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An infrastructure for

CONSTRUCTIONAL LIVELIHOODS

Main Materials 

Glubam

Galvanised steel fittings

Site

Monte Sinaí, Guayaquil, Ecuador

 

Designer 

Patrick Cronin

 

Year

2015

 

 

 

 

 

Infrastructure for Constructional Livelihoods is an MArch thesis design proposal of two interrelated parts: a community cooperative factory and an infrastructure providing new land space for the settlement of Monte Sinaí, Guayaquil, with a non-fixed programme and the ability to be rapidly assembled and disassembled in the public space as a response to local need. By locating the infrastructure in the public space and proposing that the new land space is delivered through joint contributions by the local authority and the community, the infrastructure’s right to exist and ability to continually expand over time is made possible.

 

For the purposes of this thesis, the programme and spatial materialisation of the infrastructure in the first three years of its life have been projected. The resolution brings an architectural 

Collaborators

  • Neighbours of Monte Sinaí

  • MIDUVI - Ecuador Ministry of Housing

  • Hogar de Cristo

  • Dr Leandro Minuchin

  • Manchester School of Architecture

Re_Map MArch Studio Team

 

 

 

debate to the present-day issues surrounding land rights, the settlement’s infrastructural dearth and the local construction sector as a central component of the informal economy.

 

While the thesis is very much positioned as a hypothetical vehicle through which to highlight certain tensions that presently exist in Monte Sinai the thesis aims to demonstrate how the two-part design engine comprising the factory and the infrastructure could feasibly be delivered on the ground in the present day, and suggests what this might look like and how it might function. 

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