While the Venice Film Festival will kick off at the beginning of September despite the ongoing Coronavirus emergency, the 17th International Architecture Exhibition was postponed till 2021. Yet rescheduling the event is not such a bad idea as the extra year give us the chance to think about the new challenges architecture has been facing in the last few months and will be facing in future.
In March, while Italy was in a hard lockdown, we looked at projects revolving around the emergency. Yet, since then, the discussion has become wider, with debates and projects about climate change, social distancing and safe spaces for education and working pruposes. COVID-19 has also increased the divide in life chances between rich and poor, and this is another theme that architects should ponder about when thinking about buildings and housing projects.
There have actually been news about architectural projects with social aims that are not directly linked with Coronavirus and that may prove inspiring. One of them was launched by a Catholic nun based in Argentina, Mónica Astorga Cremona, 53, mother superior at the convent of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in the city of Neuquén.
Known as "the nun of trans women", Cremona first started working with young people suffering from addiction or incarcerated and, in 2006, she met a young trans woman who explained her prostitution was the only job she could do. Gradually Cremona met more trans women and, when one of them revealed to her that she had a dream - dying in a clean bed because she worked the streets and knew she may have ended up in a hospital with dirty bedsheets - Cremona focused on a very special project that became possible three years ago.
In 2017 the local authorities donated to Cremona's convent a piece of land and the nun thought about building a complex for 12 vulnerable trans women aged between 40 and 70 years old. The housing project was the result of a research that determined that a trans person in Neuquén has a life expectancy that does not exceed 45 years and those older than 56 represent 5%. The research showed how this group of women suffered rejections from their families, were discriminated, trapped into prostitution or had serious health problems caused by a variety of issues including silicone pumping.
The complex, built by the Instituto Provincial de Vivienda y Urbanismo (IPVU) in the Confluencia neighbourhood of the city with an investment of 27.6 million pesos (over 300,000 euros), opened last weekend. Costa Limay Sustentable consists of a two-storey building with six apartments of 40 square meters on each level.
Each flat is equipped with kitchen, bathroom and heating, and there is also a multipurpose hall, a 120 square meters space to be used for garden, recreation and parking.
Costa Limay Sustenable is not a shelter nor a trans home: residents do not have to pay a rent, but will have to comply with regulations to stay for life. Those who don't respect them get a warning and will have to vacate the flat after the third one. In case of death, their partners will have to move out as the deal is that only trans women can occupy the building.
Cremona's hope while working on the project was giving the girls hope and an opportunity. Spirits were high when the project was finally launched, but Cremona had to fight for it and was also attacked by the locals for her work with trans women. She received instead the support of Pope Francis who wrote Cremona to let her know he prays for her and for her girls.
The nun hopes they will learn from this project and extend it in future to other vulnerable groups, such as single mothers. Yet this is a project of community architecture that could inspire architects not just locally, but on a global level.
Costa Limay Sustentable is indeed the first building of this kind in the world and it proves that functional and simple architectures that can improve the life of people (one of the women who moved into the building highlighted that the bathroom there is as big as the room she used to live in) are what we need to develop. Food for thought for the architects (and "starchitects" as well) out there.
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