Design strategies for thermal improvements in social housing: Applications in the town of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, Chile.

The approach to social housing solutions in Chile have been historically focused mainly as an economical issue, but not paying enough attention to quality design, neither environmental concern. This situation becomes critical when standard solutions are applied through different regions of the country, which have specific climate conditions. In the town of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, these solutions do not match with the local aspects of built heritage, identity, and thermal comfort that exist in most of the traditional houses. This problem become evident with the Earthquake of 2005, when most of the village was destroyed and the new housing solutions were clearly out of context. Due to this, it is necessary to understand Architecture as an integrating discipline, which should include different approaches to build appropriate housing solutions. One of these approaches is the thermal comfort. Attempting to recreate traditional ways of building with contemporary new possibilities, there should be a direct correlation between the new models of housing and the cultural inheritance that determinates the lifestyle in San Lorenzo. This paper checks different constructive systems through the thermal behaviour of pre-existent solutions and the new building responses, in order to establish the most important aspects to recover and replicate. From this start point, the second part corresponds to an architectural exercise, which will be evaluated in terms of its thermal performance. Finally, it is presented a reflection of this design solution related to the other architectural approaches: built heritage, public space conformation and management.