Comments on: Incremental Housing Strategy by Filipe Balestra and Sara Göransson

By: Jordi

Jordi — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:12:18 +0000

Matt: first of all, let’s not idealize slums. Slum dwellers indeed have a lot of knowledge, but there’s a lot of suffering too, so it is important that something is done about them. Dealing with slums requires a whole lot of expertise, and political will as well. Slums in most cases have problems of all sorts: legal, political, organizational, gender, city-scale development plans, sructurally insecure housing, inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure services, inadequate public transport, unaffordable and unaccessible healthcare and education, environmental hazards, etc. It is reare to find slums dwellers that can sort out theses issues without professional support (including architects). The question is: how this support is planned and carried out; is it respectful, integral, ethical, empowering, etc?

By: GS

GS — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:09:40 +0000

i agree with matt “solving problems in the slums have nothing to deal with architecture”

By: J P Bak

J P Bak — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:00:57 +0000

I have with interest studied the often very emotional discussions about the Mumbai project from May 5th 2009 to January 23rd 2010. I am involved in an important housing project in a different part of the world and I wonder, why this extremely important debate suddenly lost everyone’s interest? As things are developing in this world and with the latest financial and environmental disasters one should think that this dialogue could be one of the tools that could keep the momentum in developing the most basic need, shelter for poor and weak against escalating poverty. I would assume that Filipe and Sara’s initiative would be the best platform for such efforts. There is a lot of open questions, what about the stairs in an environment with a lot of handicapped, is just one of them. On a final note I would like to see the modular system in this project expanded with flexible and multipurpose unit

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:07:41 +0000

a comment on the project and one on the comments –
the project – very simple and workable. I have one major criticism: the major driver for informal settlements / slums is people’s proximity to their work. Many people in slums work right where they live. Why not improve this design by ‘zoning’ or ‘designing’ work spaces on the ground floors that have meaningful relationships with the street and are flexible enough to facilitate multiple types of industry / commerce? This strengthens the economic viability of the project.
the comments – too many narrow definitions of architecture. There are people in this thread who are basically saying that the slum is not the proper domain for ‘architecture.’ What crap. Kudos to this team who are broadening the architects work to include proactive, missional work in domains that have for too long been left out in the cold.

By: Tay

Tay — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:17:47 +0000

It is distasteful to see people rejecting the critique made here due to a higher moral status and experience they claim to have. Although the good will of this project is undoubted, it is naive to think that such project will have a long-lasting impact and at a relevant scale.

Too many people are missing out the complexity and the ambiguity involved in this kind of project. I have little doubt that the architects involved in this project were inexperienced in the development/aid field (they went there without knowing about the 4500 euro grant; how were they gonna fund the project? with the help of SPARC i presume?). When i saw the amount of praises these development amateurs get, I cant help but think that it’s a bit ‘unfair’ (petty me?). I can sense the silent urge of other architects wanting to put their flags in some developing countries; the more impoverished, the better, of course. Somehow it’s kinda sexy to help the poor nowadays.

By: Tay

Tay — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:47:47 +0000

Some quotes that kind of summarise my view:

“But while these well-known professionals are happy to become involve in one or two prominent projects, they cannot be persuaded to work in 10 or 20 cities. It’s understandable that no architect wants to spread themselves across so many projects but, rather, concentrate on a manageable number of projects! But this means that in some other communities, there is no architect to assist from the beginning, and the planning is really very rough. Or they borrow an architect from the municipality – but they are not very creative.”

“Getting [this kind of strategy] to a national scale means it’s something like a war – there are bombs exploding, people are lying injured all over the place, there’s no time for much fancy footwork. We need architects who can be like doctors on that battlefield, who can do their doctoring in these rough conditions, without all the perfect, sterile conditions and controlled atmosphere of the hospital operating room, with all the support staff. No doctor wants to work in those conditions, but they have to. And it is these kinds of doctors that are needed,” Somsook Bonyabancha

By: Tereza Freire

Tereza Freire — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:26:16 +0000

Iniciativa excelente! A humanização da arquitetura é uma das melhores contribuições para melhoria da qualidade de vida e desenvolvimento social. Através de um plano piloto visando a implantação de infraestrutura básica em favelas ou zonas de habitação social de baixa renda, garante-se também prevenção de doenças, mortalidade infantil e outras mazelas advindas da pobreza e da falta de condições de saneamento básico. Eleva-se a autoestima dos habitantes da localidade, levando-os à busca de uma melhor forma de viver. PARABÉNS aos arquitetos e ao seu trabalho.

By: matt

matt — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:13:56 +0000

hey you guy that write down your social status as part of your name and spell Architecture with a Capital A, it seems that you know your lesson very well, is it a real copy-paste of your courses or did your courses copy-pasted themselves in your mind?

i think i’d like to meet you and talk with you about Architecture
the only reason to justify the Capital A is this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bWUfpDDVi4

By: Bartek Klimczak. Registered Architect WA, Australia

Bartek Klimczak. Registered Architect WA, Australia — Sun, 17 May 2009 10:06:13 +0000

Whilst i agree with some of the comments here that Architects have been in the past egoists, I also find it ridiculous that the Architect bashers here are stating that Architecture today is irrelevant to affordable housing, and that the problems are legal, political and or infrastructure based only. Architects study for 5 years and then train for another 5, we are as close to experts as you will get in this field, it is an Architects job to be innovative, accountable, contextual and also culturally senstive in any outcome be it high or low budget and i think youll find most Architects are rearing for an opportunity to work pro bono in low tech solutions fed up with only getting high end commissions. I have researched countless exampled of NGOS who build stuff without thinking, without engaging Architects where the built outcome is rejected by the local community, engineers, builders and lawyers just dont get it, its not their job to. I think most Architects would be interested in the background occupations of these backyard critics and their qualifications for making the above negative comments. I think this project will be a catalyst in this emerging unprecedented field of drastic urbanisation redevelopment where 1 billion people are in need of help. Yes slum dwellers arent stupid, yes the problems are often about legal rights but slum dwellers also arent experts in construction either, and sometimes proffesional expertise shouldnt be shrugged off either beit local or from abroad. I was personally inspired doing a slum redevelopment university unit studying under Doshi in Amhedabad and having been dieing to find a way to go back and help, and most of the things i learnt where based on eveolving ideas with input from all cultures, Yes local Archtiects probably have more local knowledge but synthesis of eastern and western knowledge is where we may actually achieve a creative innovative outcome. I think sitting back on a golden throne and poking holes in projects that are genuinly trying to make a difference and only referencing the imperial mistakes of the past is naive as it is distasteful

By: Sagar

Sagar — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:36:02 +0000

HI Guys,
This is very interesting discussion between role of architectural typology and social, political, economical issue. I think both sides are fare enough but still not able to solve the problem of informality. I agree with MATT this is not first time such projects is done but at the same time Matt there are lot of the policies made for slums and still they are not able to answer the question of such informality.
My point is both architecture and the Matts idea of implementation of policies has to worked out simultaneously. Matt the architectural typology plays very important role in socio economical process. that we can see it in most of European cities. The second issue is we need such projects which will help to improve living conditions for slums, but at the same time it should not be gentrification. One of the point mentioned in above discussion about ownership will create the problem of gentrification.

Few days ago i was reading about Berlin redevelopment in 1900. I think it is very interesting to refer that example to understand the role of architect, planner, socialist working together for issue of informality.

About the above project i think it is giving some better housing conditions than existing, but this not enough, Providing cheap boxes is not the solution for slums. This is where i agree with Matts point of increasing there economical conditions. How to improve the job conditions, how to improve there local businesses. These issues are totally missing in the proposal.

Most of the slums in India, specially in Mumbai has lot of local businesses, the new building typology should consider to improve those businesses, like we can see this in Some social Housing in London, I think the above proposal is just a box which will fix the family in fix area, Thts what i understood by looking images of building typology. This is project is not so much different than what we see in most of the slum clearance project.

Finally i want to say, we need to rethink our tools for issue of informality, we need to understand that just giving house for poor people is not going to help to reduce the poverty but also need to create social economical structure which will create the conditions for help them self…