Maquina Verde - El Arca Solar Decathlon Latin America & Caribbean 2019

The current supply of social housing in Latin American countries is often not adequate for the real needs of the population, generating situations of social conflict and permanent contraposition between the “formal” and the “informal” cities. The Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá and the Politecnico di Torino participated together in the Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean 2019 competition with the project Máquina Ver-de - El Arca, a vivienda social thought for the informal neighborhood of El Pozón, located in the periphery of the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias. The project is based on the reinterpretation of the Caribbean house, starting from a study of the user needs, integrating industrial technologies - like the steel frame- and artisanal technologies -such as the tejidos in the façade-, with a strategy to reduce the environmental impact of the building in its life cycle. In December 2019 Máquina Verde - El Arca was built and tested by the students and professors of the two universities during the final phase of the Solar Decathlon in Cali, Colombia. The collaboration in the international competition was born as an innovative training activity based on PBL (Problem Based Learning) and “learning by doing” methodologies and has evolved into a shared research about the issues of environmental, social and economic sustainability for the architecture of social interest of the Latin American cities.