the INCREMENTAL house

Kambimoto: Three Years Later

2012-01-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 2011, I was able to return to Nairobi, as ateam member of Mathare Valley slum-upgrading program. I stopped by the Kambimoto upgrading project that I haddocumented in the summer of 2008, and found that it has continued to grow,adapt, and change.

The Kambimoto project was a result of many years of diligentwork by Pamoja Trust working with a small slum in the Mathare Valley, north ofNairobi. The resulting housing wasincremental, where each family started with a basic one bedroom, one-storyspace that could eventually be expanded vertically up to three stories. In 2008, the project was still underconstruction, although many units had been completed and families had moved in. In 2011, the entire project was stillunder development due to lack of funds, but many individual units had beenexpanded and the overall space had been transformed significantly.

Based on observation, about a third of the occupied unitshad added at least one story, if not two stories to their units. Additionally, color, and articulationhad begun to appear on many units. In one case, neighbors worked together on colors, relief, and surfacearticulation to add identity and individualization to their homes, while stillmaintaining a collective identity. Gates and fences had been added in a number of cases to porches thatwere on ground level.

Generally speaking, most people followed basic design andmaterial guidelines as they expanded vertically. In some cases, make shift additions and roofs were cobbledtogether with rudimentary materials, alluding to the slums and physicalconditions that many of these families had moved on from. This was a concern from the beginningand a reason why the additions were supposed to uniform. Regardless, one of the architectsworking on the project remained proud of the project to provide low cost andaccessible housing, but was frustrated that part of it was beginning to looktrashy. Additionally, he mentionedthat one of the biggest challenges was that people didn’t have incomes, and inmany cases were unable to afford any additions or had to depend on very low costand low quality materials.

The public spaces and interstitial spaces are surprisinglywell-kept, clean, and inviting. Small plants and mini gardens have sprouted up, and because water andsewer lines were added and are underground, there are now walkways that providesolid surface which can be cleaned. The difference in the quality of space in Kambimoto with that of theinformal housing one block away is quite extraordinary.

The only real criticism people living there have of theproject is that the units were not designed to be able to rent out space. Accessing the stairway requires movingthrough the living room, so it makes it very difficult to rent out an upperroom/floor and still maintain privacy. Fortunately, future projects that are in the works are being designed toallow the stair to have a separate entrance from the street. Finally, there is not enough space inthe units to allow any businesses of enterprises to operate from inside. Consequently, the ubiquitous streetstalls have popped up in one of the newly widened streets.

Overall, this project continues to be an inspiration andsuccessful on many levels. It wasgreat to return and see that units were expanding, and that the entirecommunity, while still struggling, is maturing and growing.

Incremental Upgrading in India

2011-11-27T15:10:00.001-08:00

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/05/05/incremental-housing-strategy-by-filipe-balestra-and-sara-goransson/

An interesting project surfaced on Dezeen that highlighted an incremental upgrading strategy in Pune, India, which was to be designed to be implemented in other places as well. While the images provide a provocative and compelling new vision of the community, they are basically reorganizing and formalizing what the people and the communities are already doing. It does beg the question if we give ourselves (architects) too much credit for coming up with something new and game changing.
In this case, and for incremental housing in general, architects do well to just understand and build off of what is already existing and how people live their lives. Fortunately, in this scheme, there is vertical flexibility for the types of spaces that can be produced and used, highlighting commercial space on either the bottom or second floor, which is ubiquitous in India slums. I would have liked more information on the process of engagement with the community and costs. I commend the project for getting the basics right, and for SPARC and Slum Dwellers International to help move forward this idea of development. The mass customization and focus and attention on the uniqueness of colors detracts from the value of this project. Anyone know how it has progressed and if any units have been built?

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/05/05/incremental-housing-strategy-by-filipe-balestra-and-sara-goransson/

New Incremental Urbanism

2011-11-11T18:19:00.001-08:00

Driving down US-19 from Bryson City to Cherokee, NC, there exists a campground that is unique even for Western North Carolina. While it is not uncommon to see RV's with permanent roofs built over them, this particular campground in the small community of Ella was extraordinary because so many of the structures, as well as the community itself, had become permanent.

Most campgrounds of this sort provide summer havens for people from the deep south. In the summer, they can bring their homes up to the cooler mountains, and then in winter, they can take them back where it is warmer. However, many people now live in this community permanently, as they have found a way to exand their living space while not having to pay the high costs of land and materials typicaly in many houses in Western North Carolina.
Most of the structures originally built to help protect the RV's and provide sheltered outdoor space have been enclosed, expanding what was otherwise, minimal interior living space. Porches, stoops, and benches front the street, while a range of patterns, textures, and materials define the public and private edge. Looking down the street is a very attractive scale and rhythm to this neighborhood. This kind of tight urban fabric is an anomoly in these parts.

The RV's serve as the orignal framework or core, and the additions have evolved indvidually and over time, likely as people's needs changes, and as they were able to generate capital to add on. For a rural part of North Carolina, it provides a very nice density that I would like to see a lot more of. And far from a regular mobile home park, each home has a very unique character, quality and richness to it. And if necessary, most of these folks could back up a truck to the house, move on, and take their house with them.

At the entrance is a general store. On site are sports facilities, playgrounds, and the rear of most of the structures face the Tuckaseegee River. It comes very close to a mixed-use, dense, walkable, and architecturally appealing community. Sounds kind of like New Urbanism, right? Except that this one has developed without any architects and is one of the most affordable places in the area. And if offers such a refreshing alternative to bloated, sprawling, gated, and now bankrupt developments that have shredded apart the beautiful North Carolina mountains.

Design and Social Change in Hale County, Alabama

2011-10-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

20k house

Last year, I took a trip to Hale County, Alabama. My goal was to connect with Pam Dorr, thedirector of HERO (Hale Empowermentand Revitalization Organization). Wearrived one spring day just in time for lunch, and she suggested we get somecatfish at the local gas station, Mustang Oil. Soon, the four of us hasballooned into 10 people. We ran intothe local judge, and some long term and short term locals soon joined us,including a filmmaker from Maine, and a psychiatrist from California who hasset up a live-in farm as an alternative to an institution. Heading into the gas station, it seemed like catfishand oil would make strange bedfellows. But, I was quick to discover it was a good one, and that Hale County wasfull of such unlikely combinations.

Greensboro and Hale County are world famous within the architecture communitybecause of the presence of the Rural Studio,an offshoot of Auburn University’s School of Architecture. With whimsical forms, strange materials, andgung-ho idealistic students, the Rural Studio has transformed many livesthrough a modern vernacular. But, whilefolks from Asia, Australia, and Africa have come to visit their works, manyresidents of Hale County don’t even know it exists.

One unique project that, up until recently, had been apartnership between HERO and the Rural Studio is the 20K house. The idea came from a federal loan for$20,000 that was given to residents to help them build a house. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any othermoney to do it, so while Pam was an outreach student, she began to wonder if arespectable house could be built for $20,000. Most other architects told her no. But, she has proven them wrong, as they have now finished eight houses,each built for $10,000 in materials and $10,000 in labor.

After the first one, they were accused of reinforcing thelook of poverty and creating “third-world housing.” The favorite material of many architects,corrugated metal, was clad horizontally over the entire house. This is a materialis that is often used in barns, and other farm buildings. Interestingly enough, Pam said that using apainted version of it makes a big difference. But, newer 20K models haveaddressed that concern and offer a striking variety in terms of forms andmaterials. Their size allows them to be built onotherwise unbuildable sites, and they tread lightly with minimal footings.

20k house under construction. It is designed for additions.

Early 20k house

2008 20k house

Over time, the loan sizes have changed, and Pam + crew arenow working on 40K, 60K, and 80K, houses, trying to not only create a morediverse neighborhood in terms of income, but also ensuring homeowners cangenerate some wealth from their housing. And let’s face it, living in a 400 square foot can be a difficult thing. But, it can also be a great thing. One resident has gotten a much better payingjob that would afford her to move to a bigger home, but she has decided tostay.

Beyond the 20K houses, HERO is doing some pretty awesomework. They have deeply integrated manycomponents to serve as incubators for the community. They have recently opened Pie Lab, a collaboration with Project M, to serve as a community hub,and also a small business incubator. Pecan roasters is one of the first businesses coming out of it. Much of the housing that HERO builds is throughYouthbuild, training at-risk youth, many of whom are dropouts, to develop amarketable skill and finish their GED. Yet, going even further, these youth are also designing the housing, ala Rural Studio.

But, this approach seems to go one step further, trulyallowing architecture to serve as a catalyst for social change. Training local youth to be responsibledesigners/builders has the potential to be truly transformative, much more sothan educating university students. Thisis not to discount the effect of the Rural Studio. I would have loved to have had the educationmany of these students have had. Walkingunder the supershed in Newbern, they were many works in progress, including abeautiful truss for a footbridge. Manyof the projects are lived-in and have an age about them that is hard to comeby, as most of the published images are right after projects were built.

Yet there remains a tension between the spirit anddetermination of individuals to drive projects and the capacity of thecommunity to embrace them and support them longterm. Andrew Freer, the current director describesaddressing these challenges as sustainability with a small ‘s’, meaning thebuildings need to be maintained and supported by the local community overtime. In order to get poor blacks folkinto quality housing, the structural challenges extend far beyond ensuring abuilding will stand up. Change is slowto come to Hale County, and many have an interest in maintaining the existingsocial/class/race structure, which is reinforced by the many powerfulinstitutions and individuals. Most bankswill provide loans to blacks at exceptionally high interest rates, and some localbusiness owners would rather keep storefronts boarded up and vacant thanrenovate them for fears that a black person might open up a business on MainStreet.

Rural Studio outreach project

But the strength of the Rural Studio seems to be in itsability to attract committed, innovative, and creative people to area, bothdirectly and indirectly. Hale County isnot that big, but its needs are. Youwould not expect to find such an innovative non-profit developing youth andhousing; a bunch of graphic design kids selling pies and promoting smallbusiness; and a farm, serving as an alternative model to mental institutions. But these folks have made Hale County theirhome and they are investing a lot in it. There is a lot of good stuff happening there, extending far beyond therural studio. It remains to be seenwhether there is enough room for all these innovative programs and youngdo-gooders who are wanting to change the big world to do just that in the smallcommunity Hale County. And how much ofit does Hale County need, or even want?

Cairo. Revolutionary Change?

2011-01-30T07:47:00.000-08:00

Looking down at Tahrir Square (Source: http://liveblogs.globalnews.ca)

It has been extraordinary to watch the events in Egypt unfold in the last few days. In some ways, it is absolutely shocking to see the extent to which ordinary citizens have shed their fear of the government. Yet, on the other hand, it is amazing that it has taken this long. Having navigated the complete chaos of the city, visited and met citizens living in deep poverty and unimaginable living conditions, and finally watching new cities for the wealthy develop on the outskirts of Cairo, it became clear to me how broken Egyptian society had become.

Beverly Hills development on outside of Cairo

And while the society seemed broken, the culture and individual spirit was not. The capacity of the individual to operate in small moves against the larger forces of repression, poverty, and control felt like a mini-rebellion. And so much of this is represented physically in Cairo precisely by where and how people defined their living space. Some neighborhoods generate income by collecting and processing trash in their homes. Unregulated additions and extensions to apartments and public housing have helped people open businesses as well as generate a feeling of upward mobility. Finally, the extreme quest for space has generated some incredible spatial conditions. People found available and affordable space by living in tombs in the city’s largest cemetery while explosive transition of fertile Nile farmlands to vertical slums is one of the only ways the city can absorb the massive migration.

Giza

As the revolution progresses, it is clear that the physical design and condition of the city is having a significant effect on the protests, as well as what is being communicated to the outside world. In a great post on the Polis blog, Danya Al Saleh and Mohammed Rafi Arefin describe Cairo as much more than a stage for rebellion, but as a “tool for rebellion”, with the spaces of the city continually being contested by protestors and government forces. The sprawling boulevards and open spaces were “originally planned in the 1800s to monitor and limit such upheaval, the concentrically organized downtown modelled after the belle-epoque aesthetics of Paris imposed a sort of urban discipline that was to foster the creation of the "modern" and neatly "organized" Egyptian citizen.” In recent days, though, they have allowed a great gathering and convergence of people and voices. And yet, even with the digital space being tightly controlled and almost completely shut down by the government, we are able to watch the events unfold from the balconies of the thousands of apartment buildings that dot the areas. It is from these privelaged vantage points that we are able to witness history.

Tahrir Square, Ramses intersection and October 6th Bridge

But what about the rest of the city? In the neighborhoods where the majority of the Cairo’s citizens live, there are no wide boulevards and open spaces. The streets are often meandering labyrinths where only occasional daylight even penetrates. They may only have a few main entrances connecting to larger roads and thoroughfares. These are areas and neighborhoods that are anything but planned by outside agencies. They are self-planned and evolve incrementally in small moves, instead of large, grand sweeping ones. They are the antithesis of the space of revolution that we are witnessing in Cairo’s main spaces. Large tanks, police vans, and water cannons cannot move through these neighborhoods.

Al Dharb Al Ahmad

So, what is going on in these spaces? I have seen very few images, but have heard some disturbing reports. As night fell Friday, reports were that police were being far more brutal in denser neighborhoods where there were not watchful cell phones from up above. But, maybe the maze-like structure of the neighborhoods is actually beneficial to the inhabitants, as they are able to intimately negotiate the space that would be completely foreign to outsiders such as police.

Aerial, rooftop and street level of Manshiet Nasser

This morning, we awake to the news that the police have completely disappeared and that citizens are taking to protecting their own security, goods, and neighborhoods. Checkpoints have been set up to control access to such areas, and maybe in these cases, once again, the design and makeup of such “informal” communities is a benefit and asset. Ironically, these decentralized spaces have often been difficult to police and monitor by outside forces, and often develop deep community ties and relationships. And while the large revolution is being witnessed on the grand boulevards and central avenues, I really want to know what is happening in the small streets and massive slums of the city.

Downtown Cairo

Cairo, the collage-city, that is constantly adapting and changing, is forever altered. While the future of Mubarek remains very uncertain, so too does the makeup of the city and the design of the built environment. Previous changes have been relegated to large moves propogated by the rich and powerful, with very small moves necessitated by the poor and powerless, leaving a city that is anything but an example of "urban harmony". Will the fundamental shift in power that is playing out forever change the makeup and composition of Cairo? Could the future planning and design of Cairo shift to now potentially harness the incredible capacity of the average, ordinary people to bring about a more just city? Hopefully the answers to these questions will come without anymore bloodshed.

WNC Additions: Mary

2010-12-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

Mary is currently living by herself, as she and her husband are getting a divorce. Originally, in 1984, they had a three bedroom manufactured/mobile home, but got a larger one still with three bedrooms. During this time, they had two daughters. They added a pool/workout room that now serves as a play space for the grandchildren. Unfortunately, it does not have a heat source and stays closed off in the winter. During this time, they also put a new roof on because they old one leaked. They expanded their porch and began to re-side the entire house. As Mary said, “We wanted to make it into a house.” Two years ago, they remodeled the kitchen. There were plans to remodel the rest of it, but those are on hold because of the pending divorce.

They bought their home from a dealer who sold foreclosed houses. It is interesting to think about the notion of transportable homes during this foreclosure crisis. Part of the challenge with the current crisis is that many of the houses are in the suburbs where people are not as interested in living anymore. Entire neighborhoods are deteriorating because no one is living in them, and housing authorities are shifting poorer people to foreclosed homes, producing many challenges and questions. But, if such houses could be moved to different places with greater, and potentially places with greater density, what would the implications be?

Manufactured Home Alterations

2010-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Additions include porches, new roofs, new siding, garages, and additional rooms.

I have found a number of trends in terms of how people have changed their mobile/manufactured homes. Most people find that they are built cheaply and need to make repairs or remodel, or people just want/need more space. (most of the homes I have been looking at are single-wide, just because it is an easy module to compare).

Porch. This is obvious, since the house is raised and almost every house I have seen has these. There are variations of open, covered, enclosed, etc:

End Extension. These are rooms or spaces added on one of the home. Variations include adding another bedroom (which poses circulation challenges), enlarging the end bedroom or living room, or adding a porch. I saw one example where a garage was added on the end.

Back Addition. These are typically enlargements or extensions of the main living space, depending on exactly where it is. These kind of slide along the back side, while maintaining a consistent front.

Siding/Exterior. In many cases where people have added additions, they have put new siding on both the old and new parts of the building, in order to give it a more consistent look, and make it not look like a ‘trailer’ anymore.

New Roof. This is one of the more interesting aspects, as people have often added pitches roofs cover their homes. Sometimes this is because the old roof leaks. In other cases, it helps tie new parts of the house together, creating sheltered exterior spaces and gives a new, and sometimes dynamic form to the house.

Remodeling. Because of the quality of the materials in a mobile/manufactured home (2x2 or 2x4 structure) wall paneling, and other cheap finishes, many people decide to remodel their homes once they get a little more money.

When all these small incremental changes are added to the original home, it is often difficult to tell whether it ever was a mobile or manufactured home.

Mobile/Manufactured Homes

2010-12-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Manufactured home park in Boone, NC.

I spent some time exploring mobile homes in Western North Carolina. Having served as the most effective and extensive affordable housing option in the United States for the past 50 years, I was curious to learn a little more about the uses of mobile homes here, especially since many of them have been adapted and changed. Many people (especially architects) think that manufactured housing is the only way to effectively address the affordable housing crisis in the US. Unfortunately, the past is littered with brilliant architectural minds failing miserably in using mass production to produce well designed, high quality, and affordable homes. (read the excellent book: The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies).

There are many techniques and methods being employed now, and some of the terminology can be a bit confusing. A few of the commonly used terms and their descriptions:

Mobile Home (often referred to as trailers): Terminology used to describe factory-built housing building on a chasis and transportable before 1976, when HUD changed its code.

Manufactured Home: Same type of home built after 1976 with new HUD code (both of these are one story and come in either single-wides, or double-wides.)

Manufactured home waiting to be delivered in Boone, NC.

Modular Home: Factory built home that meets or exceeds state and local building codes. (these houses are often indistinguishable from site-built stick frame homes.

Modular home waiting to be delivered in Boone, NC.

The mobile/manufactured home is actually built on a chassis, that serves as its main structure and allows it be transported. It is then strapped or anchored onto a site and connected to respective plumbing, electricity, etc. On the other hand the modular home is a permanent house, even though it is manufactured on a factory. It is transported on a trailer, but is not built on it. It is picked up off the trailer by a crane and dropped onto a permanent foundation. Typically, there is much higher resale value with a modular home, and of course, it is costs more to build in the first place. On the low end, a modular house can cost $55/SF and go much higher depending on the design and bells and whistles. A mobile/manufactured home will come in around $40/SF. You have a lot more flexibility with modular homes, and can even design it yourself. One salesman told me it only added $800-1000 to the cost of the overall home.

While mobile/manufactured homes are often the most affordable housing options for people, especially in rural areas like this, stigmas and associations with ‘trailers’ and temporary housing have made it difficult for these types of homes to gain traction in certain areas. See previous posts about Mississippi and temporary Katrina Cottages.

The quality of mobile/manufactured homes has improved over the last few decades.

Haiti: Beyond Building Housing

2010-03-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

Seven weeks after the disaster, a number of recent news pieces have highlighted how now is the time to begin shifting people out of the tent camps and into different kinds of housing. This has many merits but inevitably raises lots of questions. One approach that has been advocated by some is trying to get people back into their communities/homesites as soon as possible. It can begin to ween people from the dependency of the foreign aid system. As we have already seen, such camps are not set up to deal with the onset of rains, etc. Additionally, by integrating people back into their communities, they can begin to re-establish social support structures that would likely provide greater resiliency. Of course, this can only happen once the rubble is removed, or the sites are deemed safe, which is a huge challenge. A number of groups are working on this very task, providing many Haitians with some much needed cash.

Sorting out the land issues, not just in urban areas, but rural areas as well will be incredibly important, as mentioned. While it will be straightforward for some, many people have not been living on land they own. Some may have been living on it illegally or have been renting. How this gets sorted out will be incredibly difficult and important. Based on what little I have heard about it, the land issue may end up hurting those who need it the most, reinforcing distortions in class and power.

Another challenge is to figure out the most effective type of housing. Once again, the incremental approach seems to make a lot of sense and a number of groups, like the International Organization for Migration and CHF International are pushing such ideas, getting people immediate basic shelter, while also allowing it to grow and be added onto. The basic simplicity of this core approach can offer both shelter and structure, and could initially be erected very quickly. Some simple basic materials(cut up shipping container, wire for gabions, paper tubes, etc.) could provide structural support for a minimal roof and security, but then they could double as formwork for more permanent structure later on. Integrated into this is the idea that natural building materials such as the Alternative Masonry Unit (AMU) and sandbags (ground-up rubble) could be infilled as well. Materials could serve multiple functions. Maybe even tweaking the idea of the shipping container... The point is, it wouldn’t take much.

Another approach is providing the shelter and housing itself. Andres Duany and InnoVida are pushing forward thousands of homes made of a new composite material. InnoVida is proposing to build a factory in Haiti. That is a great idea, give people some work and produce much needed housing. I totally applaud the effort, it is much better than just shipping in a bunch of housing from the US and being done with it. Yet on a deeper level, it highlights the challenge and history that Haiti has faced. It has become a country focused on exports and manufacturing industries such as apparel. The only real benefit most Haitian people have is meager wages, at best. Yet, many are drawn to Port Au Prince for this very reason. And with new composites materials, such a factory will likely have to import much of the materials, limiting the impact.

So, while I mentioned above that resettling people on their previous homesites is critical, it is also imperative (as many have mentioned) to focus on the rural development of the country. This would reduce the strain on the city, as well as limit the future ‘pull’ of the urban areas. While Haiti is predominantly rural and close to two-thirds of Haiti’s citizens are farmers, it still imports more than half of all the food is consumes. Even most of the concrete used in Haiti is imported. There are many reasons for this, but the point is that there is great opportunity for this sector to serve the country and the rebuilding in a much greater capacity. For the housing factory, why couldn’t some investment be made to develop more natural materials such as bamboo, sugar cane, jute, etc. that could then be developed into new materials for use in new housing? Easier said than done, but with a little tweaking of all the energy being put into developing new composite materials in the US, a more focused and just approach could be taking place in Haiti.

As mentioned in the excellent Al Jazeera clip, it has the opportunity to shift some of the power balance back to Haiti. The clip mentioned self-organization, which is not a term we hear much of in discussing the aid/rebuilding process. There is an image of the big international aid groups and outside experts doing the heavy lifting…Yet, I would argue that the Haitians have already done most of the heavy lifting. There is capacity and this is an opportune time for much of the rebuilding to come from the bottom up. Effective groups such as Partners in Health are helping support such a model.

And at the end of the day, the results could be even greater than just rebuilding the economy. As Greg Bankoff writes in a great essay, communities such as those in Port Au Prince are continually facing some sort of disaster and challenge. These “normal, everyday events” very often strengthen individuals as well as communities. Many developing countries lack the expertise and infrastructure to address even small disasters, so they depend on an expertise that is more flexible, affordable, locally adapted, and a grassroots approach to prevent and manage disasters. And this is not at all a bad thing. It is similar to the community-based public health approach, working to strengthen and support existing social, cultural and community structures, not replace them. Such an approach offers many lessons for designers. It also enabled India to deliver an effective relief strategy after the tsunami, effectively refusing foreign aid and even helping neighboring countries. Yet, a more balanced, less technocratic effort can sometimes be very difficult for those of us in more developed countries to see. Working with, but moving beyond physical planning and technological solutions, especially being generated from the outside, could activate and support a much more resilient Haiti. Maybe then, when the inevitable future disasters do occur,Haiti could say, "No Thanks, we've got it covered."

Incremental vs. Traditional

2010-02-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts related to incremental housing vs. traditional approaches in the case of Haiti.

1) People could get homes built initially much more quickly because they are building less. However, there would probably need to be as much planning up front. But once, a system or framework is in place, the planning doesn't have to go on and on, it can be tweaked for each place or context....without creating cookie cutter mass produced stuff. That is what is beautiful about it....it can take on a life of its own, and have individuality, culture, context, and place embedded in it without the architects designing it in. Also, like many good projects, there will need to be deep community involvement. Incremental housing would allow such involvement to exist, but keep it more focused and take up less time, which is critical in this case.
I am also wondering in haiti's case, if it would be possible to get people to start to rebuild their homes (with some planning) once the rubble has been cleared, etc. and then just wait for the infrastructure to return. They shouldn't have to wait for all the infrastructure to be fixed, etc.

2) It would also be designed for flexibility and changes to take place over time, if needs/problems arise, etc. This is not the case with how most buildings are built today. One more formalized strategy such as this is open buiding...

3)One challenge is that architects and engineers, even banks,etc, all work to design a finished building. There must be a plan, etc. A community leader in India said that when working with poor communities, it can be hard to get support for a project because everyone on the oustide wants a plan. But, poor communities in general don't have plan....they are just hustling to get through the day and make sure all the basics are provided. This is not to say that poor communities can't develop incredible plans, but outside entities need to be more flexible, etc. such as smaller loans, etc. Incremental housing could be interesting if you begin to think about it under a micro-financing possibility as well. But, these larger changes are hard to come by and pose great difficulties....

4) Another challenge for it work well, is that people would have to work within some sort of guidelines and rules as their house progresses and gets built. Communities that are effectively organized can do this, but with the situation in haiti, it might prove to be a challenge. But, getting a little but of regulation in there instead of trying to regulate all parts of the building process would be a huge advantage. I think we have over-regulated many parts of our built environment here in the US. So, less regulation is not bad, it just has to be strategic.

Incremental Housing in Haiti

2010-01-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

In the midst of all the devastation in Haiti, it is hard to imagine thinking about next steps, when I feel like i haven't even been able to process the initial event. Regardless, in thinking about how to rebuild, many ideas and conversations I have been having come back to the idea of incrementality. I decided to utilize this blog again to see what discussion this may trigger. Also, please check out the good work going on at wired.com. They have a great discussion about issues in Haiti http://haitirewired.wired.com/

It seems that intentionally planning projects to be incomplete, offers many advantages over those that are designed to be built all at once, namely that of time and money. Additionally, because most people in places like Haiti are already building incrementally (pay as you go), this approach offers a more potentially culturally sensitive and contextual approach. Finally, incremental growth may offer the greatest opportunity to shift the large scale redevelopment to one that is more sustainable, inclusive, and weighted more towards the bottom up approach than the top-down. However, as with any project as this scope, the devil is in the details…

Having visited the Quinta Monroy project mentioned in an earlier post and spoken with residents, I do think it is a fantastic example of how to rethink housing/architecture in areas and times of scarce resources. I do want to make the point, though, that if many people had their choice, and the resources, they would prefer a finished house. This was precisely the case with a follow-up project ELEMENTAL did in Santiago called Lo Espejo. Regardless, the strength in the Quinta Monroy (and other projects) came from a close partnership with the residents and the architects. Without the active leadership and support of people who were already demanding new and better housing conditions and the sensitivity of the architects to listen and think outside the box, the resulting buildings would have been irrelevant. It worked because the architects and the residents served as equal partners.

I think the greatest draw of incremental housing is the ability to do a whole lot with a whole little, using time to one’s advantage. This is particularly important in the case of Haiti where there is such a larger number of people needing new housing (although not necessarily new communities). The idea (not that different from site and services projects that became popular in the 1970’s) is to build a starter house (core). This would allow the most basic and immediate necessities (structure, water, sanitation, etc.) to be taken of, which often are not during self-building and many development practices in places like Haiti. This is essential on both a macro (neighborhood) and micro (each individual building). Once this is taken of, it can provide a pattern of framework in which families can add onto and expand whenever more resources (internal or external) become available. The initial first half of the house in Quinta Monroy is built and sized to withstand earthquakes in Chile’s active northern coastal region. It also structurally supports any new additions that will be made, offering a standard of safety well into the future. The same goes for the bathrooms and kitchens; they were sized to support the home once it was completely built out. This project is only able to work because of clear parameters of when and where people cannot build. There is bound to be a lot of money thrown at the reconstruction effort in Haiti, and we can only hope that it is gets distributed well. By intentionally not completing every house, resources can go further.

Another effective example of this idea is a project coordinated by the Pamoja Trust in Nairobi, Kenya. This project trained local members (with a focus on women, partnering with Slum Dwellers International) in various building crafts to erect the project. They only had money for one floor, but it was designed for two more floors to be added vertically. They even built the stairs up to the third floor as part of the starter house, so as to minimize construction disruptions on the already establish family.

Pamoja Trust was also exploring other ideas that would be pertinent to Haiti’s reconstruction, trying to link both immediate and long-term recovery options. For some of the poorest people, they had proposed a building erected quickly and affordably out of earthen blocks. At the corners, they proposed arranging the block so that it eventually would serve as formwork for reinforced concrete columns as money become available. I think this is particularly important as there seems to always be a disconnect between the immediate housing needs and long term solutions, as was exhibited by the case of the Katrina Cottages in Mississippi. They are now left with thousands of trailers. In Haiti and other places, it will be large tent cities, erected far from existing communities.

To move beyond the failures of sites and services, much greater emphasis has to be given to the involvement of future residents, local contextual conditions, and future growth possibilities as homes/values increase. Additionally, the initial starter house must be able to work on its own even before additions are made to it. Another beautiful thing about the Quinta Monroy project is that it gained a whole new level of contextualization and plurality over time, in a way that could have never been planned by the architects.

Finally, one of the richest components of incremental housing is its potential to put power and capacity back into the hands of the people themselves. While involvement in the design process is essential, so to is involvement in the continuing building of the homes. While not everyone has the ability or time or resources to continually work on their homes, many do. Additionally, people can choose what the best use of the initial house should be. Many would probably choose to build out a store, or some income generating space. As basic items are essential for the regeneration of communities, small stores seem to be an integral part of rebuilding Haiti and its economy. Income generation seems to be incredibly important and will not make every Haitian dependent on the millions of dollars of foreign aid that seems to be having trouble reaching them. Additionally, these income-producing spaces could eventually serve to upgrade the rest of their house. This was the case of the Altamiras in El Alto, Bolivia (.), as they were able to transition from a small one-room adobe house to a much larger six-room house, all on the same plot of land.

There are certainly many other issues and complexities that exist in this particularly difficult situation. The future on the ground realities are far from what most of us could imagine. Some pitfalls of this approach (based on sites and services experiences) are the allocation of properties to politically connected people as well as houses achieving a level/standard that people could eventually not afford. Both of these had the effect of not even reaching those who such projects were intended to serve. Long-term maintenance issues always pose a significant challenge for projects such as this.

The scale of this recovery is massive and it might be difficult to pursue an incremental approach for all the people that need it. A lot of creative and new ideas are going to essential to this process. But, it does seem that a close initial partnership to get the basic things right at first, could allow for much more extensively sustainable and empowered communities on down the road and for growth to happen the way it is meant to, organically. Finally, it could ensure that the aid money is used effectively, to spark the people and the communities, without overrunning them. The capacity is there.

Mississippi: Future Trends

2009-07-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

Look closely, there is a still a Katrina Cottage there

Rebuilding a bit differently. A whole new aesthetic is developing.....

I also spoke with Ben Brown, who works with Placemakers, an urban design/planning firm who has been engaged in the process in Mississippi. He described some of the challenges that are now being exposed on the gulf coast. As they have had a severe housing crisis there for the last three years, they have a jump on what the rest of the country is experiencing now. The strange thing is that while most would consider that the Katrina Cottages were only temporary housing, and then envisioned to be used as storage sheds detached from the new main house, they are now marketing them as middle class housing. Their premise is that if people still want high quality housing that has a sense of scale and style, they will have to downsize bigtime, and they think the Katrina Cottage is just the way to do that. This whole endeavor has shifted from some emergency solutions on the Gulf Coast to a new type of housing to be marketed across the country. And it just may have a chance.

But, the resistance to such solutions are very strong. Communities like to have control, but there are many things that are out of their control such as labor, material costs, financing, and insurance costs. So, they exercise control by setting minimum sizes of homes. But, it will be interesting to see how attitudes are to such small low cost options after all the people living beyond their means in large houses weather this economic crisis. They may very well be needing such a place to live.

Mississippi: Prefabrication?

2009-07-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

Two different approaches, manufactured home (front) newly designed/built from GCCDS (back).

East Biloxi.

New housing in East Biloxi (designed by Marlon Blackwell in partnership with AFH and GCCDS)

One of the groups doing solid work in Mississippi is the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, working in East Biloxi, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods. It was poor and working class and New Urbanists designs had broad sweeping, new beautiful designs that would replace Vietnamese neighborhoods with new parks. They have been working closely with homeowners to design and build new houses, and there prices are coming in at $65-85/sf (most definitely excluding the Marlon Blackwell designed house). These are hard costs only. I brought up the Katrina Cottages to one of the architects. He kind of laughed, citing the costs for such a small space, and without any user involvement in the process. They are saving some money with volunteer labor. The clear reality is that prefabrication has never really addressed the affordability issue. But then, on the flip side, some argue that pre-fab only addressees the cost issue, not the architectural issue. If stick built can pull it off, then why not?

Regardless, I highly commend the work and experimentation taking place on the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, our institutions (FEMA and local governments) don’t have the foresight or initative to look into the future and imagine creatively how to deal with these challenges in the right way. But, fortunately, there are great minds thinking and testing creatively how to deal with the problem at hand. Bruce and his crew have developed a number of models at Cottage Square. Some are pre-fab, some are stick built. Even the modes of pre-fab differ, as they have developed a new company to specifically look at new ways of producing such model themselves.

Mississippi: Long Term Solutions

2009-07-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

Diamondhead HFH Cottage Demonstration

Interior showing addition of living room

Installation of prefabricated tag unit.

Katrina Cottages are sold by Lowe's.

New homes at Cottage Square.

Enterprise Community Partners will find occupants to move into the 8 units in Cottage Square. I don’t see how the occupants are going to last. Will the people living there be temporary? Can someone last permanently in a space like that? It is not that different from a cheap studio apartment in a city, but this is Ocean Springs. Some of the larger units might be viable. If they go to the trouble of making sure the trailers can be permanent, but if the space is not livable enough to be permanent, then what is the point? Spending time in such a small unit, one realizes that it wouldn’t work for the typical American family. Maybe in other countries, but not in the US. Consequently, the first question is: “Well, what about adding on?”

The main challenge is that communities and neighborhoods are vehemently opposed to such ‘trailer’ housing, fearing their property values will drop. They don’t want mobile homes nearby. And since the Katrina Cottage is on a trailer, it is considered mobile. The trailer and the scale are the kickers.

I met with Jorge Quintero, who is working for FEMA’s Long Term Community Recovery program, and he is trying to figure out how to deal with those specific challenges. Partnering with Habitat for Humanity, they have just completed a demonstration project in Diamondhead to explore viability of longer term housing. They took a two bedroom Mississippi Cottage (728 SF) and added a factory built 196 SF module for a completed total of 924 SF. The module was added at the front the house, offering a full living room, and giving the visual impression of a larger house. All of this was added to permanent foundations. The house inside certainly felt livable and there was adequate space to serve the needs of a family with one child.

But, the kicker with this thing is the price. Again. It was very hard to get any real figures from anyone about the pricing of all these things. Bruce said he didn’t how much the original Cutsano cottage cost,, maybe around $100,000. That would make it about $285/SF. The ones they are selling at Lowe’s cost $65/SF. However, that is just materials. Lowe’s just send the materials, not even pre-cut. You still have to hire a professional builder and install the foundation and air conditioning, etc. I would guess at the end of the day, the cost is getting up to at least $150/SF. The two bedroom Mississippi cottages seem to cost around $40-50,000. The cost of the addition alone was $70,000 (not including land costs). Everyone says that, well it is the first one, so it is going to be more expensive. But it is still coming in around $150/SF.

Once again, the crazy thing about all of this building is the costs of it. And the costs probably have more to do with all the codes, standards, expectations of housing now. And because of this, there are crazy complex modes of financing to allow poor people to obtain such housing. So, the real challenge in such housing is financing. And we have seen the problems of all it recently with bad mortgages, poor credit, people wanting things beyond their means. This is certainly a problem that bears responsibility with the individuals as well as the financial institutions and governments. My interest is more in a design realm, and how design can reduce the dependency on the all the external conditions. So, the question remains, can starting small and building incrementally address some of these problems? Yes. It seems to be able to reduce the cost at the beginning, because it is smaller. It can’t be too small, though, and what is too small will depend on the site context. One could make the argument that it is more important to get into a house of your own, even though it may be a little bit smaller. You have a mortgage you can handle. Maybe it will be an investment and work, maybe not. The clear reality of the housing market is that it is really volatile, and you’ve got to be able to weather all ends. If the economy and housing market tank, then you’ve still got your house because it wasn’t foreclosed on, and you can just delay your addition once the market kicks up. This can also relate very closely to personal issues such as losing a job, etc. And then, when you can pull off the addition or expansion, it will be easier because you will have collateral and you can borrow off of your existing building. And if it was designed with some forethought, it will not cost near as much to make the addition, such a preframing, etc. And limiting the amount of choice people have would probably be a good thing.

Mississippi. Temporary vs. Permanent

2009-07-07T18:29:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting components about the Katrina Cottages is the questions it raises about temporary vs. permanent housing. Of course, the original FEMA trailer and mobile homes that were provided were certainly seen only as temporary housing. I don’t need to go into detail about how poorly these were planned and built. Not only were many people forced out the trailers because of toxic formaldehyde issues, there was no plan at all with what to do with them AFTER people got back into permanent housing. In fact, they are now selling most of them for scrap.

And while the Katrina Cottage didn’t actually look like a trailer, its scale was such that it was seen as something temporary. And the house was actually mounted on a trailer. The plan was for these to serve as temporary housing to be put on site while people rebuilt their houses. There was no real long term plan for it. Most of the Cottages were produced in Mississippi through their receipt of a $270 million from the Department of Homeland Security Alternative Housing Pilot Program. This particular program, under the direction the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has produced about 3000 “Mississipp Cottages” (not be confused with Louisiana Cottages) that served a very useful purpose. There were supposed to be three models produced:
Park Model: 387 SF one bedroom
Mississippi Cottage: 728 SF one bedroom and 840 SF two bedroom
Eco-Cottage: A variation that has more focus on green and energy efficient materials.

There are now eight Park Models at Cottage Square. In order to prove their viability as permanent housing, they have been removed from the original chasis and dropped onto permanent foundations. But walking into these, one feels like you are entering a miniaturized mobile home. The linoleum floor bounces, the kitchen has to low quality fake cabinets, and the furniture arrangement feels awkward. Additionally, the space just feels different. It is a much harsher space than the original Katrina Cottage, which was architect designed. This product had been streamlined through a factory to be mass produced. It felt like it had lost its soul. To get a house done right at that scale, the skills of an architect are desperately needed to make the size and quality of space work. Using the traditional streamlined systems that focus purely on mass production will only lessen its quality.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Mississippi Cottages are awaiting a yet to be determined fate a local staging yard. It is quite a scene.

Mississippi: Katrina Cottages

2009-07-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, MS

The original Katrina Cottage designed by Marianne Cutsano

Mississippi Cottage

I went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to learn more about the Katrina Cottage. Developed out of the New Urbanist charrettes after the storm, it is one of the few decent examples of architecture/planning that I think has come out of the process. It is something that has actually gone to scale and is being put to use. Designed as an alternative to a FEMA trailer that was built and looked better, it was an option many people could be more comfortable with and something people felt a little more up to the standards that one would expect out of our country. Digging into it has been interesting and revealed much about American’s approach to housing.

One interesting location where one can track the progress and development of the Katrina Cottage is at Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, MS. There, architect Bruce Tolar has developed a series of designs and created a small community. Having been involved since the beginning with the charrettes led by New Urbanists to look at how communities could redevelop, he has continued to champion the Katrina Cottage as an model for gulf coast recovery, but also for many middle class Americans. The original one was designed by Marianne Cutsano, an architect from New Jersey. It is about 345 SF. The space is quaint, but functional and pretty versatile. It has a very small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, that has four beds in the form of two bunk beds. She has since teamed up with Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse to sell them directly to consumers. At Cottage Square is also the Lowe’s Cottage. Bruce has built two other buildings, one of which serves as his office and the other has been converted to a hair salon and actually works pretty well. His business sell floor plans of these ranging from 360 SF to 1825 SF. There is a mix of site and factory built houses there.

New Orleans. Rethinking Poverty?

2009-01-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

Started, but unfinished
And that opportunity after the storm to rethink and tackle poverty in

America

in a new way? Ummmm. Yes, it is a catastrophic failure on a national level, but on a local level as well, with endemic corruption that could probably rival many places I have visited within the last year. Consequently, for a city that was almost completely inundated, New Orleans is being rebuilt piece by piece with heroic efforts from tons of people.

Local business in Lower 9th ward that serves some mean chicken

But, zooming out and thinking about this form a larger scale, is this really the best we can do? Is Global Green and Make it Right the best we have to offer? They make look, sound, and smell different, but at the end of the day, they seem like more of the same. Cost overruns and excessive technologies bump up the initial costs of housing for those who need it the most. High profile figures do their best to give money and wield their influence, yet at the end of the day, all of this is being subsidized and built in vulnerable areas. Housing was not the only thing destroyed, livelihoods were as well. If the housing is built, but the means to support those are not redeveloped, then the pattern of New Orleans will be repeated all over again, this time without a storm. Ronald Lewis, who is a lower 9^th ward resident is fairly critical of the Make it Right project precisely because it is happening from outside the community. And because it is happening from outside the community, it stifles many possibilities for the community to actually take action and develop something that is of their true direction. It reminds of something someone described as ‘New Democracy,’ where people and communities are actively engaged in participation, they are asked their opinions, they are listened to, but at the end of the day, the end result is still the same, determined by those who set up the process in the first place.

The replacements of the public housing projects are reinterpreted in areas such as River Garden, built and defined by a prescribed notion of style, space, and livelihood made to look like a nice neighborhood under the mantra of HUD’s Hope IV program. Typically, these are mixed income, and the math NEVER lines up. Poor people get displaced, not only from housing units, but neighborhoods and networks as well.

River Garden

So, how then, do you really help jumpstart a community such as the lower 9^th ward, and then allow it go on its own? Still working on that one.

But, there are many small scale efforts that are trying to get to the point. One of the projects within the Make It Right project was the Kieran Timberlake house. One of the architects described a much more holistic intention and approach with this particular model. The house is a prototype designed to transition from stick built construction to off-site fabrication, where a self sustaining local industry of component fabrication that could be maintained after the 9th Ward and surrounding areas are rebuilt. Integrating broader social fabric and conditions into the process is a pretty good way to think about. And allowing the house to be easily customizable to allow the project to grow quickly seems like a good approach as well. This project seems to offer interesting ideas, but I have a fear many initial principles had been lost and it may remain as a one-off project?

Kieran Timberlake's Make it Right project

Another innovative example was the Project Home Again. This project is buying up people’s old flooded homes as they are and then selling them affordable new housing. As a group having the capital, they are able to invest more money into the houses and then resell them once there may be a demand in the area. Otherwise, most homeowners in this neighborhood would not be able to afford renovating their houses, much less be able to sell it.

Project Home Again

Tulane University has been very actively involved in the rebuilding, offering great bits of fresh thinking and young, idealistic, and hopeful creative minds and bodies to get down and dirty. Their work through the City Center has provided a number of wonderful examples and additions to contribute to the new identity of New Orleans. And there are countless quiet heroes working tirelessly on the ground, often in the midst of seemingly insurmountable odds. My host and good friend, who is a Rose fellow, is working hard to ensure that green can be affordable and accessible and understandable to not only low income residents, but low income housing developers.

So, while much of my commentary about New Orleans has been very critical, I do leave very hopeful, because this was one place where I felt that some of the problems we are now facing are going to change. This old guard, this old way of doing things, this status quo that has messed up things so bad as in the case of New Orleans, won’t last forever. And having met tons of young, energetic, optimistic, creative, and critical young minds and doers gives me great hope for what is to come. And I think the election of Obama was the first major step in that transition. And, as in many other places I have visited this year, the most vulnerable people persevere, move forward, and shape and build their environment to the best of their abilities, in spite of all the shit thrown in their faces. It is much easier to write and think about these issues from a distance, than trying to solve it and address it on the ground, everyday. I just basically looked and listened. So, mad props to all those quiet people DOING, trying so hard to offer new solutions.

Throughout the Lower 9^th Ward, there are many signs that say “Roots Run Deep Here.” I finally really understand it. After seeing Trombone Shorty at Tipitino’s and dancing down the streets of Treme Sunday in a Second Line, I have realized how special this place really is. While I returned to back to my home country, New Orleans still felt like as rich and engaging city as any in the world.

Roots run deep

Second line

New Orleans. Green Washing Machine

2009-01-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

Here, it seems the whole green thing has gotten a little bit out of whack. It is kind of interesting how little I have really thought about green and sustainable stuff on my trip. It was kind of a shock to return and be bombarded with the word, ‘GREEN.’ In returning to the Gulf Coast, I am reminded how green is all the rage, not only here, but in the entire country.

While it has always been at the back of my mind, it is just not that relevant in most of the projects I have been looking at. There are so many more fundamental things that are important, like having a home in the first place. Land, electricity, water, plumbing, opportunities, human rights, education, and the ability to leave a better life for the next generation. All these seem much more about sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) than the word, ‘GREEN’, just because it seems to get isolated and represent the latest fad. It almost seems like the rest of the world’s homes are more sustainable precisely because they are incremental. So, I don’t even think that green is even an issue in most of the world, but sustainability absolutely is. Architects need to get the basics right and since people in most of the world don’t consume so much, they don’t talk and care about being green, although that is quickly changing in places like India and China.

One of the more high profile green projects is the Global Green house in the Lower 9^th Ward. The spaces are really nice, the scale is good, and it is attractive. 1300 square feet, the volunteer on duty told me it was about $200,000. It does the basics pretty well (south facing, shading, high ceilings, clear story windows, natural ventilation). But, it also has all the bells and whistles: paperless sheetrock, low VOC paints, a dashboard (computerized control system monitoring all the energy usage), water collection cisterns, energy efficient appliances, piping to use rainwater as greywater in the future, (if codes ever allow it) solar panels, small green roof, and hopes to eventually put turbines in the Mississippi River right next to it. And, it is a LEED Platinum building (the highest green rating a building can get.). Great, right? Sort of.

Some guys from the adjacent neighborhood walked in while I was there and one said to the other, ”It looks like it is from…..California.” It was actually designed by people from New Jersey. And while it is a demonstration project, it seems to go overboard, a bit, especially in terms of providing solutions that average homebuilders can employ in helping them rebuild and improve the efficiency of their homes in the 9^th Ward. I was talking to another architect, and she was saying that some friends working on the project, gave a price more like $400,000-$450,000. Daaaamn. That would put it around $325/sf. Okay, it is the first one, right? Well, still, too much and too excessive. Like so many things in our country.

In many ways, we wouldn’t need to pushing such crazy technologies and issues if we didn’t consume so much in the first place. Of course, there will always be a need for renewable energy sources such as sun and wind, but a lot of this other stuff still helps us feel better and not so guilty about the lives we have been leading for so long. Our country is one of the main reasons we have such a problem with climate change in this world. Our consumption per capita dwarfs that of everyone else. But, you can’t just change the systems by which energy is delivered. It takes a lot time. And the infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. But, for me, that is where the government can come in a provide the much needed funding and incentives for change to take place. The true free market will not ultimately work where it needs to. Look where it has gotten us now. I suspect there are certain areas where it won’t adjust itself and energy seems like it might be one of those areas.

And now, we create products to help solve the problems we have created. I guess it is not that bad, at least. The improvements we have done in building design in terms of energy efficiency have been incredible and the LEED rating system has done an amazing job. But, much of this stays in the commercial sector (where companies have to have capital to invest in these things) or in the middle to upper class portions of the residential market. I am interested in how these ideas and technologies can make it down to lower income people and how it can truly make such housing more affordable, and not vice versa. Right now, a lot of the green stuff is not really addressing such issues. And houses like Global Green just address reinforce the notion that geen is expensive and is a just a bunch of toys that architects like to play with and can’t really reach a broad spectrum of people. The Home Depot Foundation invested $5 million into the Global Green project. I guess they have an incentive to make it work. More sales for them….Corporate responsibility? Who is funding and paying for the rest? How much do people actually pay, and how do the mortgages tie into all of this?

The same thing is happening down the road with the Make it Right project, but not quite on the same scale. Both projects have Brad Pitt’s fingerprints on them. The MIR project is working to build 150 houses in the Lower 9^th Ward, of which they have currently built 5. The website says each of them costs $150,000 but people working closely on the project, say they are well over $200,000. The forms are a little funky and a bit off base, and there are some scale issues developing in that process. People talk about one of them as a McMansion. But, it has solar panels. So, in many cases when high profile architects get involved and green comes to forefront, the affordability goes out the window.

New Orleans

2009-01-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

Lower 9th Ward

Lower 9th Ward from the industrial canal levee

Waiting

Gym in the lower 9th

Unfinished house in the lower 9th

Public housing in upper 9th ward
On my stop back in the US, I headed to the Gulf Coast to see how things were progressing after Hurricane Katrina. My first stop was New Orleans. One of the more telling things about New Orleans is that now, there are some areas of the city where you can’t really tell if it had been flooded or not. Some parts that had been flooded are back and in good shape, and there are neighborhoods that had never been flooded that look worse than those that have been flooded. The word decay was constantly popping up in my mind. Yet, while decay is very present, growth is very present, with the building industry booming, one of the few places in the country. New projects are popping up all over the place.

Part of what makes this time and rebuilding interesting is there are areas which have been completely razed. Driving across the Inner Harbor Canal and dropping into the Lower Ninth Ward, you almost lose your breath by realizing how empty the whole area is. Except for those new modern houses as part of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation. They are strange and almost foreign forms of a new type of growth sprouting from a devastated neighborhood.

MIR house designed by Graf

But the wide open swaths of land waiting to be redeveloped aren’t only in the Lower Ninth Ward. The Central City feels like a ghosttown, and a good chunk of it was hardly even flooded. It also holds a couple of New Orleans’s largest public housing projects, all of which are in the process are being redeveloped. Each of these offers a wide open land within the city for new projects and possibly new identities to emerge. The timing, context, and redevelopment of each of these projects present a lot of interesting conditions. Many of them were already in the process of demolition even before Katrina. But, after the storm, protests grew into outrage as many people struggled to understand how the city could be destroying so many units of good housing that had been relatively undamaged by the storm. I guess it really doesn’t make much difference whether a neighborhood is now completely bombed out because of Katrina or because of years of social neglect.

Central City

One example is the Make it Right project and since it has been spearheaded by Brad Pitt, it is gaining the most notoriety. Having a blank slate in some areas should offer new ways of thinking about housing. But, the history and context here is strong and established. My initial gut reaction to this project was, “Damnit, here go architects again.” But, for a place like the Lower 9^th Ward, getting people into homes is pretty critical, and strong formal moves may not matter that much to people there. They just need to get into well built homes soon. And that is what Habitat for Humanity did with the nearby Musician’s Village. They are all the same. But, they are getting built and people are living in them.

Musician's Village

Bolivia. Leaving.

2009-01-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

Senkata

The rim of El Alto

I went back to El Alto drawn to a city, an indigenous, self built city, that had served as a space of resistance against so many things wrong with the world. The now infamous gas wars, when Altenos prohibited natural gas destined for the US from leaving the Senkata Plant in 2003, brought down three presidents. There is an effective civic structure that can mobilize tens of thousands of people instantly. I saw it with my own eyes. But, I am not going to make it out to be the romantic notion of collectivity that I wish it was. It is not. Many people are aspiring, making money, figuring out this capitalism thing pretty well. Others are remaining poor, but trying to better themselves. Some people are financing all of this through the banks, and many others are doing it on their own. Class frictions are growing everyday, as some of these indigenous migrants are hitting a gold mine within urban commerce and real estate, while exploiting others in the process.

Life is hard for children

The quest for size, space, and status has become intense. A local housing activist was telling me how hard people have to work just to maintain such a large home, and that they often sacrifice other things (food, health, sanitation) to build a bigger house. It is a hybrid and confusing mix of everything I could imagine. Urban, yet deeply rural: Six story buildings sit next to empty lots where potatoes are grown and sheep graze. Collective, but now more and more individual: Social networks are deeply entrenched and established, but people are living their lives behind walls. Traditional, yet deeply influenced by the products and desires of the modern world: The yatiris (spiritual healers) using coca leaves leaves to tell fortunes and llama fetises for sacrifices are right across the street from internet cafes with kids playing the latest games. Dependent on La Paz, but wielding tremendous power over La Paz: While a majority of people depend on La Paz for their livelihood, they can shut down access to the entire city instantly.

Llama fetises

I left El Alto on November 5, we had just elected Obama. I felt a collective sigh of relief from people around the world. It is something so many of them have dreamed and hoped for. I walked to the window and watched the arrival of AA flight 922 from Miami. I thought about my country, its opportunities, its hopes, and dreams. And specifically, what that airplane represents to so many people. It is a ticket out of here, it is a connection to a new and different world, it is a dream. I am overwhelmed with emotions, as I gaze out upon this hard, tough vast city. All the people that have been asking me how much it costs to get to the

. Leon was always wanting to know how he could get a Visa. After giving his family some money to put their roof on, I went back to their place a few weeks later to say goodbye and see if they had finished their roof. Leon was gone, hardly any work had been done on the roof, and even though early in the day, his wife was already blistering drunk.

AA flight 922

But, I also think about Eloy, who is carving out his space here in El Alto, building a future for his kids, with no reason to go to the US. He has Evo. He has hope and a solid foundation and future ahead for his him and his family. It is very inspiring to me, as many people can build their future with their own hands and wealth and strength and initiative, in spite of all the things stacked against them. At the end of the day, however, I am not going to get to crazy about this reality in El Alto and what is represents. It is a harsh.

In some ways, I like to think that the election of Obama is the real reach of our country, that can still affect little people in deep ways, well beyond the markets and products that we offer so wonderfully to the rest of the world. I still can’t help but think and relate our feelings of new beginnings to those of the campesinos here in Bolivia with Evo Morales. They have fought, been raped, pillaged, taken advantage of, and stomped upon. Now, it is certainly not a rosy picture, but the country has fundamentally changed in a lot of ways.

Bolivia

has so much to offer because it is really different. The greening of the world is taking place in the forests and jungles here. A new movement of indigenous, and predominately poor are taking hold and pushing new power and changes. So much of the changes have symbolically come against the interests of the

and the predominant world order. And in El Alto, the people are working hard, busting their ass, building the city by themselves. In many ways, the urbanization of El Alto is no really different than what is happening in most other places. The form here is a bit different and very homogenous. It feels like a sense of solidarity among people, even as people build bigger, and put single family homes on top of these buildings.

As for design, I came back hoping to find a clear space where I could exercise my wonderful skills and architectural knowledge gleaned from around the world to apply to the many problems there. But, it began to sink into me, that once I again, I didn’t understand the issues. And while people kept aspiring to be modern there, one of the jokes in La Paz was that Altenos would build these big houses, but not have a bathroom. I understood it after getting to know some folks there. While the current older generation has moved from the country to the city, they are still very much bringing with them their rural lifestyles. So, they still cook in one room, go to the bathroom outside (or in a rudimentary space) and many people sleep together in one room. It is one of many ways they negotiate this shift. But, they all seem to be thinking about the future and their children. And these children growing up in El Alto will know and expect a very different world from their parents with more modern comforts. But, in a weird way, El Alto is one place where becoming modern may not come at the sacrifice of everything traditional and indigenous. Time will tell, especially with all the convulsions that have been going on politically.

As an architect, I can’t force people to live a certain way. If I design them a sweet bathroom, integrated into a passive solar adobe building with a tight envelope that is uniquely beautiful, are they going to feel at home in such a space? It very much depends. But, the issue of future change is one of the most striking here is the notion of future space and flexibility. People are building with what they know from each other, or from TV, or from Zona Sur. These tastes and styles will probably change in the future. But functions also change. Unfortunately for Remijio and his family, they are all crammed into a small dark space that is supposed to be a store. A little planning could have designed a much higher quality space that could function as both a store and a living unit, to give the owner more flexibility while maintaining a higher quality of space.

El Alto, overlooking La Paz

But, I do know a couple of things. The home very much allows people to stake a claim, keep that claim, and improve upon that claim to the city. Each home in El Alto is an incredible economic engine, allowing many people to not be so dependent on the markets and opportunities in the modern metropolis of La Paz, as well as the global economy. People are able to build new and bigger houses only because it happens ‘poco a poco’ or little by little. Each step in the building process allows them to fund and support the next step. Rooms get rented out. Stores are built. Pay phones are installed. Candies are sold. Photocopies provided. Shoes are sold. Bedrooms added. Kitchens are built. Hot water is installed. Walls are stuccoed. The house remains unfinished. People live and move forward. This is the world home.

The unfinished home

I returned to the US, a very different landscape at a very unique time.

Senkata

Bolivia. El Alto. The New House

2009-01-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

The new living room

I had told Eloy that I would return in the evening to take a photo of his whole family in the new, almost finished apartment. I ran a little late, trying to catch up with everyone in the city. I caught a cab in El Alto, just because I was running late. It was the most beat up car I had been in a very long time. My window was entirely tape. You could feel every bump, it felt as if the engine was going to stop immediately, and then going over the speed bumps…..I felt them in my feet, scraping the underneath of the car, almost as if it was going to break in half. I think it even had an 8 track player. But, this guy didn’t give a damn. It was his livelihood, and he drove it just like a new one. I then piled into a minibus at Cruce Viacha. I still find these minibuses some of the most extraordinary parts of El Alto. I always like climbing in them. I always feel safer, and it is always a collection, of rough and tumble, hardworking people trying to move forward with their lives. And I never cease to be amazed about how they pile in there. Late at night, people trying to get home. We were full when we stopped. They piled four more people in crammed in all around everyone. People were half standing all over each other. No one said a word, about letting them in. Not a word, not a complaint. It reminds me of the trains in

India

. We are moving forward and we all need a little help.

I arrived a little late to Eloy’s place. The store was already closed. I knocked for a few minutes, then heard a young voice asking who it was. I said, Lucas, and then there was a bunch of scurrying. Pamela then opened the door and let me in. I quickly noticed she had a dress on. She looked beautiful. I made it into their room, and saw Erica as well, and she was dressed up as well. I realized they had been waiting for me to take a photo. The room again struck me, just because so much happened in that one room. There were two beds for four people. Actually five. It wasn’t until later that I realized the grandmother was sleeping in the bed I was sitting on. After making a bunch of racket, I half joked if there was someone sleeping under that hump. Sure enough, it was the grandmother. What a trip. But, how cramped was that space. The girls had their desks at the window.

I gave them the new pictures of them I had printed. Eloy and Maria were most proud of the picture I had taken of Eloy with his Alacitas building in front of their building. He admired it for a very long time. It seems that people can be proud of the physical manifestation of something so different, it is tangible and it is there, it doesn’t matter if it is different from someone else’s or has a beautiful color.

The dream

It was only when we went upstairs into their new building to take a picture that I realized what an incredible thing this was for his family, and how different and new everything was going to be. Their living space will increase probably by 6 times. They have hot water in a shower. They have beautiful tile. They have natural light, they have wood floors. They have an indoor kitchen. I don’t really know how much Eloy and Maria will really, really be into all that stuff, but rest assured, Eloy is building a future for his children. But, it will be an interesting future because these are children that are learning both Aymara and English in school. The care with which the house is done is striking. It is immaculate, even now. There is a flame that will burn as you enter the door. There is a soap dispenser in the bathroom. He wants the best. And I can’t wait to see it.

The next generation

Bolivia. El Alto. Eloy and Family

2009-01-02T21:11:00.001-08:00

Eloy and his family

Current living quarters

New house next to old house

Eloy and his wife Dona Maria lived down the street and ran a store on the corner. I got to know them very well, as their store provided much needed staples such as yoghurt, bread, telephones, and chocolate. Half of the time, their two daughters, Erica and Pamela, when not in school, were running the store and listening to my phone conversations.

During my time there, they were living out of basically two rooms. One room was the bedroom and everything else. Within that one room, all four of them slept along with Maria’s mother. The kids studied in there as well. Outside was the kitchen and a rudimentary toilet.

They bought the plot of land in 1998 for US$10,000 and through the pooling of family resources, was able to buy two plots together (320 m^2). They moved from another part of El Alto because there were no real transportation options and places to run a business. He now believes the land alone has doubled in value. He first built the one story house in the back. They lived in a total of three rooms. Once they decided to open a store, he had to rent out one of the rooms to help pay for the costs. Once he had completed the first floor in 2002, he was able to run a store and rent out another room as a pharmacy. This income helped pay for the second floor, which he is now close to completing. It will be a two bedroom and one study apartment with generous living room, and nice tiled kitchen and bathroom. This will be a huge step up for them, considering their living conditions. In one year, he plans to cover the façade in a cement coating. This will give it identity as well as protection from the rain, as the bricks do leak moisture. His mother and wife’s sister live in two rooms in the attached house in the back and they run a store right next door.

Albanil, master craftsman

Eloy designed the house himself and drew the plans. He is the architect of the world. Not necessarily a barefoot architect, but a real architect. Although he is right across from the Subalcaldia, he did not go through the municipality because he said it was too expensive. He basically decided to spend that extra money on tiles to make the kitchen and bathrooms sing.

There is a festival here called Alacitas, where each January, people buy up things in miniature that they hope the gods will bless them with. I even still have miniature bricks, cement bags, and wheelbarrows from my childhood in Bolivia. One day in Elhoy’s store, I noticed a miniature building sitting on the shelf. It was their wish. And they were having it granted.

The dream almost fulfilled

I honestly had a hard time understanding how different their two worlds were. This was an indigenous Aymara family that had moved from their village in the Altiplano to El Alto. And they were moving from a rural two room house to a new modern 6 room house that certainly rivaled many in the US in terms of quality. And they did it all by themselves on the same plot!

Bolivia. El Alto. Leon

2009-01-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

When I first arrived back in La Paz, I was haggling with some cab drivers about the price to take me into the city. One finally offered me a lower price and I took him. As we were talking, I told him I was planning on staying in Senkata, and he told me he was building a house in there and he invited me to come and see it. It is on the outskirts of the city, right at the edge where the city buts up against the countryside. His lot is on a big plaza, but looking over the wall at the back of the lot, the country extends out in front, giving way to magnificent views of Illimani. The wind was strong and whipping through their lot, as there were few other buildings around to shield it.

Leon and his wife, Adriana, bought their lot for $3,400 six month ago. They have one child and another one died three years ago. The three of them were living in one room with

Leon

’s parents before they were able to find this space. Once they got the land, they built a small one room adobe space that they all moved into. It is 3 x 4 meters. They started building an additional two rooms two months ago. Their son, Limbert, is 14 and it must be a bit difficult to be sleeping right next to his parents every night. It is clear they are poor.

Leon

is lucky to own a car, which he uses as a taxi service. He is building his addition out of adobe. He says primarily, that it is much warmer than the ceramic brick you see being used everywhere. Plus, it is much cheaper. Leon and his family can build the majority of the house with hardly paying for materials. But they still lack the roof. Once I started asking about the roof, they said it would cost $500 and they didn’t have that. We need a ‘padrino.’ Maybe Lucas could be the ‘padrino.’ Oh, I said I wasn’t a padrino. They were good people, though, I could tell. What to do? I was asking them for something, to share their lives, their homes, and time with me, a complete outsider, a foreigner. And they were asking me a little bit of money. I guess it wasn’t that much different.

Regardless, they described the future plans for the expansion of their home. A garage here, a living room there, an extra bedroom here for visitors such as yourself. “Make you sure you call me the next time you come, and I will pick you up at the airport and you can stay here, okay?” And then eventually a two story building with apartments and stuff, but that is way down the road, they said.

Adriana’s sister was robbed and attacked in La Paz a month ago. She was left out all night before anyone got her to a hospital. She had picked up a pulmonary infection. And while her doctors said she was going to be okay, her family needed to buy a lot of medicine to help her along the way. Adriana had bought 7 boxes of pulmonary medicine at a cost of Bs.160 ($US160). But a few days later, she suddenly died. And they were left with 5 boxes they had no use for. They were asking me if I knew a way to return them and get their money back. It might be the cost of getting that roof on. But, they will find a way. I know they will.

Bolivia. El Alto. David Garcia

2009-01-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

I met another architect in Senkata the one day A guy was working on his bus in the middle of the street and I said hello. He said hello back and seemed pretty nice. We started talking a bit, I figured he was just another mechanic. But, he got really excited when I told him I was an architecture student. He said he was studying architecture at Universidad Publica de El Alto (UPEA). I didn’t even know they had a program there.

I ran into him later and we shared pictures and designs and he showed me around his place. It had a nice intimacy and scale to it, things of which people here don’t really care that much about. But, I liked it. They had built an oven to make bread, but the competition increased and they aren’t able to keep up. Now that space essentially functions as storage. They have built half the wall on the front to eventually open up a new store. The bus that his father uses to earn money is just parked out in the street at night. It blocks the entire street. I love it. I also love, that I can bump into a mechanic on the street here, and he is an architect working in 3-D Studio Max.

Bolivia. El Alto. Don Willy

2009-01-02T20:48:00.001-08:00

One of my first nights in my room, I arrived after dark from La Paz. It is cold, windy, quiet, and sometimes seemingly desolate. Everyone had retired to the shelter of their walls. Nothing about such a place felt like home, and it was a completely different world. But, as I got out of the minibus, and started to walk down the street, a neighbor, Don Willy came flying by in his van, asking me how I was doing and where I was staying. His kids were hanging out the windows hollering at me. It was nice to see them. In the back was his wife sitting on top of a big bag of shoes. In the informal economy, Willy and his family sell used shoes. They pick them up from Chile, and sell them in markets in El Alto. I first met him when a health worker here took me out to the market to see if he had a room for rent. They were selling shoes. Later that day, as I was drawing some of the buildings in the neighborhood, I could see him using his courtyard space to wash and clean used pairs of shoes. He also makes seats for minibuses. So, tonight, he told me he had a pair of shoes just my size. His wife echoed it, saying just for me, they just got a fresh arrival today. I am doubtful they will fit me, as most Bolivians are not taller than 5’6”. But, we will see.

If any home is an engine of economic activity, his is. He built the entire place himself and always seems to be running about five businesses out of his place. Everyday, I would walk by, he would have something different to show me. He hopes to eventually cover his entire lot with an apartment building of 4-5 stories.

Bolivia. A Place to Stay

2009-01-02T07:25:00.001-08:00

The front of my home

Fearless guard dogs

Courtyard space

Front Entry

Second floor which will eventually become a restaurant
I rented a room from a wonderful woman named Benigna. While the public space outside it is pretty dead and very little public/private interaction, it is much more complex and interesting once you get past the exterior walls. As Benigna was showing me around and introducing me to the neighbors (in her own plot), it was clear there was like a mini community there. Beniqna stays next to me with her daughter. Below her stays Casta. And on the bottom floor of the new building is Remejio with well, he couldn’t really tell me. Benigua said 10, as I looked through the crack and saw at least 4 kids peaking through, getting a peak at the gringo. Remejio said they had a squadron, and he never quite knew how many.

Building at the back of the lot where my room was

My building was on the back of a lot. This is where Beniqna stays next to me with her daughter. Below us stays Casta. There was a small courtyard inside where many activities took place, from washing to cooking to cleaning, etc. On the front of the lot, Benigna had built a new building, typical of the area. Only the bottom floor was really finished. While she had built commercial space to help support and make money for finishing out the building, she was actually renting out the store space to a family. There stays Remejio with well, he couldn’t really tell me. Benigua said 10, as I looked through the crack and saw at least 4 kids peaking through, getting a peak at the gringo. Remejio said they had a squadron, and he never quite knew how many. After staying there for three weeks, I never could figure out how many were staying in that store space. One thing I was sure of was that the kids helped with every task: cooking, cleaning, and helping their father, the albanil, do work for Benigna. Additionally, the space they were living in did not have a single window, aside from two high openings with glass blocks. But, it was the cheapest space available for them. Even though they were living in the new building, they still cooked out back in a separate adobe kitchen, and used the bathroom outside as well, which was an open air toilet stuff under the stairs.

Remejio, the albanil, and 4 of his children

The other really interesting part is how much the sun affected the comfort of my room. Since my building was built out of ceramic, hollow brick, there was basically no thermal mass capacity, unlike adobe. And since it gets pretty cold up there and there are no heating systems, thermal mass is critical. My room got the afternoon sun, and if there were no clouds, the room would be nice and toasty throughout the evening. However, if it was cloudy or rainy, the room would probably be 15 degrees F cooler. While most people understand the value of adobe in terms of heating and cooling, they still generally prefer to use brick, because of its modern connotations, it is thinner (allowing more floor space), less maintenance, and in great abundance (Benigna ran out of dirt for adobe after her first floor on the original building).

The new ubiquitious building material

Benigna's changes in her home

Bolivia. Typologies

2009-01-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

Suburban on top of Urban. El Alto

Suburban on top of Urban. El Alto

Suburban on top of Urban. El Alto

Suburban on top of Urban. El Alto

Suburban on top of Urban. El Alto

Suburban . Zona Sur. La Paz

Suburban . Zona Sur. La Paz

There are a number of different housing typologies and sometimes they are hard to distinguish. But generally speaking, the lowest quality is in the el campo, or the Altiplano. It gets a little better in El Alto, as more economic opportunities are available. It could be argued that housing in the laderas is a step up from El Alto because of its location and proximity to

Bolivia

’s main city, but it is very vulnerable. As you descend, the housing becomes better and more expensive until you descend into Zona Sur where the wealthiest people live, hardly distinguishable from many

suburban neighborhoods. One architect here described it as the “US Style” where people want to have a home that looks like it came from the

. The funny thing is that this is starting to show itself in different places in El Alto, where people are actually building what look to be single family homes on top of a multiunit apartment. The only way they can afford such houses is to use the income from the rented apartments below to support the nice houses above.

The differences between the country and Zona Sur are pretty interesting as well. In Zona Sur, people generally place their home in the middle of the lot, with most of it being built in one go, with minor alterations afterwards. In rural areas, the house is usually spread out along the periphery of the lot with bedrooms in one building, the kitchen in another and the bathroom in another (if any) building. Typically, the dwelling has been a series of detached buildings. But, in El Alto, it is a hybrid approach, allowing people to moved toward more fixed “

style” buildings, while still maintaining the rural influence. Actually, El Alto seems to be a crazy mix of urban, rural, and suburban all thrown together right next to each other.

Rural Village . Ancoraimes (my home village)

Church on top of store. El Alto.

Typical Scene. El Alto.

Bolivia. La Paz. Laderas

2009-01-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

One of the areas that is much more interesting architecturally are the ‘laderas’ of La Paz, the hillsides where people have been building like crazy, often illegally. This is basically the interstitial zone between the main commercial district of La Paz and the city of El Alto. The implications are tremendous as not only are people destroying valuable vegetation, but the buildings are slowly getting taller and taller. Unfortunately, the place where density is increasing on the hillsides, is just where it shouldn’t be. La Paz’s hillsides are almost like gravel. When vegetation is destroyed, much of the rainwater permeates and then filters out lower down the hills, often causing collapses and destruction in mudslides and such. At the very least, the majority of people have water entering into their homes when it rains. I must say, the hillsides are pretty extraordinary, and again, the majority of the houses are built on inclines over 45 degrees! But, they have the best views! Some of the constructions are quite engaging, and the use of rooftops is ubiquitous. With all the clamour about green roofs and stuff these days, we forget that a large majority of the world have used rooftops as very active spaces.

Bolivia. El Alto. The Professional

2009-01-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

I was able to link up with an NGO called Red Habitat doing housing work in both La Paz and El Alto. In El Alto, they are doing much more technical assistance, both in design and also microcredit. Once people come and ask for assistance with money, they can also get the assistance of an architect to help with layout issues, material issues, and labor issues. Sometimes people want it, sometimes they don’t. Almost 70% of people in El Alto build their homes themselves. The other third use some sort of professional help. Often, this help is in the form of ‘albaniles’, or craftsmen. They can be masons, painters, plumber, or electricians, or all of the above. One of the challenges Red Habitat has in improving the quality of housing here is that the status quo stays the same. People don’t really know any other way, so that is how things get done. Plus, most of the albaniles are pretty proud and don’t really like to be told how to do things, especially from an architect. But, they have never really been formally trained, the training is more just passed down through generations. So, most of El Alto looks the same.

One day I went around with an architect working for Red Habitat to do some site visits. I have been very influenced by the community based health care system my parents helped to set up here. Instead of getting people to come to health clinics and hospitals, the program was set up to train local health workers to go directly to people’s homes and engage them there. In Senkata (El Alto), I have been on a number of home visits with health workers here. Doing these kind of visits made me feel like architecture is irrevelant for most of these people. Why would they care about space for expansion, a warm wall, good natural light, and the proper foundation when their kid has diarrhea, is losing weight, and the father left home six months ago? When there is no bathroom, no sewage line, and three small adobe rooms, there are still many basic things that need to be worked out. And while basic health care is one of the most important things people need here, it has become more evident that architects can a play a significant role in improving people’s condition as well. The problem (???) is that most people intentionally bypass any professional help (even though it is the law) because of the cost and hassle. Where are the architectural interventions most critical and how can you incentivize them to make people value their use?

Another day in my neighborhood, I stopped in a shop that had a sign with the word ‘Arquitecto’ on it. There was a woman inside who had a variety of services to supplement her work: pay phones and photocopying. She said many people come to her with basic ideas. I need a store here and an apartment here. And I like this building. She actually designed the one across from the subalcaldia (district council). I didn’t really think about it, but it has quite a presence. Because so many visit the subalcaldia for various reasons, many people will come to her and say, “I want my building just like that. Just like that.” Or sometimes someone will say, “Come, there is another building and I want it just like that.” Regardless, the frame of reference is few and far between. When people keep referencing a few buildings, the cycle will build upon itself and keep reinforcing the “matchboxes” of buildings she described. She kind of asked me why I was there, as all the buildings are just like matchboxes, what could possibly be interesting architecturally about that? Some days, I did ask myself the same question. In a place with such vibrant colors in dress and cultural traditions, why is it that the housing is so colorless?

Bolivia. El Alto. Senkata

2009-01-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

On my first day back, I went on some house visits with one of the nurses at the local health clinic, and spent the day looking at some rooms where I could stay for a month. Wandering around Senkata, it still feels like a ghost town. Is this what was recently considered the fastest growing city in Latin America? Where is everyone? Knocking on doors, it became very clear that many people were away, working….somewhere. Probably in La Paz. Returning to La Paz from El Alto, we passed a massive line of people waiting for transportation back to El Alto. The people have to live so far away to make a living in the modern metropolis. It is a taxing journey packed into small vehicles, dodging traffic and everything else. Even though, people are hidden behind the walls of their homes. The nurse told me that people are afraid of thieves. I wonder what applications Jane Jacob’s ‘eyes on the street’ has here. If the public and private realms were more permeable and people focused their attention on the street instead of exclusively on the interior courtyards of their homes, would it change the activity on the streets? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that the streets are still dirt, with only curbs built into to define the areas. But, it is also the culture, as the Spanish courtyard housing typology still exerts a strong influence on the built environment.

The streets and the public transportation stops are a mess. The commercials zones are huge, full of empty space waiting to be filled. La Ceja (the central part) is congested madness and an intense experience all around. One day I passed a street hawker selling alternative medicines to deal with all kinds of worms that find their way into people’s bodies. After looking at the worm samples in the bottles, I was almost tempted to buy some.

Almost every single home is under construction. It almost reminds me of Beijing, but at a much smaller scale, with all the construction being undertaken by the people themselves instead of the state, corporations, developers, and certainly without the use of architects. It is a totally self built city, almost the entire thing. In that regard it is pretty extraordinary. But, it is also a self-regulating city, for better or worse. Violence and robberies are pretty common. When the state does not provide adequate security, the people take care of it themselves. Most neighborhoods you go through will have a stuffed dummy hanging from a telephone pole, a clear sign to possible thieves that they will be lynched if caught. And they will, last year 18 people were lynched in El Alto.

In a weird way, it is as if the local municipal government has set up the extreme minimums in which people can operate. They set the streets (in a minimal, mathematical fashion with public spaces allocated). They set the curbs. They set the electricity, but hardly anything else. They will get to the rest of it later. Is this place really providing agency for people, more so than other places? How is the minimum planning able to keep up with the explosive growth, more so than other cities?

But, density, density, is the big question. The amazing thing about Bolivia and El Alto is the amount of people that own their land, and the amount of space they have to build upon. A common lot size is 250 s.m.. I think I read somewhere that 70% of Bolivians own their own land. But, in El Alto, that is coming at great expense as much available and arable land is being converted into urban land. With such a low density and unlimited space as long as people are looking for land near the big city, the future implications are scary. Water, food, transportation, and quality of life will all be at risk. But, it doesn’t seem to matter to most people. They want their dream, their hope of making money, of getting a better home, of having a better life for their children. It is hard to think beyond that, or even expect people to. Most Bolivians are stoic and strong and make with what they have but work very hard to improve their lot, often against tremendous odds.

The plot sizes are set, often determined by the municipality, but employed through both legal and illegal means. Loteadores (black market sellers) had illegally subdivided a lot of the land and sold it to willing people. They were smart about making sure space was left over for streets and stuff. When there is enough of a critical mass, the municipality eventually has to no choice but to provide basic services. Such is the norm these days in most of the developing world. But, corruption is rampant and most people can pay off city officials for most of what they want.

One big problem is the incredible cost increases in materials, especially steel (for cement reinforcement), cement, and tin. Some of these materials have doubled in cost in the last three years. Most people do use banks to get loans to do the construction. This is because they can get more money than with the microcredit, even though their interest rate is higher. Just down the road from my room in Senkata, the new banks are doing a bustling business with lines out the door every morning. But, a life of debt with high interest rates…..hmmmm. I think I have heard of that before. What if people can’t pay? What if the minbus they are gaining most of their income from is wrecked and they can’t pay their loan? There is an extreme desire to build more and bigger here, and possibly at a great expense, not just monetary.

Back to Bolivia

2008-12-31T11:14:00.001-08:00

For my last stint in South America, I returned to the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, to the sprawling city of El Alto. I decided to rent a room in the neighborhood of Senkata ($30 a month, no bathroom) and get to know the built environment and people a little better than I had on my previous visit (http://incrementalhouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/bolivia-la-paz-and-el-alto.html). I was really curious to better understand the built environment of a city that has been termed the ”Rebel City.” Because on the surface, there seemed to be nothing rebellious about most of the housing.

It was a bit of tense time, as the country almost fell into chaos, after Bolivia’s own ‘9-11’, when almost thirty people were killed in a clash between supporters and detractors of President Morales and his attempts to shift revenues from the wealthy lowlands to poorer highlands. For background, see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/americas/15bolivia.html?scp=1&sq=bolivia%20massacre&st=cse.

Immediately after the massacre, President Morales expelled the US ambassador (accusing him of helping orchestrate a coup) and the State Department ordered all

U.S.

Citizens to leave. So, heading back to such a country and to a city that has consistently rebelled against neoliberal and privatized interests, I, of course, did have some question about how I would be received. But, as in most places, the policies of the government are often very different from the people themselves, and I was received with nothing but sheer warmth, even from the city authorities. But, the intense political climate did shape a number of my experiences there.

On October 20, tens of thousands of people converged on La Paz to demand Congress to ratify a new constitution. Many of them had begun walking form Oruro five days earlier and we had been hearing about it for many days. Here were some of my reflections immediately afterwards:

“The massive march came through today. It is huge. Even by 7 am, people were scurrying around, trying to meet up with folks, and participate in the mass that eventually would descend into La Paz. There was so much indiginous dress and wimpalas (indigenous flags). There was a serious energy with everyone jockeying, slowly filling up the roads, as trucks and vans trying to continue with the everyday work battled through. A neighbor went to take his kids to school. They came back, no school. A guy selling DVD’s about the massacre in Pando came through. Finally, Evo made his way through. The crowd surged around him, chanting, “Evo, Evo.” Behind him were tens of thousands of Bolivians, mostly indigenous Aymara Indians who had been walking for 5 days from near Oruro. They don’t have Nike’s here, and the local health workers are out helping hand out water and deal with foot injuries. Everyone has their radio on. The announcers are speaking with excitement like a football match. There is a spirit of festivity, but also determination and antagonism with a number of groups highlighting the recent massacre in Pando. There is music, there is every type of traditional dress you could imagine. It feels like an independence day, and I guess in some ways, it is almost like a new independence day for many of these folks, as they are pressing for congress to ratify the new constitution. You can’t help but moved by the solidarity and power among such people here. I was standing on an overpass over the main road, as far as I could see in both directions were people marching.”

The march essentially shut down the city, as other people came in from all over the country from all directions. By far, the greatest amount of people were descending from El Alto through La Ceja (on the rim of the city). The sight of tens of thousands of people descending from the altiplano down into the city of La Paz is quite extraordinary. People ended up staying in Plaza Murillo overnight, all the schools shut down and housed the tens of thousands of people.

In La Paz, there was a lot of grumbling about the march (especially among middle class), how it is messing up all the transportation and everything. They were saying they heard that Evo had paid everyone Bs.100 to participate. It is a little weird to see how integrated the government is in political stuff like this. The entire municipality was out marching, and supporting people. But, not everyone is for this, and it is clear who this government is supporting. And Evo is getting a lot of power from them. It is a trip how the altiplano and highlands filters down into the city to fundamentally disrupt that way of life.

On October 21, Congress ratified the new constitution. I was eating lunch and they were showing a huge party on the TV in Plaza Murillo. I could hear horns honking outside. And then, there were more and more flares and firecrackers. I happened to call the cab driver who picked me up at the airport on my arrival, as we had hit it off and he was building a house nearby. He said they were going to celebrate the new constitution by drinking beer, and he wanted me to join them. And so we shared a Pacena (bolivian beer) and celebrated the new constitution. They were excited. They said there would be no more racism and discrimination against Indians. Schools are being required to teach Aymara, Quechua and English. Even Elhoy’s (a neighbor) daughters can speak Aymara. I asked him about it, and he said they were learning it in school now, ever since Evo came to power. Everywhere around in El Alto are signs up for new schools and housing. There is a lot of hope and dreams about the future for people here. There is a band of zamponas and drums playing furiously down the street celebrating what people here are calling the new Bolivia. The sounds drift as in a village on the Altiplano, yet they bounce and reverberate among the new, yet unfinished multistory buildings.

Rio. Pedregulho and Favelas

2008-12-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

Pedregulho and Context

On the way to the Metro

Pedregulho entrance

Studio

favela edge

favela edge

favela upgrading

While in Rio, I visited Pedregulho housing, designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy and built around 1950. It has 6 floors and 272 apartments. It is quite a contrast to anything around there, and neatly connects with the terrain as it weaves around the hillside. The third floor offers is open and offers a great experience of moving into the building, and then gains a commanding view of the surrounding neighborhood, which off to one side consists of a very dense fabric of favelas. However, they both seem to relate to each other, with the colors, and texture of lived in buildings. There, I initially saw two options on where to get involved on the housing issues for architects and planners. And that was a tough option. Pedregulho (architect’s disregard for people’s lives) on the left and the favelas (state and society’s disregard for people’s lives) on the right. It kind of depressed me, because on the surface, it looked like Pedregulho was a mess and disaster. It seemed run down, oppressive (scale of the building in the context), and irresponsive to people’s needs. And the favelas were rough and difficult. You can tell by looking at them. There is not much romanticizing for me anymore. Reading about Janice Perlman’s revisiting the Rio favelas (Marginality: From Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: 1969-2002) helped made that clear to me. Despite all the work and upgrading over the years, of programs like the Favela Bairro program, people feel even more marginalized. Drugs and violence are associated with many that lives within, but most people are actually victims of it, not the perpetrators. And there is not much choice.

But, I am not so down on architects at the moment, but at the conditions in which we have to operate and try to solve problems. Being clear on what is in the realm of architecture is very important. I really wonder what people living in the public housing in the US really thought about the architecture and design of their environments. I am sure there are a ton of them who felt connected and had a found a good community, amidst all the problems.

While I was standing at the main floor, sketching, someone asked me what I was up to. He turned out to be a really nice guy, practicing his English, and he graciously offered to take me around. We went to his small one bedroom unit, then upstairs to his parent’s place, then to a friend’s unit, then underneath the building, and finally to the back to have a beer with other residents of the building.

He said that it was good there, much better than the favelas around. There was no violence or shootings. It was close to a metro, but here location is not always the key condition. The problem with formality is the set of rules and constraints within it. And consequently, someone sets the rules, and it is not always a formal process.

Inside, each unit was in pretty good shape, although it varied as to how well people took care of their space. But, there were computers, refrigerators, etc. Most physical improvements came from things like the tiling of the spaces. The outside space and walkway of people, which served as a kind of interior street was kept in really good shape and offered a nice experience. The overall façade didn’t look good, but is who is responsible for that? The state? Because if you look at what people themselves take care of vs. what the state, etc does, then things are different. Underneath the building, water and sewage run openly down the structure.

I felt the warmth of people, I couldn’t resist an offer to stay for dinner (as usual). After finishing up the meal, we realized it was getting dark, and I was still a ways from the metro. My host expressed concern as I would have to move on the periphery of the favelas. But, he sent me with a neighbor and her children who were heading the same way. She was nervous and anxious, as much for me as for her children. Yet, I got a brief of sense of the anxiety that people must feel in these neighborhoods, as the violence and militarization is extensive.

Before I arrived in Rio, I had suspicions about the notions of the favelas, as most other informal and poorer areas in other parts of the world had felt like some of the safest places in the city. They kind of watch over you there, as they sprawl up the hillsides in all parts of the city. It is quite extraordinary and a contrast from Sao Paulo, where you could move around without ever knowing they exist. Everyone has heard about the favelas of Rio, and the violence and drugs are no joke. And there is a certain draw, myth, and romanticization, so much so that there are even favela tours, a part of a growing industry of slum tourism. (In my hostel, there were advertisements for a trip to Rocinha, where we guarantee that "kids will be greeting you with a smiling and happy face." From a very distant realm, thought the realities became very real to me. I met with an architect, Jorge Mario Juaregui, who had won a number of awards for his work with Favela-Bairro upgrading program, and is currently involved in a massive upgrading project to develop new housing, economic opportunities, and transportation (cable cars) options to connect the hilltops. I tagged along with his driver to drive to get in a little deeper. We stayed on the edge, drove around and saw lines and lines of military troops. As we were about to leave, I asked if we could go further in, and he looked at me like I was crazy, and turned his fingers into guns and went,”rat, tat, tat, tat.” So, what is the realm of the architect here? Hard to say, many people criticize the work of the upgrading programs as they try to formalize the favelas, integrating them into the rest of the city, often through ‘urban acupuncture’ where new buildings, stairs, and community centers are added with cool designs and bright colors. But, even with that, people feel more disconnected and marginalized than ever. It will be interesting to see how some of the new proposals actively address the much deeper issues there.

Until then, the favelas will remain deep in our collective imagination. They are some of the most beautiful and evocative structures I had seen all year, and the connection to the topography, and the resulting spatial conditions are quite extraordinary, yet oppressive. So for now, the favelas will continue to strike a chord in creative minds, doing what little that can be, to try and look at things a little differently. Here is one approach.

http://unhoused.livejournal.com/tag/rio+de+janiero

http://28millimetres.com/

Sao Paulo. Paraisopolis.

2008-12-11T15:48:00.001-08:00

source:http://www.rc.unesp.br/igce/planejamento/gpapt/links.htm

One day, I got lost in a city of walls. It was pretty extraordinary how fortified and different the affluent neighborhoods are. I went wandering trying to find a favela. I found Paraisopolis, only through some images on from the internet. I was interested in the juxtaposition. It was one of the most extraordinary I had seen. Private swimming pools on balconies cantilevered over a favela. I was on foot. I followed a google map I had. It showed clearly streets running through the suburban type rich neighborhood into the densely packed favela right next to it. The google map was wrong, and it was impossible to move between the two zones. In fact, there were walls, barbed wire and security guards. Not surprising at all, stark and amazing on the ground and in person. The guards were everywhere. On the entrance to the substreets. On the actual streets, on foot, cars, and on bikes, and then in the doorways below the electrified fences on the houses. Why didn’t they stop me? White? Who do they stop then? How many layers are really needed? Does this create violence or is the proximity? Both zones are fighting for access and location in the city. One wanted to get away from it, and the other wanted to get to it. Now they are right next to each other, and the consequences are drastic. A professor at Berkeley has written a book called City of Walls about Sao Paulo. In many cases when security and isolation has increased between neighborhoods, violence has increased. A very worthy topic of much more exploration.

All these experiences have left me a little sour, partly because how striking the differences are in Sao Paulo and it reminded me a lot of the other cities in the world. And while Brazil has a lot of new and progressive policies, this place is fucked up, and so is most of the world. I began to look at incrementality a little differently. In reality, incrementality represents injustice, lack of resources, lack of investment, anbandonement, etc. The reason people have to build that way is because they have no other choice. Where it looks like they have choice on the outside, do they really have choice on the inside? And what choice are we talking about here? Location, aspirations, improvement, development, etc? It’s all there. incrementality needs to be seen in a much more critical light. Many houses (even wealthy) ones are incremental. So, what is the point? Often, the middle and upper class can work closely with the architect, they feel empowered, they have ownership in the process. But, they are not challenging anything else beyond the existing reality, or perceptions. Incrementality works because allows people to exist and play in the consumer market and global consumption game. It allows them to improve, but on a more individualistic scale. And that is where the world is going. And look at the result of it. It ain’t pretty. Or is it?

fav

Based on a lot of more famous images of Paraisopolis, you would think there was extreme wealth next to extreme poverty. Wandering on the ground and talking to some folks in the municipality, it is clear that Paraisopolis is a highly developed favela with tons of work, economic activity, and social structures very well in place. The city has had an active role in upgrading a lot of it. Does it have to do with its proximity to the wealth right around it? At least they are not trying to redevelop it like Dharavi.

Sao Paulo. Periphery. Diadema

2008-12-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

I tagged along with Tatiana as she visited an NGO working in the periphery in a place called Diadema. It had become a separate urban municipality right outside Sao Paulo and much of the housing stock was informal. We were visiting an NGO called Rede Cultural do Beija Flor. (http://asasdobeijaflor.blogspot.com/). The place was flowing with creative energy, unlike almost anywhere I had seen. Between music, dance, art, and leadership development, this place had been taking a lot of kids off the streets and offering alternatives for a number of the other kids in the areas growing up in favelas. The results were extraordinary. They had built, designed and painted an entire complex. Youth could come there and spend all day. There were art and painting classes. Graffiti and other street artists would come and give work shops. All kinds of music was explored there, even the youngest kids were playing beautiful things. But some of the more extraordinary work seemed to be coming out of the high schoolers. They had a couple of projects going on. Many of them were heavily involved in breakdancing. With a deep and obvious connection to capoeira, many of these kids understand it in a different way, both physically, spiritually, and mentally. About a month before I had been there, they hosted one of the largest break dancing competitions in Sao Paulo. The scene was amazing. Check out the incredible moves. The youth produced this video:

http://www.afrobreak.blogspot.com/

They were also working on multiple projects documenting and interviewing part of a community that had been living on a trash dump. You can check out some of their work here:

http://www.asasolharsocial.blogspot.com/

We went and visited a community these youth were working in. Some of the housing there was the worst I had seen. But the most extraordinary thing was the transition of the formal to the informal. In this case, it was represented by power lines. Along the road, there was a point where the municipal power line ended. And at point were about 100 lines attached to it with clamps, extending in a tangle all the way down the road, propped up by sticks and poles.

There are two words that have been on my mind much during my travels but resurfaced during this visit: CAPACITY and AGENCY. It was clear that finding unique and innovative ways to tap into people’s creativity is quite extraordinary. And while much of my focus has been on housing and buildings and how they can help increase capacity and agency, so much of the development of communities and people happens outside the realm of the built environment. Yet, it can still be enhanced by the built environment, and this was one place where that was happening.

With that said, I want to make two points. Favelas can be extremely developed and sophisticated neighborhoods with many opportunities for people. This is not the norm, but it is certainly possible. And I am not expressing my amazement with the work that was being produced here because these are kids from the favela. Well, maybe a bit, but no matter who is doing that kind of artistic exploration at that age, I find it extraordinary, regardless of class or socioeconomic background.

Sao Paulo. Cidade Tirandentes & Mutiraoes

2008-12-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

Cidade Tirandentes (source: wikipedia)
I had been really wanting see what was going on in the periphery. I could look at in Google Earth, but figuring out how to get out there and where to go was certainly not easy. I linked up with a great group, Uniao Nacional por Moradia Popular (UNMP) (www.unmp.org.br) and the leader of it spent a little speaking with me. She invited me to a signing ceremony of a new housing project to move people out of some favelas. It had taken them 6 years to get to a point of signing an agreement. The big party spilled out into the neighborhood street. She linked me up with a young architect doing work with mutiraos. These were housing projects run and managed (even constructed) by the future residents. I was interested in this model, because in Brazil, under Lula’s leadership and because of the active participation of so many people in the production of their city, progressive policy has given into new partnerships to effectively transfer some power and decision making to communities and social movements. And the mutirao is one such example. The state basically gives money to local groups and communities to develop the housing on their own.

Paulo Freire Mutirao

On a cool, gray, Saturday morning, we took a long subway ride, and then a long bus ride. We passed through Cidade Tiradentes, one of the largest public housing projects in the Latin America (almost 40,000 people live there). It is quite striking. Riding past them, I am reminded of jails in the US. Of course, it has to do with the fences, the monotony, but also the tall water towers that dot the landscape. At certain ridges, you can look along in the distance and all you see is such buildings. One after another, after another. But, it is an election year, so they are freshly painted.

In this case, the state asks developers to build them. Efficiency is the key and they work hard to maximize their profit. If they can more done for less, they then they will have more profit. The result is obvious, although I wouldn’t say the quality isn’t that bad. My friend told me that the process of the mutiraos can get 14 sq.m. more (56 sq. m. vs. 42 sq. m.) with about $5000 less, with the active participation of residents to be involved in the design and construction on their future homes. And more space is critical to people. Unfortunately, with the state housing, people have been brought from many places and communities around the city and this stuffing together without much consideration has generation extensive violence here as well. My guide felt strongly that moving all such people to periphery was intentional. It got people out of the central locations where it would free up for wealthier people, and it supported large construction companies, who have many close ties to the government.

State Housing

The mutirao was an interesting project. I can’t say it was the most engaging, beautiful or innovation architectural approach. They were trying to use steel instead of brick and concrete for the structure to allow for a quicker construction time, but in the end it had sacrificed aesthetic. But to most people who will soon have a new home and community, that is something of minimal importance. But it is to us architects. The cool thing was the first thing they built in the whole project was the public pavilion, where the community could gather. They used it as a stepping off point and office for the construction of the project. For the duration of the project, the residents have been coming every other Saturday to assist in the construction. Before that, they worked closely with the architects during the design process.

The whole process is fascinating and the idea of it is really engaging. It is truly a process supported by architecture to challenge the traditional modes of production that have often created the problems that many people are faced with. And while they have a great deal of decision making power, they still don’t have money and are dependent on it coming from the state.

Unfortunately, political squabbles, budget issues, etc. leave such groups very vulnerable to delays. Mad delays. This project had been going on for 5 years, and it still wasn’t finished. But, the people I met were just as spirited, optimistic and hopeful to see the day where it would be theirs. In the face of all the challenges and setback, it is extraordinary to see the grace and strength by which such average people fight just to live a basic life they all believe in .

The whole neighborhood offered interesting context. In addition to the mutiraos and state building housing, there was also a state financed project, almost like a sites and service project. My guide described it as an “embryonic” house. They state provided a minimal part of the house and the land (two or so rooms) and the people were left to finish it on its own. I actually found the urban condition quite wonderful with the variety that people had finished off their houses. My guide was critical of it, saying the original buildings were too small and minimal.

Finally, there were favelas all around, completely self built and designed. I wandered through them, watching all the engaging activity and marveling at the textures, but also the growth and aspirations they represented.

Yet, favelas are often precarious and face the threat of destruction. I wandered upon freshly demolished houses. While I was taking pictures, a man named Salvador came up and wanted to know who I was and why I was taking pictures. With charades and a bit of Spanish, he opened up and told me he used to live there, pointing to a pile of rubble nearby. He said,” My heart feels heavy coming through here. It is like a cemetery.” He works for the City of Sao Paulo. But, the police recently demolished about twenty houses in this area. I asked my friend about it, and she said that since they had been there longer than 5 years (they had been there 8 years), they were legally entitled to the land. And so it goes……

Sao Paulo. Occupied.

2008-12-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

The marked and empty buildings are striking. There are so many of them, but they have still continued to have an active live and connection people even though their formal uses have disappeared. Some buildings just aren’t finished. And while some are just ‘tagged’ others have been taken over by people seeking housing and shelter in good locations. If there are so many empty spaces (40,000 abandoned buildings) and so many people that need housing (15,000 homeless people), why not? And Sao Paulo is a city of extremes. For a couple of years, Sao Paulo had the largest squat in Latin America. I think it would be hard to find a larger one in the world. Stretched over 22 floors (without working elevators) close to 3,000 people occupied this building for almost two years. The Prestes Maia building was occupied by the Movimento Sem Teto (MSTC) ‘roofless’, extending out of Brazil’s strong Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST) ‘landless’ to bring attention to crazy and difficult housing dynamics in the city.

I linked up with an amazing photographer, Tatiana Cardeal, who had been documenting and exploring the building and the people. Tatiana describes the current situation on her blog:

“After almost 5 years of occupation, constants suspensions of evictions, national and international mobilizations, in May 2007, a meeting joined leaders from federal, state and municipal sphere, giving a new direction for the Prestes Maia families. After negotiations, a progressive and pacific withdrawal happened and the occupation was closed.

Many had moved to other buildings, small apartments at city's downtown with a provisory support of the federal government, and are still waiting the promise of the negotiation: reform and rent for fair values social habitations for them. Other group of families accepted the offer to move out of downtown, to live in the periphery of the city. Some other families just moved to other occupations from the Homeless Movement in the city, and continue fighting.”

We went to the building, but it was all sealed up. It was extraordinary to think people were living on every floor of it, without elevators. It is quite a sight and quite a structure.

But, right down the street, many of the same residents and the group have occupied another building, this time, the Santo Dumos Hotel. You wouldn’t be able to tell anything was going on. There was an entrance of the main street, but it was more a garage entrance. We knocked. The door creaked open. My guide was able to start name dropping and talking about her involvement in the Prestes Maia occupation. She knew the leader, a hard core woman, not afraid of anything. We were let in. A group of three of four burly brazilian women were guarding the gate. They had some canes and clubs for whatever arose.

We wandered into the courtyard, and looked up at all the laundry, and the lives of people extending into the outside of the old crumbling building. Art decorated the walls of the courtyard. We wandered into the first floor. About twenty families had constructed little rooms with make shifts walls, door, etc. I think it used to be the hotel lobby. Now, it was the ‘favelinha’ (little favela).

We found a family on they second floor that my friend knew from the Prestes Maia occupation. They were great, generous, fragile, and proud. They were getting some money from the government after the Prestes Maia occupation, but found the quality and location better than they could get anywhere else, even with all the uncertainty. They had a pretty sweet suite, two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom to themselves.

On the top floor, however, the conditions were not so good. We found a room that had been subdivided into two spaces. I think there about 8 people living there (6 children). We spent time talking with a woman who had made her home there. She had covered the windows with black plastic to keep out the cold, rain, and pigeons. The roof leaked, and her room was decorated with plastic tarps to catch the water as it came in.

Article about Prestes Maia: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/23/brazil.uknews1
Article about Santos Dumont Hotel: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37911
Tatiana Cardeal's amazing photography:
http://tatianacardeal.blogspot.com/2008/07/tatiana-cardeal-prestes-maia-opening-in.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tatianacardeal/sets/72057594064182578/

Sao Paulo. Central.

2008-12-08T13:45:00.001-08:00

My hotel was in a small building near Praca da Republica, right in the heart of the city. I think I feel lost here because I caught a glimpse of the city flying in. Breathless. All I can say. To me, it is incomprehensible. I couldn’t see the end of it. On and on and on. My room was facing an internal courtyard, where I couldn’t hear the sounds of the city except for the buzzing helicopters and the occasional sirens. To reach the room, I went up one flight of stairs, then down a hallway, turn, and up another flight of stairs, and then turned and up another flight. My room was at the top, but I have no idea where in the building it was. I couldn’t even tell where the sun was. But, it was quiet, with wireless internet.

The good parts of this place are a laugh and smile as I struggled with the language. It was weird, hardly anyone spoke English, not even at my hotel. They taught me numbers, and I taught them numbers. I don’t know whether I am actually speaking English, or Spanish, or whatever. It just comes out a mix of everything at times. The first day I struggled to not only get a sim card, but actually figure out how to activate it. Trust me, this stuff can get complicated. The one armed man at the street kiosk helped my figure it out, playing charades, me speaking Spanish, him answering two other phones at the same time. It was a fitting intro to the city. Good nice, helpful people, but busy and focused on the task at hand: getting by and getting ahead.

And then, I went up into one of the tallest buildings in the center of the old downtown (modeled after the Empire State Building), and I had the same feeling of complete and utter disbelief at the built environment. On top of the Banespa building, it very much felt like a vertical city. The extent of the size is a whole other matter, and the fact that regular people have built the rest of it in a form of autoconstruction, and in an explosive horizontal growth realm is something quite extraordinary. It is a horizontal city.

For me getting out to the periphery has been difficult. It is just the opposite for most people. They are stuck in the periphery (or can’t afford anywhere else) and try to make it to the center where the opportunities are.

The rich who have to move around the city have cars or helicopters. In fact, Sao Paulo has the most number of helipads of any city in the world. It is a weird spatial condition, so many of the buildings have these light frame protrusions on top of them. However, the majority of the people have to use public transportation. Many days, even I dream of the helicopter to bypass this incredible urbanity. Even with such an efficient public transit system, it can take a very long time, packed close to people. These are the ones that have to fight the commute everyday to better their life, to buy some ceramic tile to improve their home, to save money for their education, and to ensure they will be able to stay where they are possibly move out. It can be an exhausting experience.

I am in the center. It is raw and real. The street kids walking around and sleeping with blankets. The gay males making out everywhere. There are empty buildings everywhere and they are marked. Like crazy. It is surreal scene. Speculation is rampant. Prices are high, but opportunities are everywhere. Mobile street vendors hit the street selling everything from pirated Hollywood movies to local brazilian porno. Their stands can be picked up and moved in two seconds if they see the

police coming.

The real estate pressures don’t allow the housing to be occupied downtown. There are physical challenges that make the market not want to work (pedestrian streets, little access, etc). but, will people eventually shift to the pedestrian lifestyle that so works in many other places? So much of depends on effective access and movement. And that is where social movements are critical. The rich drive cars and helicopters, but don’t use public transportation. Fuel is cheaper, and more environmentally sensitive. The country is self sustainable energy wise, but comes as great cost of environment (destruction of rain forest to grow sugar cane for ethanol), people (exploitation of a cheap labor force), and social justice.

Chile. Valpo

2008-12-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

Buildings change

The topography poses interesting challenges

Materials palette is quite rich

Buildings added piece by piece

Angles

Quebrada Marquez

Valparaiso is one of those spectacular places that just kind of catches you. You feel the history of the place with the texture and materials of the buildings, as the newly brightly painted buildings sit next to the old rusting homes, generating a new and changing palette of material and color. Everything just feels old here, but still very much alive. New interventions sometimes work and sometimes don’t, but everything feels like it has been adapted and changed over time. The challenges of building a city on steep slopes is evident and creates some amazing visual dynamics as the chaos of the power lines juxtaposes nicely next to the chaos of the hillsides. One project, Quebrada Marquez is a large housing project set on a hillside. The approach was to directly challenge the hillside by inserting a massive horizontal shift in the street. The result is quite extraordinary. And while the the deep and overpowering gesture is a repetitive and uniform approach, the necessary shifts in the street and the painting of the outer walls and balcony give it a richness and form that it is quite engaging. It carries the language of the individuality of the hillsides and applies it to a larger and less intimate approach. How to negotiate the horizontaility with the topography poses interesting challenges, which the city has always found interesting ways to negotiate (ascensores).

Santiago. Unidad Vecinal Portales

2008-11-21T12:17:00.001-08:00

The Unidad Vecinal Portales is a massive housing complex just north of the main bus terminal. I don’t know the exact number of units, but it must approach 1000. It is quite a striking modernist project designed in 1950 by B.V.C.H. (Bresciani, Valdés, Castillo y Huidobro) and was constructed between 1952 and 1956. It has quite a striking variety of buildings, all originally connected through broad walkways and interior streets. In the larger blocks, housing is a variety of one and two story units. In between the blocks are units, designed like rowhouses. Each of these have a front and backyard. These were originally placed under a lot of the walkways, but over the years, these walkways have been closed off and used to create pitched roofs over the homes. It is a very strange experience to be walking along and see the walkway in front of you end in someone’s roof. One of the residents told me that it was because young kids would hang out all night being rowdy and the only way people found to stop it was be building roofs there. I suspect there were problems with leaks as well. The result is, of course, that you have move between the buildings on the ground.

The facades are a bit of a hodge podge, but offer a striking variety and diversity, as balconies and windows having sliding screens as well. The interior circulation zones were quite striking as well with large wide, interior streets and large voids cut out where the vertical circulation is located.

I dug this project, and the people I spoke with there seemed to really like living there. There is enough variety within the entire complex that families have been able to remain within the same community while still be able to moving to different units and apartments sizes. But there is something about these modernist projects that have a distinct contribution from the inhabitants….

Chile. Salar de Carmen

2008-11-19T20:13:00.001-08:00

While in Antofogasta, I visited a project called Salar de Carmen. It was designed by Mario Perez de Arce and Jaime Besa in 1959 and encompassed 850 homes. It was very much in the modernist tradition and while originally was a very striking project, has since been transformed into an unrecognizable project, almost blending in with the vernacular of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The original design in 1961

1961 and 2008

Additions and Transformations

Each of these corners were originally the same design

A typical street elevation showing the variety, transformation and progress of the fabric

Context today

Chile. Lo Espejo

2008-10-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Duplexes with expansion zones

Lo Espejo was the second completed ELEMENTAL project. The community was living in a campamento (squatted and shabby housing of minimal materials) near the location of the new project in Santiago. Once again, ELEMENTAL proposed building half the house, and allowing a

Typical housing in the neighborhood

good bit of freedom for customization and such. After working closely with the community, ELEMENTAL proposed two schemes and the community agreed and selected one. Because Santiago has a much rainier climate, the roof over the entire project had to be built first. This project differed with Quinta Monroy in the fact that the government essentially funded the additions, and the homes were able to be completely built out at the beginning.

Johana, in front of her ´perfect´houseI spoke with Johana, one of the community leaders. After taking the bus all over town and finally finding the project, I was early and decided to draw a bit and wander around the neighborhood. Not always the best idea, but no problems here. As I returned to the project, there was a woman out on the street, standing there with her hands on her hips, (it almost looked like she was tapping her foot) looking at me. “Lucas?” she asked with the biggest smile ever. It was pretty obvious I was the guy from the US. But, she instantly welcomed me into her home and spoke with such passion and fervor about the project, and housing. She was completely enthralled with her place. She said she wouldn’t change a thing. Most of the customization and changes within this project was cosmetic. You could finish your inside however you wanted. Most people had added tiles and paint and their own interior flavor. Additionally, on the outside, one could change out the window and such.

Johana´s bottom floor
I also visited Monica Vargas’s bottom unit. Three rooms were added in the back before they moved in. She was able to remove one of the walls in the living room to open it up to a larger space.

Monica´s before and after

Monica´s Changes
Again, this project was very much initiated by the community itself and the strong community leaders (women.). But, ELEMENTAL basically was able to get involved right in the beginning, and provide the legimitacy and ability to negotiate the many different realms to pull yet another project off. And it has paid off. Johanna is ecstatic. She was wonderful. She has pictures on her wall sitting next to Michelle Blanchelette during the inauguration. While I was there, a Chilean newspaper was calling to interview her about the project.
Check out more essential details here.

The window zone on the facade is malleable

Chile. Quinta Monroy

2008-10-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Varying facades 5 years later

Before and after facades on Galvanrino St.

Elevation on Pedro Prado.

This project served as one of the inspirations for my initial proposal on incremental housing. By looking at how architects could play a significant role in helping people improve their housing without taking away their agency, the architectural group ELEMENTAL, in conjunction with the Chilean government, has contributed significantly to the discourse of social housing. The first project in Iquique, on a site called Quinta Monroy explored the question of how to provide a basic quality house, for only $7,500. Their answer was to provide half of the house. And if only half, which half would it be? Working closely with a community of squatters that had lived precariously on an urban site, the architects developed a set of rules, by which people could still have a lot of capacity to live their lives and have their homes express that. The rules ensured that each unit would have access to public space, adequate light and ventilation, and be structurally sound to withstand the many earthquakes that affect the area. But, they went much further than that. Each family could then add on and expand their house whenever possible, and in many different ways, customizing and individualizing their spaces. Additionally, the families were able to remain on the same site, where they had access to neighbors, shopping, main transportation thoroughfares, and the beach.
This project would not have happened without the sheer determination of the inhabitants and the effectiveness of their leaders (women). Only once these folks agitated for something to happen, many things came together (One of the community leaders I met with said that she personally blocked the path to President Lagos’ helicopter when he visited Iquique to get his attention about their living situation.) But, it was the architects who were able to help bring formality, credibility, and ingenuity to the process to ensure its success. And since its completion, this project has generated much press. This project, in addition to others in pipeline (see more upcoming posts) helped ELEMENTAL receive the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Biennale this year. Well deserved, if you ask me. It is nice to find architects who are relevant.
The overall arrangement took the 100 families that were living on the land, and redistributed them into 4 smaller communities, each arranged around a common public space. The units were basically designed as duplexes with units on the lower floors taking up three bays, while the upper units had two stories and took up two bays. The initial space of each unit was about 30 m^2, and could be expanded up to 72 m^2. The Chilean government had established a program called “Housing without Debt.”. Each family owned their unit without debt. This was able to happen through keeping the initial costs extraordinarily cheap, and strong commitment from the government. Wow, housing without debt. Just think if that was a value in the United States. Especially now. Would it be possible to pull that off?

Before and After
Ana Lagos
Ana has been one of the movers and shakers in this community. Through her leadership position, she was able to pick a lot on the main thoroughfare of Pedro Prado, with the intention of someday adding a store to generate some extra income. She was also intentional about picking a unit in which her mother could live below. The first thing that Ana did was to tile the bathroom. This not only served a functional appearance (most of the bathrooms were leaking to below), but gave it a much greater sense of permanence and quality (those which had not been finished felt pretty grimy).

Ana Lagos
Since the upper units don’t come with a bedroom, just an open two story space (and the bathroom), Ana added a floor for a bedroom upstairs in 2005. After that, they removed the stairs from the original section and added the floors in the slack space. The leftover space of the original stairs provided more closet space, and the resulting three bedrooms allowed a room for each person.
In 2007, with the assistance of her mother, Ana added a room onto the back of her house on her main floor, right above her mother’s patio area. The floor of this addition sat on the roof of her mother’s new addition. Ana could pull this off because she knew her mom would agree to it. Most restrictions stipulate that those living above can’t add onto the second story of the house, but can add a balcony on the third story. This is mainly to reduce conflicts among neighbors. However, some neighbors have agreed in writing and worked together to add multiple story additions on the back of their homes.
Right now, Ana leases the store out, which supplements her work as a domestic servant in Iquique. She hopes to eventually run the store herself one day, but can’t afford to right now.
Finally, in September of 2008, she plastered the interior walls of her home and will be painting them next week.

Ana´s Mother
Ana’s mother (who lives below her) has customized her space in really attractive ways. She lives there with her husband and brother. She enclosed two rooms as bedrooms. Her brother ended up moving in with her in a room added onto the back. She brought her kitchen with her from Santiago. She added a wall at the front to serve as a sort of foyer because she could see the bathroom from the front door. On the outside, she painted her three bays all the same color, clearly denoting her space and adding a visual layering most typically done by architects.

Before and AfterPraxedes Campos

Praxedes is one of those people you instantly feel comfortable around. The energy with which she greeted me on the phone, the warmth of the greeting first in person, and then openness with which she opened her home to me was just wonderful. But, at the same time, she is not the kind of person you want to be disagreeing with because I could quickly tell she was a deep and persistent fighter. Much of her story is described in the history of the project, and she is certainly one of the main reasons this project exists.

Praxedes lived with 5 other family members in an 8x3 meter shack on Avenida Gavalrino. In that tiny space, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom, but the kitchen was a just a covered space outside, so she had a lot of incentive to improve her space. Now, there are 7 of them, as her daughter recently had a baby. After the project was completed, she chose a bottom floor unit because she thought that it had more space to make additions. In 2005, soon after moving in, she and her husband enclosed the first bedroom for themselves. Everyone else at that point was sleeping in the living room. In 2007, once her daughter gave birth to a baby boy, she decided it was time to close in the second bedroom. Finally, earlier this year, they added a room on the back patio for her son. It is kind of a pimp pad, where he sleeps, but also serves as a gathering point and local hip hop recording studio. Certainly, having this makes the strain much less on the rest of the family. Soon, there are plans to add one more room off the back.

Growth of Praxedes´ homeMaria Mantorfano
Maria was in the process of adding onto her space the weekend I was there. She had a friend who was doing most of the construction. All 4 children are currently sleeping in one bedroom, so when finished there will be two more bedrooms.

Growth of Maria´s home
In talking to people here, they are incredibly proud of the project and how it has turned out. I do believe so much of it comes from the fight and initiative that they had to put forth to get to this point. The beauty about this project is that its intention was that people would eventually have a middle class house. So many projects for the poor people are very clearly for poor people, in appearance, size, and amenities. But this one gave people room to negotiate and aspire, and eventually to have the house they had always dreamed of. And I am not being romantic here. People were dang proud and happy with their place.

You know, after seeing so many projects in real life that are different than what is published, this one was such a breath of fresh air, because it was expected people would take over and commandeer the space. And there were rules, but they were loose enough to really allow people to have some agency, and control over their homes. I felt very comfortable, and the warmth with which people shared their homes, families, and food with me was pretty dang great. And mad love to the strength of the women here.

Expansion zones (in red)
But, a few questions are:
What happens when someone moves out? When all there people move after 5 years? Will anyone want a smaller space? Will the construction be poor enough to allow easy renovations, reductions, and shifts? Could the house potentially shift? Could the intervention be done another way to allow for disassembly?

Check out much more good stuff here. Rock on ELEMENTAL…

Bolivia. La Paz and El Alto

2008-10-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

The hills of La Paz
The place is defined by topography as much as any place I have seen. And the geography or altitude dictates the strict and deep divisions in class. The wealthy live in Zona Sur, 1000-1500 feet below the rim of El Alto, where the poorest of this metropolitan area live. In the middle is La Paz, the commercial center of this part of the country. Zona Sur resembles many American or European suburbs with large, gated, and protected single family homes. The climate is much less harsh, and as much of the water drains to this area, and it is much greener and lush with vegetation. The heart of the city is provides most of the commercial opportunities and somewhat modern skyscrapers of banks, hotels, and apartments dot the landscape. But, as you move up the hillsides, the housing becomes informal, and at times, it almost becomes difficult to distinguish between the dull brown hillsides, and the extensive self built brick and adobe houses ringing the rim of the city.

At the top of the rim is El Alto (a separate city), recently considered the fastest growing city in Latin America, with a population approaching one million people, most of whom are aymara indigenous indians. Its growth has been unchecked and blossoming for a number of reasons, partly because of climate changes that have altered traditional agricultural practices, but also shifts in mining industries that have forced many workers to migrate to the city. It is at the edge of the altiplano and therefore is flat. Consequently, unlike the rest of La Paz, there are no physical barriers for the expansion of the city. It has surrounded the international airport and steadily grown with low rise, self built houses and buildings into the countryside.

The steets of El Alto

I spent some time in one of the neighborhoods on the outskirts of El Alto. Walking through the streets of the Senkata barrio is a surreal experience. You can’t really tell if you are in the fastest growing city in the western hemisphere, or even if you are in a city at all. You can almost look down one street and see the never ending altiplano, which holds Lake Titicaca in its grasp. You feel like are deeply connected to the land still, not only because of the occasional adobe walls and buildings, but because the streets and sidewalks are still dirt. There have been curbs put in, but that is it. Essentially, the land has been subdivided, walls put up, buildings added, streets marked, water run, and an occasional cancha de futbol set aside. And there are dogs. Tons of mean ones. I have been walking around the neighborhood doing home visits with the nurse from the Consejo de Salud Rural Andino. Even the nurse has to stop and wait a few minutes, because she is scared of two dogs in front a house she is supposed to visit to weigh a child. Funny thing is that even some of the meanest dogs have green ribbons tied around them, signifying that they have been vaccinated. Good for me, but still have no interest in getting bitten.

Rural to urban (El Alto)

This change happening in El Alto is mostly on its own, yet still driven by the market. It is evident right across from the Health Center where CSRA is working. Here, the owner had built a new three story building on the street. It was weird, it looks completely unfinished. I guess the inside is nice enough. On the ground floor are stores. But, where the new building stops, the old house begins behind, with its courtyard space, adobe walls, and wrap around design. The new building towers above the intimate space shielding the traditionally strong sun. The first floor of the building is being rented as an office space, the top floor has walls around it, but that is it. No more. And it could keep going up, and likely will. But, there is no flexibility. The walls are set. It is not malleable. But, it is incremental as hell. Looking around the block, I was amazed at the amount of movement and change within every lot. Once I really think about it, it is pretty amazing what is happening there. New commercial buildings were popping up, every lot seemed to have some construction going on. But, that is just it. The whole city is under construction and not finished. And it is very homogenous just because it is so new. It has no aesthetic. Or it has an aesthetic of construction and change.

I have decided to return to this area to do some more in-depth research documenting the changes within El Alto and in particular individual houses. Stay tuned for more posts.

In the city of La Paz, 40% of the housing is illegal. Most of this is scattered along peri-urban areas that ring the canyon that holds the city of La Paz. Since 2005, the city has participated in a Word Bank/Interamerican Development Bank project called Barrios de Verdad (True neighborhoods). Focused on infrastructure and public investments, the process is also formalizing/legalizing many of the households as well. Improvements have included potable water, electricity, telephone lines, medical services, jobs, community centers, and bathrooms in every house. They are unable to do house improvements as much of the land that people have invaded is on private property.

Community Center, Alto Pampahasi

I visited one project in Alto Pampahasi, which offered spectacular views of the city. It was pretty impressive the extent to which physical improvements (community center, walkways, etc.) were giving rise to many other social programs. The local leaders were incredibly proud of the work they had accomplished, and numerous improvements in houses and other places were taking place.

Childcare (photo courtesy of Mary Alice Boyd)

We walked into a community meeting of women, and people from the mayor’s office showed up giving out eyeglasses and many other things. They all wear well-marked uniforms and are showing off a good bit. Is this strictly for political purposes? I don’t know. At least in Latin America, because the urban poor are such a substantial portion of the population, they have political power. In this context, the city government is getting things done, and that is pretty important. Graciela (the community leader) said they get together every week and do clean ups and maintenance and stuff like that. The neighborhood seems to be pretty solid socially. They installed bathrooms in 72 homes. The have child care now, which is huge, which maybe as much of a financial boost as something else. It looks very nice. Graciela said that people were grumbling before and didn’t believe anything would happen. Sometimes just getting something done like that is the most important thing.

Women's meeting in the new community center

I still have some questions about the long term effectiveness. What about money after it is finished? Who pays for the maintienance of these new facilities? Is this neighborhood at a level to which you could justify that much money into an aesthetic improvement? Can this program help generate new means of generating income for people, which is ultimately what most people are after?

Local community leaders (photo courtesy of Mary Alice Boyd)

Copenhagen. Bikes

2008-09-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

So, Copenhagen is considered the happiest city in the world. Why? Well, I have my suspicions that it has something to do with bicycles. And they are everywhere here. One of my happiest times of this trip is being able to hop on a bike and ride around the entire city looking at neighborhoods, buildings, and whatever else may draw my attention. Of course, the city is smaller than, say, Cairo, but there is a bike culture here. During rush hour in the morning, it is bikes that are backing up in the lanes, not so much cars. It is crazy, but beautiful. And, bikes have been innovated to do many other things that cars typically do: move children, goods, and a bit of everything in between. I think a lot of this has to do with innovation and commitment from many levels of society, industry, and government. I hope we can learn from Denmark. The connection to the high price of gas is telling...