Ángela Ferrero, Bélen Pizarro & Seizen Uehara - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Design (FAUDI), Córdoba, Argentina

Service points as ephemeral infrastructures for immediate and permanent responses in the context of cities' crisis.

How should infrastructures be today?

In a context in which cities grow faster and faster, without planning and where the benefits of the city are for a few, we believe that it’s necessary to re-materialize sustainable construction and rethink which should be the role of infrastructures in the present and future of cities.

Talk about sustainable construction does not only mean thinking about high-cost energy saving technologies or large global interventions, but also considering the feasibility of functional changes of the same infrastructure and involving people as a starting point for the project. In other words, it must provide a multi-scalar response: from large energy generating infrastructures to smaller-scale infrastructures that have direct access to people.

In the recent LafargeHolcim Awards for Latin America, the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) continued its unrivalled success, taking out the first and third prizes in the Next Generation category of the world’s most significant competition in sustainable design. A reception to celebrate the success of UNC students was held at the Faculty of Architecture, Urban & Industrial Design (FAUD) to congratulate the students, present their concepts on sustainability, and promote sustainable construction in Argentina.

The path of Tropical Storm Nate across Central America and the Caribbean – with heavy winds and torrential rain pummelling Costa Rica – delayed the journey of the Next Generation 3rd prize winning team from Argentina. The group of five students from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba were unable to reach San José in time for the LafargeHolcim Awards ceremony for Latin America, but the inconvenience didn’t dampen the team’s spirit.

Water is the hot topic among the project entries for the Holcim Awards in region Latin America. Whether for wastewater, drinking water, or tidal water, many of the prize winners have innovative and often surprising proposals for ways to master the use of this precious resource in Latin America.

“Service Points” are new small towers inserted within the informal fabric of Córdoba, Argentina. The project’s twofold objective is to provide an array of services for low-income populations as well as to increase social interaction among citizens. Covering a spectrum of amenities, the towers offer spaces for multiple uses – ranging from everyday activities such as childcare, cooking, and laundry to cultural activities such as theater, music, and exhibitions. In terms of their construction, the towers form an adaptable framework (including the necessary infrastructure), which can be transformed to accommodate current as well as hitherto unforeseen needs. The structures correspondingly define open outdoor spaces, which can be used and thus appropriated by the users as well.

Innovation and transferability / economic viability and compatibility

We believe that architecture should be summarized to its services, it should contain activities inside, but the strength of the space should be outside, within everybody’s reach. The project seeks the lowest investment, generating the greatest amount of useful meters. The main structure is made of metallic elements, which allow easy and quick assembly, and the possibility of performing in places of different geographical and climatic conditions. The structures are designed to seek maximum efficiency, composed of the least amount of elements, and which generate free spaces, adaptable to different types of buildings. Each infrastructure tower can act independently or create a system of services more ample to contain activities of greater size, adapt to different dimensional requirements.