In New Mexico, irrigation channels that have been in continuous operation for three centuries replenish and nourish the wetlands of the American Southwest. These channels are known as Acequias – communally managed water systems built on democratic tradition. Members of the community own water rights, who then elect a three-person team to oversee the channels. In Cairo and Barcelona, Tahrir Square and Plaza de Catalunya have acted as important sites for voicing political dissatisfaction. The Tahrir Square protests of 2011, for instance, resulted in the eventual toppling of an almost 30-year-old government.
Royal Manor Mobile Home Park. Image Courtesy of MH Village
The future of manufactured homes may reinvent the form of something that already widely exists- trailer parks. All across the United States, these small homes are being reimagined by architects by utilizing more sustainable materials, inventive construction techniques, and value engineering to create affordable homes and reinvent the once negative connotation that surrounded this housing typology.
Founded in late 2017, named one of the "Most Innovative Companies in the World" in 2020, and selected as ArchDaily's Best New Practices of 2021, ICON is a construction company that pushed the boundaries of technology, developing tools to advance humanity including robotics, software, and building materials. Relatively young, the Texas-based start-up has been delivering 3D-printed homes across the US and Mexico, trying to address global housing challenges while also developing construction systems to support future exploration of the Moon, with partners BIG and NASA.
Featured on Times’ Next 100, as one of the 100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future, Jason Ballard, CEO and Co-Founder of ICON spoke to ArchDaily about the inception of the company, worldwide housing challenges, his ever-evolving 3D printing technology, and process, his partnership with BIG, and the future of the construction field on earth and in space.
California, as with most American states, has a housing crisis. Unlike the rest of the country, it is actually working to ameliorate the situation, with private and public initiatives that critics can’t help but label inadequate. The Bay Area made accessory dwelling units legal by changing zoning laws, but that has hardly made a dent. Some cities are now pushing for additional upzoning to give developers more room to bring new buildings to market at lower rents. There are all sorts of studies, university sponsored or underwritten by the industry, that recommend more-or-less radical fixes for a seemingly unfixable problem. Environmentalists are naturally cast as villains because they don’t condone greenfield developments. And Californians are tough on their elected officials, as the current governor learned last year.
https://www.archdaily.com/975506/new-construction-is-not-always-the-answerMark Alan Hewitt
ADUs or accessory dwelling unit, a word mostly used by architects, is "a smaller, independent residential unit located on the same lot as a stand-alone single-family home" according to the American Planning Association. They can be converted spaces of existing houses, additions, or new stand-alone structures. In this piece, author Walter explores the recent policies in California that seek to reduce the shortage of housing.
All over the globe, countries are facing a housing crisis. United Nations statistics put the number of people who live in sub-standard housing at 1.6 billion, and 100 million of the world’s population are without a home. As conflicts and climate change forces refugees to move to new countries, and as housing prices around the world continue to rise, cities are having to grapple more and more with how to provide safe and affordable housing for their residents.
The housing shortage has long been the catalyst for architectural speculation over adaptive resue scenarios or the valorisation of underused places in cities. At the same time, the health crisis and its work from home imperatives have brought into sharp focus the adaptive reuse potential of offices spaces into housing. The probability that some office buildings remain vacant post-pandemic opens up the possibility of bringing back housing to city centres, enabling the implementation of a 15-minute city vision. The following discusses the challenges and opportunities of transforming office spaces into housing, highlighting this limited phenomenon's long-term feasibility and impact.
Planning cities and the way that we comfortably live in them is often a pull between many things. From creating affordable housing for all, enhancing community facilities and amenities, and designing walkable neighborhoods, all aspects of urban design have trade-offs, or do they? While there are many reasons why cities are becoming increasingly more expensive, dense, and less pedestrian-friendly, one of the key drivers behind the increase in unaffordability has to do with the way that outdated zoning codes drive the lack of available housing that they regulate.
“We need a new spatial contract." This is the call of Hashim Sarkis, curator of the Venice Biennale 2021, as an invitation for architects to imagine new spaces in which we can live together. Between a move towards urban flight and global housing crises, the growth of more low-rise, dense developments may provide an answer in the countryside. Turning away from single family homes in rural areas and suburbs, modern housing projects are exploring new models of shared living in nature.
San Francisco is a city defined by its relationship to housing. Since the 90s it has faced an affordable housing shortage, and now, has some of the highest rents of any major US city. As planners and policy makers work to move beyond the city's past and find new paths forward, architects and designers are testing out diverse housing models. From dense residential towers to multi-unit developments, modern housing aims to strike a balance between economy and urbanity.
India is rethinking the future of housing through new typologies. Defined by historical and cultural influences, the country's contemporary architecture centers on discussions of how best to modernize. Built over millennia, India's housing projects are made to address diverse scales, programs and functions. Exploring a revitalized urban landscape, these modern housing projects have begun to set a new tone for the future.
It would be an understatement to say that architecture is a profession that closely mirrors economic conditions. In this practice, we’ve all heard the stories or felt the experiences of recessions that were quickly followed by projects put on hold, a decreased pipeline of new business, and the unfortunate impact of layoffs and furloughs. The cyclical nature of the design field, paired with the pressure to meet the spatial needs for a growing global population in a time where the value of land has continued to sky-rocket means that architecture is naturally subjected to economic impacts in a significant way. But some economic theories predict that instead of the economy dictating the ebbs and flows of the design profession, architecture might be one of the influences causing economic downturns.
Newly built houses, with their sizable carbon footprints, don’t just contribute to climate change. For many Americans, they’re also too expensive—a bitter irony in cities rife with vacant buildings and record evictions.
Given the urgency of both issues, projects that retrofit livable housing into existing low-carbon shells (the initial embodied carbon was spent long ago) might be worth a closer look. We searched for them and came across a handful that promise a cure for housing insecurity and excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
The City of Los Angeles has launched a $100,000 housing design challenge for low-rise developments. The competition asks architects and landscape architects to imagine "appealing and sustainable" models of low-rise, multi-unit housing. Organized by the Mayor’s Office and Chief Design Officer Christopher Hawthorne, the initiative aims to create new paths to home-ownership and housing affordability in Los Angeles.
While damage control and preparation is an ever increasing factor in how we plan our cities, certain extraordinary circumstances, like natural disasters, remain outside of our ability to plan and demand quick architectural responses that offer instant aid to the people affected, often being the difference between life and death. Natural, unpredictable events like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, armed conflicts, territory disputes, or global crises--such as climate change or pandemics--require immediate action in order to mitigate ensuing damage and chaos. Emergency architecture is the immediate answer to the humanitarian side of a conflict, covering everything from housing to medical facilities for the affected.
It is an inevitable truth that the world population is growing exponentially. Higher numbers can only lead to a higher demand for resources, food, and housing. By the year 2100, the 7.6 billion people currently living on earth will reach, according to the UN, a whopping 11.2 billion.
This increase can only mean that the need to accommodate these people will become an urgent priority, innovating and shifting from the household system that is present nowadays. Soon enough this will be a global pressing issue.
"The rooms are awash with sparkling candelabra, sumptuous carpets, marble columns, sculptures, and expensive artworks,” says Benedikt Hartl, co-founder of Opposite Office of Buckingham Palace. The 775-room, 79-bathroom, 828,821 square foot residence has been home to Britain’s royalty since the 1830s. And, if Opposite Office’s recent Affordable Palace proposal were to go through, could also be home to you.