Total Housing - ELEMENTAL


	QUINTA MONROY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA from ELEMENTAL Actar: Favelas and other forms of self-built neighborhoods have always been considered undesirable in terms of their instability, both structural and social. The project in Iquique reverses this view and uses the DIY approach as part of its architectural language. Where did this idea come from? Elemental: Actually it was not an idea, nor a choice. There was not enough money to build a whole house. What the market does in these cases, is to reduce the size of the house until it meets the costs. We thought that 40sqm, instead of simply being a small house, could be understood as being half of a good house. When there is money for only 1/2 house, the key question is which half do we do? We decided to deliver the half that a family would never be able to do well on its own. So, from the beginning we included the families and the communities in the planning process, because if they were going to be responsible of 50% of the built environment, better split tasks in a coordinated way. This type of social emergency projects are usually in the hands of politicians or governamental institutions. What would be your advice to architects who are interested in getting involved in such projects, and to the governments that are interested in implementing them regarding the usefulness of having architects on board? I don’t think we can take for granted that having an architect on board is a gain. If we expect an architect to be the expert that can give a better look to the houses of the poor, better don’t have them. But if we believe that architectural praxis has a very powerful tool in its core, a synthetic tool such as the project, we might want to have a strategic use of form as part of the answer to a tough question, maybe the toughest of all: low cost housing. We identified a set of design conditions that conform the first difficult half of the house and that (and this is our point) can make a unit gain value over time, treating housing as an investment and not just as a mere social expense. To do this, we followed every single rule existing in the current condition: market, policy, cost, size, time frame, users. The policy in Chile, in theory, allows for architects to be part of the chain. The problem is that there are no competitive fees involved, so no wonder no architects are there. We are no heroes, nor volunteers, so besides trying to produce an appropriate and precise project, we were looking for funds to pay for the neccessary professional quality chain that was missing because nobody was paying for it. But again, this required a very concrete approach from the architect so that there is a real gain, otherwise it’s just dead weight added to a fragile system. How do the residents live here? Do they build their additional rooms as you anticipated? Were they actually taught how to use and extend their houses? In our design, we followed the minimum effort law. So when families began to expand, they pretty much followed the same path we anticipated. Moreover, our design followed the path that was more likely to happen. Since the structure for the final scenario belongs to the first 1/2 house, no complex technical operations have been performed in the second half. That explains why the process has been quick, economic and safe. We identified who was the wealthiest family, meaning the one that was more likely to be the first one to expand, and offered them technical support, with the condition that they should show their house to the rest of the families: an on-site prototype. The Iquique project received a lot of attention and the Elemental competition for similar housing projects was an international success (see the upcoming Actar book for more information!). Do you think that this reputation will allow the initiative to grow and to be implemented in other places? We did not wait for that recognition to come in order to expand the initiative. Elemental is a for-profit company with social interest, that in its board has brilliant decision makers, executives from very succesful companies like Copec, the Chilean Oil Compay, or Universidad Católica. So they already anticipated strategies for expanding the knowledge we created at the beginning. The need is so big that we would like other people to offer other solutions so that bad practices become the exception and not the mainstream, which is the case today. Back to Main Page

QUINTA MONROY
ALEJANDRO ARAVENA from ELEMENTAL

Actar: Favelas and other forms of self-built neighborhoods have always been considered undesirable in terms of their instability, both structural and social. The project in Iquique reverses this view and uses the DIY approach as part of its architectural language. Where did this idea come from? Elemental: Actually it was not an idea, nor a choice. There was not enough money to build a whole house. What the market does in these cases, is to reduce the size of the house until it meets the costs. We thought that 40sqm, instead of simply being a small house, could be understood as being half of a good house. When there is money for only 1/2 house, the key question is which half do we do? We decided to deliver the half that a family would never be able to do well on its own. So, from the beginning we included the families and the communities in the planning process, because if they were going to be responsible of 50% of the built environment, better split tasks in a coordinated way.

This type of social emergency projects are usually in the hands of politicians or governamental institutions. What would be your advice to architects who are interested in getting involved in such projects, and to the governments that are interested in implementing them regarding the usefulness of having architects on board?
I don’t think we can take for granted that having an architect on board is a gain. If we expect an architect to be the expert that can give a better look to the houses of the poor, better don’t have them. But if we believe that architectural praxis has a very powerful tool in its core, a synthetic tool such as the project, we might want to have a strategic use of form as part of the answer to a tough question, maybe the toughest of all: low cost housing. We identified a set of design conditions that conform the first difficult half of the house and that (and this is our point) can make a unit gain value over time, treating housing as an investment and not just as a mere social expense.
To do this, we followed every single rule existing in the current condition: market, policy, cost, size, time frame, users. The policy in Chile, in theory, allows for architects to be part of the chain. The problem is that there are no competitive fees involved, so no wonder no architects are there. We are no heroes, nor volunteers, so besides trying to produce an appropriate and precise project, we were looking for funds to pay for the neccessary professional quality chain that was missing because nobody was paying for it. But again, this required a very concrete approach from the architect so that there is a real gain, otherwise it’s just dead weight added to a fragile system.

How do the residents live here? Do they build their additional rooms as you anticipated? Were they actually taught how to use and extend their houses?
In our design, we followed the minimum effort law. So when families began to expand, they pretty much followed the same path we anticipated. Moreover, our design followed the path that was more likely to happen. Since the structure for the final scenario belongs to the first 1/2 house, no complex technical operations have been performed in the second half. That explains why the process has been quick, economic and safe. We identified who was the wealthiest family, meaning the one that was more likely to be the first one to expand, and offered them technical support, with the condition that they should show their house to the rest of the families: an on-site prototype.

The Iquique project received a lot of attention and the Elemental competition for similar housing projects was an international success (see the upcoming Actar book for more information!). Do you think that this reputation will allow the initiative to grow and to be implemented in other places?
We did not wait for that recognition to come in order to expand the initiative. Elemental is a for-profit company with social interest, that in its board has brilliant decision makers, executives from very succesful companies like Copec, the Chilean Oil Compay, or Universidad Católica. So they already anticipated strategies for expanding the knowledge we created at the beginning. The need is so big that we would like other people to offer other solutions so that bad practices become the exception and not the mainstream, which is the case today.

Back to Main Page