CORREA + FATEHI

The EcoVivienda Popular project utilizes the Sucua Valley in the southern Amazonia of Ecuador, as a pilot urban & landscape approach to minimize the impact of upcoming processes of urbanization derived from oil-extraction industries. The area is chosen by virtue of the overlapping of many favorable conditions. It is placed at the rich interface between the Andean and the Amazonian ecologies; it is in close proximity to a vast area of Amazonian land where oil exploitation has been already authorized; and the valley already presents some degree of urbanization. The key idea is to redirect the upcoming oil-driven population flows -thought to colonize some of the remaining unspoiled Amazonian ecologies- and bring them into these already semi-urbanized hinterland areas, as an opportunity to enhance their incipient urban condition.

In this process of urban consolidation, bamboo production will play a main and double role. First, new bamboo crops will be used to rapidly remediate the ecology of currently eroded lands in the steep slopes of the Andes, a consequence of recent uncontrolled farming. Second, the bamboo’s physiognomy and fast growth regimes, combined with a set of sequentially programmed production cycles will provide enough material for the sustainable construction of new “Communities of the Millennium”. A programmatically diverse urban framework will guarantee the social success of the intervention.