The pilot scheme for the new “Rua of coffe” in Paraíso de Chabasquén, Venezuela, offers the opportunity to intervene on a large strip of ground of about 100 hectares, by joining touristic and hotel routes relative to the world of coffee and various local production branches like beekeeping, sheep farming and pomiculture. The area, with an extension of about 1 km of length and 400 km of width, is conceived as an educational park based on exclusively sustainable strategies and directed to bring the visitors close to the local tradition and history as well as to the natural landscape.
The main access way to the area, once passed a residential area with one family houses freely distributed, leads to the actual entrance where an interchange parking lot allows to leave the car and reach by foot, by bicycle or by electric means the rest of the park. A close-by service area with accommodation and refreshment facilities for visitors offers a panoramic view on the green scenery where a series of pavilions and touristic facilities are positioned, like the resort and the sports route running along the artificial lakes, the spa area and the close-by educational centre.
The primary functions are located inside simple buildings built with dry construction technologies, flexible for possible transformations and extensions and provided with large extroflexed curved roofs made of bamboo, designed to offer shelter during the long periods of rain and protection from the strong solar radiation in summer.
All buildings result from the application of indigenous technologies and materials easy to provide. The residences have a punctual steel frame, “dobe” wall plugs and wooden fixtures; they are based on a square floor layout of 7 x 7 meters and distributed on two raised floors on a tree pillar bearing structure which makes them appear like stilt houses in order to make them salubrious in view of the frequently humid and steep ground.
Each of them is provided with at least 12 sqm of so-called hybrid panels, both solar and photovoltaic, capable of producing at the same time warm water and electric power for at least 2 KW /h. Every functional building, on the other hand, is provided with a kit for rainwater harvesting and with a system of hybrid panels.