Carimagua neigborhood. Section and façade
countries12. For Samper, La Fragua’s conception of social housing became a productive obsession, leading to ongoing theoretical and practical research producing evident results in future projects. As I mentioned before, thanks to his particular way of undertaking projects in a systematic, analytical, and organized manner, and always with perseverance, he was soon published in books and magazines, participated in urban planning processes, and designed numerous projects that further matured his concepts regarding “The Humanized City”, in his description.
Germán Samper and Housing Returning to the early years, these were, for Germán Samper a very active time in which he took part in many fields. Apart from his core activities as designer, he joined the academy (first as professor, then as Dean for the Universidad de Los Andes), and became the director of the Colombian Society of Architects, where a key legacy was to start architecture biennials. He also served in politics for three periods as City Councilor for Bogotá, and simultaneously he began to become involved with the transcendent theme of his entire career: social housing.
In 1964 the urbanization of Carimagua was initiated, where Samper was able to apply the theories that he had begun to clarify in his La Fragua project. The notion of shaping social spaces is enriched by placing small plazas surrounded by small groups of houses. Two-story houses are adopted with a shed roof in order to allow for extensions on one side. The social area is on the first floor and the bedrooms on the second, accepting in advance that its transformation by the owners would be an unavoidable process. Germán uses the wall colors of the façades to confer liveliness and variety to the complex, and to inspire a taste for aesthetic concerns amongst homeowners. The lessons learned from observing traditional architecture, plus this experience with real communities, began to produce positive results in further architectural projects. In this, anthropology and architecture are complemented in the work of Germán Samper.
1958 marked the beginning of an experience that changed Samper’s attitude towards the city and architecture. In collaboration with his wife, Yolanda Martínez, and from wanting to help the family’s chauffeur who desired his own residence, a process that involved CINVA (Inter-American Centre for housing and Planning), the ICT (a Low-income Credit Institute), and Colsubsidio.11 This collaboration resulted in Colombia’s first experiment in mutual-help, also known as self-building or co-operative housing. After organizing a group with legal representatives from financial companies, a process that linked architectural design to communities and supporting institutions. In actuality, architecture formed the roadmap that allowed 52 families (parents, children, and extended relatives included) to build their own housing. This produced strengths and weaknesses from which many lessons were learned for future social housing experiments. Selfbuilding or co-operative housing was soon officially included as one ongoing program for the ICT.
The urbanization of the Sidauto neighborhood in Quirigua in 1967 was the next community project, only this time it was for bus-drivers. In this complex the architect and urban planner wanted to find a solution for parking lots, in which two internal patios, sheltered by the backyards of houses are proposed. With this he again frees up the interior portion of the complex from domination by motor vehicles. This is a very low-cost solution in terms of land and construction, and has security and identity benefits. In this project and for the first time, Samper applies the square lot idea,13 where but half of the lot is occupied during its first stage, a layout notion that could result in four different spatial situations
In regards to design, in La Fragua Samper defined two new fundamental and basic rules. The first one was to increase density with single-family houses. To achieve this, vehicular roads are reduced to the periphery, thus recovering the inner urban areas for pedestrians, designing the neighborhood as a single residential community. The second rule was to design a small house with room for extensions and to conceive of them as live-work spaces; this idea leads to the design of two separate structures with separate entrances. La Fragua was a successful experiment, especially in its social dimensions; it started a new route for housing production in developing
12 Numerous studies on the subject throughout the world, agreed to enact the auto-construction as the most realistic and viable method to meet the overflowing demand for affordable housing. House for People by John Turner is an example of the research that helped to formalize the governmental and international loans to this type of developments. Alongside, architects from different latitudes developed the urban concept to be defined later as “Low-height Housing of High Density, versus the CIAM idea that offered High-height Housing of High Density”; this type of housing had its theoretical and practical culmination in 1969 with the PREVI-LIMA project. 13 In Previ, Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda en Lima (Experimental Housing Project in Lima), Samper also employs the square lot that gave him good results in Sidauto. He also suggested this model in 1970 for urbanization for higher income families, la Alhambra, this time with the possibility of designing the structures and their façades permanently as it was not progressive growth housing.
11 In 1959, CINVA was a research agency with headquarters in Bogotá that depended on the Organization of American States, OAS, with René Ehyeralde as director, and in regards to housing issues the ICT was the official agency in Colombia with Fabio Robledo as manager. The CINVA provided technical collaboration, the ICT awarded two blocks, and the Colsubsidio (a Family Subsidy Fund) provided credit to the 52 families that were grouped for this first experiment of Mutual Help.
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