El Menzah Housing, Tunisia, Africa
Year 1978 latitude: 36° 50' longitude: 10° 9' Period Initiator(s) Planning organization Nationality initiator(s) Designer(s) / Architect(s) Design organization Inhabitants Target population Town website Town related links Literature type of New Town: > scale of autonomy New-Town-in-Town Satellite New Town Company Town > client Private Corporation Public Corporation > policy Capital Decentralization Industrialization Resettlement Economic
The project consists of 417 dwellings organised as low rise apartments on the outskirts of Tunis. These aim to offer an alternative to the modern blocks adapted from European models and to accommodate a Maghrebi way of life. The site is flat and is surrounded by low to middle income housing. The 417 dwellings are organised along a dorsal spine. Pedestrian streets provide most on-site circulation; service and emergency vehicles are accommodated with priority access routes. Pedestrian and vehicular ways are screened by dense planting. The apartments are organised in groups of eight, served by four flights of stairs. All have a large living room and kitchen, a laundry adjoining the outdoor space, and a secluded area for the clothes line. Each unit is heated. The 278 two storey apartments have a small garden and are entered at ground floor level. There are six types of these units, with either 3 or 4 bedrooms. The 139 two and three storey units are entered from exterior stairs. Each of five types of apartments has either four or six rooms, and a large outdoor terrace Interior organisation provides three divisions: for parents, children, and communal spaces. A distinction is made between spaces used for daytime and night time activities, and these are superimposed to ensure sound isolation and visual privacy. Taken from the source source: http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.tcl?site_id=204
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