45 SOCIAL HOUSING FOR THE BASQUE GOVERNMENT IN TXURDINAGA, BILBAO

The assignment comes after receiving the first prize in a competition launched by the Basque Government. The neighborhood, Txurdinaga arises from the only two planned urban growth operations in Bilbao developed after 1950 and it was completed many years ago. In one of the few lots that were left unbuilt we posed an absolute volume, abiding the heights that the ordinances order. House plans have the same perimeter inside and outside of the courtyards, towards whic only the kitchens and bathrooms ventilate. The ground floor, on the base of garages, is ordered with three identical doorways that allow permeability to a rear square of a new creation, which was the subject of a separate project.

Once the work started, a political decision made part of the ground floor and the first floor into a Health Centre; the type of holes designed, serial, repetitive, and the position of the rigorous vertical communication, allowed the building to admit this change of use almost unaltered.

The square consists of a little more than adapting routes, enabling accesses from four different heights (two existing streets that border the plot, another newly created pedestrian route and from the outer spaces of our residential project); ramps, squares inside the square, benches designed from the same prefabricated concrete of the residential building, an interior garden crowded with native Euskadi trees…

Precast concrete panels with black arid in the square walls and in the garage separated eight centimeters, reinforced concrete pillars painted slightly modifying its natural color, black terracotta ventilated façade with plain baking secured by clips on an aluminum subframe and polished anodized aluminum frames.

In this project of Txurdinaga, with the assistance of the Housing Department of the Basque Government, a pilot project on energy efficiency of different possibilities for HSW heating and collective housing. Different configurations were implanted inside the building, in order to assess their viability by tracking their comsumption for one year. Different configurations of solar thermal systems have been installed and auxiliary natural gas or electric energy is used, as appropriate. 

DATA:

Architects: Jose Maria de Lapuerta, Carlos Asensio.

Team: Architects: Paloma Campo / Marta Renom / Raquel Lara / Cristina Jimenez / Quantity Surveyor in construction: Luis Alberto Martinez, SYMAT

Promoter: Basque Government

Construction: Construcciones Olabarri

Surface: 5,510 m2

Dates. Competition: 2005 Project: 2005 Construction: 2006-2009