A sustainable social housing unit featuring productive and commercial spaces is the winner of the third edition of the Chilean competition Construye Solar. The project, known as Casa Mercado, was developed by a team of students from Universidad Mayor.
Organized by La Ruta Solar and sponsored by CTeC, CORFO, the Regional Government, and Mall Arauco Maipú, the initiative brought together teams from various universities who spent two years bringing their projects to fruition. Following Casa Mercado, second place went to Universidad Diego Portales with its “Proyecto Panal” home, while Universidad de Santiago de Chile took third place with its “Casa Tecno” prototype.
This effort resulted in the construction of eight sustainable social housing prototypes built at Mall Arauco Maipú, showcasing various climate control, energy-saving, and water reuse strategies, all within a budget of 21,000,000 Chilean pesos (approximately $27,500 USD).
According to Mauricio Zanotti, director of La Ruta Solar, “this third edition of Construye Solar marked a historic milestone by featuring eight full-scale built housing prototypes, two of which belong to technical institutes, thereby expanding the number of institutions joining this initiative. We hope that in the future, projects like those we saw this year can be scaled up; that is the major challenge facing Construye Solar for its next edition.”
Meanwhile, for Álvaro Undurraga, Metropolitan Director of Corfo and President of the entity's Smart City Program, “participating in Construye Solar is highly important, because the contribution we make to the affordable and social housing industry is tremendous.” Additionally, Carolina Briones, Director of the Construction Technology Innovation Center (CTeC), pointed out that “through this long process in which we supported them as technological partners, the students have developed a more collaborative way of working, which will undoubtedly enrich their professional development.”
During the competition, each project had to pass 10 tests evaluated by a multidisciplinary panel of national and international judges. These tests assessed a range of requirements including design, engineering, and sustainability to ultimately select the winning home.
This is the third time that Universidad Mayor (Temuco campus) has participated in Construye Solar. They first competed in 2015 with the “Casa Parrón” prototype, which won first place, and later in 2017 with “Casa Lafkenche,” which stood out in the energy efficiency category that year.
Construye Solar 2019 is organized by La Ruta Solar in alliance with the Construction Technology Innovation Center (CTeC) and Arauco Maipú, with funding from the Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago, the Regional Council, SE Santiago, and Corfo.
Follow our coverage of Construye Solar 2019 and visit the official website of the event.
This article was written by ArchDaily Team. The translation is powered by AI.
