Parco !
Failing.
When W.E.9.4.6. posited that downtown social housing has to compete with the suburban family home as the iconic fetish of the AmeriCanadian dream, W.E.9.4.6. knew it had to start by looking at the failures of Habitat 67 to suburbanize social housing and become a replicable model. The chosen strategy couples some of Habitat's utopianism with an aggressive plan to inscribe it in the competitive urban environment which is the Peter McGill site by using existing financial and social forces, for example the Darwinist survival of parking lots or the flux of workers to/from downtown, as an opportunity to both sustain the presence of social housing and generate possibilities for fantastic programs that will cement the city's commitment to it and bind it to the surrounding communities and neighbourhoods.
Parking.
Parco! embraces mainstream Montreal real estate formulas, mainly that parking can be used both as a revenue generating system, and as the structural and organisational matrix for the architectural layout of buildings. As a consequence, Parco! is inserted in the site to complement current parking patterns. By allowing its dwellers to own parking space, Parco! offers them a prominent public platform they can manipulate; a participatory infrastructure that invites the greater urban population to invest in, drive through and infiltrate Parco! through a plethora of diverse programs that respond to the downtown's pulse.
Dwelling.
Dwellings are organised in single units, each allocated with parking spaces, unfolding along a car ramp that liberates the ground floors. The ground levels then become covered civic spaces both vast and playful, serving at times as parking, at others as markets and open areas for sports. The ramps unite the dwellers by offering them a collective platform akin to suburban neighbourhoods and pull the parking and programmatic scramble of the ground floors to their doorstep. Units vary in size to house different numbers of tenants with different relationships. They have a minimal imprint and are vertically organised to provide added intimacy for the residents and to maximise spatial efficiency. The corner houses are designed horizontally to accommodate senior citizens and handicapped persons.
Greening.
On a googleearth scale, Parco! frames the site which stretches between two green spots, the Grey Nuns Convent and Dominion Square, by weaving greenness into its fabric. In spite of the omnipresence of vehicles in the scheme, the reclaiming of traditional parking space in favor of green belts around the blocks means that vehicles do not monopolise Parco!'s visual and spatial identity.
Building.
The main infrastructure of Parco! is a bridge-like megastructure finished with prefabricated porous concrete blocks, which allows the ramps and platforms to be a hybrid between suburban front lawns and urban parking spaces. The megastructure is supported by large shafts that serve as stairs and elevator accesses and provide for shared facilities and communal storage rooms.
Concluding.
Through the process of Parco! W.E.9.4.6. subvert the historical narrative of the neighbourhood, one where the car was held responsible for the deterioration of urban fabric, by manipulating the presence of the car and its spatial consequences to generate a specific typology for social housing.
(Competitor's text)
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