EL MANTECO

The area to be intervened is located in the center of the city of Barquisimeto, Venezuela. This area represent the 20% of the wholesaler commercial of the center, it is a visitant importer and a resident exporter. The recreative program is low, heterogeneous and does not have a systematic operation although the connection this area has with the rest of the city. The investigation process included studying the behavior of each of the 16 blocks, their formal structure, buildings, program, empty lots or opportunities, abandoned buildings, green areas, sidewalk condition, density, scale and parking lots. This information allows us to detect a percentage of intervention in the area and define three strategies that this area needs, density, recycle and rehabilitate. A typologies board or intervention board is created to start a explorative study that allows strategies in each block acoording with the data, this typologies area categorized by scale, density and program and should be diverse like their environment. Firts we have a Belt intervention that was not enough to change the behavior of this commercial area of the city, so a second proposal is detected by the evolution of each typology and the re evaluation of the percentage of buildings that could be demolished, obtaining a more heterogeneous intervention and increasing on a 55% the density. 

C1 / D1 Urban Blocks Project

Two urban blocks are selected to develop each  typology and test the Urban intervention. The ones selected are the C1 block and the D1, a 35% of the C1 will be rehabilitate according to empty lots, because of its poor condition a 15% of the buildings are demolished and 35% is recycled because of the presence of warehouses including historical buildings and industrial structures. A 5% of the D1 will be rehabilitate according to empty lots, 25% is demolished and 70% of the existing structures are recycled. The typologies board or intervention board is applied on each urban block allowing diversity on various categories such, scales, typologies, program and density. Finally when each typology is placed in this areas emerge the need to connect each device with other buildings through a public system called Pathways. The typology board changes again and allow typologies to connect to this new system and with their neighbors creating a walkable area .