacoas have taken over, cramming many more people into shorter and shorter spaces. This phenomenon is viable across the facades of the buildings that line that city’s grand boulevards, where once-tall windows have been replaced with piecemeal, informal accretions and subdivisions. This transformation has been inverted across Alamar, where the same housing crunch as led to the development of a variety of vernacular accretions throughout the dormitory city. Here, ground floor units have expanded outward, appropriating ground space to house quasi-commercial activities, black markets, and bazaars. Second floor units typically project large balconies and entire rooms propped up on a smattering of stilts, columns, and poured concrete buttresses out over these areas, providing overhead shelter for these informal activities. Alamar, built with little government oversight beyond the laying out and pouring of asphalt for roads, is a true dormitory city in the sense that it is nearly mono-functional in nature as an urban environment. The district lacks major retail areas and contains a relative dearth of official cultural venues. But Alamar itself is home to a thriving Cuban hip hop scene, where an annual hip hop conference and music festival draws aficionados from across the segments of the world that are legally allowed to visit Cuban soil. This social and cultural movement, however, has a more tenuous relationship with its built environment than that of the artists in Belyayevo, for example. Here, in a relationship perhaps analogous to the physical sites of hip hop’s manifestation in American and European cities, Alamar’s dilapidated and threadbare existence serves to fuel an impetus to persevere and hopefully, one day, escape. Alamar, with its winding roads and Gulf views, was meant to represent the actualization of Castro’s Communist revolution in physical terms. Located on the landmass directly opposite the Bay of Havana from Havana proper, this district, one of nearly a dozen such communities developed throughout Cuba during this time, is the end result of decades’ worth of both formal and informal auto-construction. Here, as in other contexts, groups of citizens, known as Micro-Brigades, were organized, provided with construction materials, and instructed to built the various housing projects themselves. Individual buildings were planned in reasoned arrangements, and construction was performed by these teams of 33 individuals, typically 22 men and 11 women, who engaged in cooperative auto-construction. Membership in micro-brigades were assigned based on a lottery system, as were newly-constructed units, and it was expected that individuals would participate in the micro-brigade system for several years at a time before receiving their home. Some percentage of each participating micro-brigade was eventually afforded housing in their recently completed building, instilling inspiration and hope in workers while simultaneously generating a pool of quasi-professionals that was constantly being drained of its longest-serving and most-skilled members. This phenomenon, responsible for the vast majority of construction in Cuba’s recent history, is also responsible for the island’s often shoddy and haphazard construction.

El Gran PanelAntonio Pacheco

4 Introduction

Axonometric View, bloc Interior

Walk-up units are accessed via a centrally-placed stair core, around grouped entry landings; this stair core is surrounded on either side by small, bay-wide loggia. Units, uniformly of either two- or three- bedroom configurations, are framed and divided by exterior, structural panels and interior, longitudinal shear wall structural systems.

Axonometric View, bloc Exterior

Parallel rows of blocs present the “interior,” stair core facade towards one another and are configured to express a more articulated, balcony-laden facade towards other rows of structures. The projecting balconies are organized without intention regarding solar orientation.

Proposals for Alamar

Map, La Habana and its environs

Alamar (red), is located in Habana’s eastern extremity. It is connected to the city center via Soviet-era articulated rapid bus transit and was planned and built as a modern extension to the historic city center.

‘Juntas de los Elementos Prefabricados’

A diagram taken from Arquitectura Cuba showcasing typical joinery techniques for the panel buildings under consideration in this thesis. Notched openings in panels are welded together and grouted over .

Plan, Typical 2/3 Bedroom Unit

Walk-up units are typically organized around a central, shared access stair. Interior room configurations vary among a basic set of unit types; the most common configurations include a 2- and 3- bedroom configuration per floor.

Antonio Pacheco

6 Introduction

‘Juntas de los Elementos Prefabricados’

Proposals for Alamar

Antonio Pacheco

8 Introduction

Proposals for Alamar

Districts 8-10

Alamar is divided into 10 sub-districts that were developed chronologically. Our chosen site is located in district 8 (red). The axonometric view on the facing page shows a zoomed-in site with winter and summer sun, prevailing sea breezes, and overall organization of blocs (white) and auxilliary structures (black).

Antonio Pacheco

10 Introduction

Proposals for Alamar

On-the-ground conditions across Habana reflect the delapidated state of post-Embargo, post-Soviet Cuba. When government-backed construction came to a screeching hault after the 1989 “Special Period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s urban environs began a slow-motion crash course to ruin that continues to this day. As the main financial patron for the Castro regime evaporated, average Cubans were forced to take hammer and nail to their crumbling homes, perpetuating the initial and existing culture of auto-construction. Alamar’s neighborhoods have always embraced this hands-on approach to urbanism and it is a trend that extends into today. The collective foces of inhabitation have been able, over time, to re-take and re-configure shortcomings in original Soviet-inspired designs.

Areas immediately surrounding ground level units are often reappropriated for a variety of uses, including: expanded living space, enclosed outdoor space, or built space housing semi-formal economic activities. Outdoor rooms are not always fully-enclosed and serve both functional and social roles. In the instance of enclosed outdoor space, porous walls are often errected around either private or grouped entry conditions, sometimes re-orienting unit configurations, other times, providing a secure threshold for building residents.These walled patios, often built of found or re-used components, are typically marked by a large entry portal.

Entire buildings often grow out from groundfloor units, providing a new streetfront and housing a diversity of activities. Additional rooms are supported through crude but effective methods, often employing a mix of structural conditions. Sidewalk-side columns are built of repurposed and often mis-matched materials.

The following diagrams show the presence of these existing vernacular interventions in Alamar.

Utilitarian AccretionsAntonio Pacheco

12 Conditions Assessment

Outdoor Living Rooms

Covered Outdoor Space

Proposals for Alamar

Reapprpriated Ground Floor with Walls

Marked Entry Portal

Antonio Pacheco

14 Conditions Assessment

Re-purposed Ground Floor

Introduced Forced Air Systems

Proposals for Alamar

The facing page depicts a preliminary exploration showing experimental interventions in a tower-variant of Alaamr’s bloc heritage showing 1) the addition of a brise soleil with outdoor living rooms connecting access stairwells, 2) the repetition of this scheme along the height of an entire building, and 3) the functiomnal re-configuration of groundfloor units, incorporating quasi-economic activities and live-work configurations.

Following pages showcase intitial schematic drawings aimed at measuring and depicting the myriad existing vernaculars observed in Alamar’s built fabric in order to more effectively formalize these geometries through design sensibilities.

This project aims to harness the existing tradition of auto-construction and vernacularization of these extant structures towards passive ends. The proposed alterations represent measured, piecemeal attempts in guiding these energies in a nuanced way. The oberved tendencies toward greater amounts of unit space, overall, the creation of covered outdoor space, re-configured and re-signified ground floor configurations, and increased dwelling space - both in terms of enlarged existing units and wholly new units - is represented across the scope of the following proposals.

Modularizing the VernacularAntonio Pacheco

16 Schematic Design

Wrap Around Brise Soleil & Outdoor

Living Rooms

Re-zoned Ground Floor with Live-Work

Configurations

Proposals for Alamar

10í5í

North

10í 5í

North

PROPOSED

July Sun89 °December Sun

17 °

Ambient Breeze

Convective Cooling

Ground Floor Vegetation

Throughways

Passive Ventilation

Passive Ventilation

Passive Ventilation

+

+

+Outdoor Rooms

Articulated Roofs+

Existing and Proposed Exterior Building Envelope

EXISTING

Antonio Pacheco

18 Schematic Design

Existing Vernacular Adaptations

Observed Adaptations Modularized

Proposals for Alamar

Alamar’s Myriad Vernacular Adaptations

Antonio Pacheco

20 Schematic Design

Alamar’s Myriad Vernacular Adaptations

Proposals for Alamar

The goal of this thesis is to alleviate the architectural and social shortcomings inherent in these structures through architectural re-interpretation. The strategies used to achieve these goals will be to: 1) provide passively-ventilated, covered outdoor space, 2) increase living space, in general, 3) add a greater number of units in order to accommodate growth, 4) introduced mixed-uses along the ground floor, and 5) achieve these objectives through self-built operations.

As such, this thesis proposes to add covered outdoor space along the south side of each building, in accordance with solar angles for the Cuban climate. This means that an external gallery measuring the width of the building by ten feet (with adequate overhang) will be necessary to achieve this requirement (2400 square feet per floor, 9600 square feet per building). Two units of roughly similar sizes will be added to each building per floor. These units will measure roughly 40 feet by 30 feet (1200 square feet per apartment, 2400 square feet per floor, 9600 square feet per building). These apartments will either be added to the existing structure of the building on upper floors, or they will be arranged along a piano nobile that rests above an open, mixed-used ground floor of identical size.

Proposals for Reconstructing AlamarAntonio Pacheco

22 Proposed Changes

Existing and Proposed Exterior and Interior Facades

Internal changes are gradually reflected across Interior and Exterior facades.

Proposed Section Between Parallel Blocs

5.

7. 8. 9.

Proposals for Alamar

Sectional Perspective, Before & After

Proposed alterations to structures (right) showcase how a climate-minded approach to design intervention can lead to a more humane urbanism in Alamar.

Antonio Pacheco

24 Proposed Changes

Proposals for Alamar

Plan View, Live-Work Units

Groundfloors can be re=configured to facilitate the development of formalized economic oportunity. Accompanying units are small, efficient, and flank sally port areas in order to capture commerce.

Antonio Pacheco

26 Proposed Changes

DN UP

Plan View, Two-Bedroom Units

A removed bedroom unit creates a visable entry for the sally port and initiates a vertical shaft used to introduce light, air, and stack ventilation for the entire building.

Proposals for Alamar

UP

Plan View, Two-/Three-Bedroom Unit

Re-formatted existing units make use of added outdoor living rooms and expanded balcony spaces to bring the inside outdoors and vice-versea.

Antonio Pacheco

28 Proposed Changes

Plan View, Mother-in-Law Unit

An entire floor is re-configured to allow for extended family living. An attached mother-in-law unit allows an existing three-bedroom unit to grow and expand with its constituent family.

Proposals for Alamar

10’5’

North

Plan View, Additional Units

Top Floor is added onto with flexible, open units that can be configured in a variety of ways. Shown units include breezeway and expanded bathrooms.

Antonio Pacheco

30 Proposed Changes

View, Outdoor Living Rooms

An externalized access stair allows for the creation of outdoor living rooms and new entry landings.

Proposals for Alamar

View, Existing Unit Parlor

Reconfigured existing two-/three-bedroom units are more open, pervious to light and air, and outfitted with new entry thresholds.

Antonio Pacheco

32 Proposed Changes

View, Ventilation Shaft

Space left behind by removed staircase creates a ventilation shaft that facilitates stack effect cooling and can be used to hang laundry.

Proposals for Alamar

View, Added Kitchen

Flexible additional units are designed to be open, light, and passive.

Antonio Pacheco

34 Proposed Changes

View, Added Great Room

A great room configuration facilitates passivity and adds new living space without taxing existing structural members.

Proposals for Alamar

View, Added Breezeway

The space between or within new units can be left open (or enclosed) to create even more covered outdoor space.

Antonio Pacheco

36 Proposed Changes

View, Sally Port

A new cooridor within existing structures brings people into blocs and engages with live-work units to create economic opportunity.

Proposals for Alamar

View, Outdoor Living Rooms

Buildings in various states of rehabilitation showcase new functional uses and occupations along their interior facades.

Antonio Pacheco

38 Proposed Changes

View, Expanded Balconies

Re-clad exterior walls and masted balconies bring new life and vibrancy to previously under-sized outdoor spaces.

Proposals for Alamar