Residential Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Architecture photographer Iwan Baan once again shared with us an impressive photo set on a social housing project by Chinese architects Urbanus.

The commission was to design a 220 apartment housing complex for people for low income families in Guangzhou. Urbanus decided to give the complex a nice and intimate atmosphere, by reinterpreting the traditional Hakka Houses. This housing typology correspond to 300 year old houses in the south of China, and as you can see on some pictures after the jump, they are basically a large housing project where complete families live as a community (aunts, nieces, nephews, etc.)

You can take a look at the Urbanus’ complete photo set over here, and the Hakka Houses photos over here.

Bostjan Gabrijelcic from Arhitektura d.o.o. sent us this rehabilitation of an old apartment’s terrace in Slovenia.

More images and drawings after the break.

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Our friends from Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter sent us their latest project, a first prize in an invited housing competition in Sweden.

You can see some more images and drawings after the break.

Aerial collage: the new archipelago of incremented kaccha houses rising from a context of well built permanent homes in a typical slum.

The problem with social housing has been how to give the most with less money. We have very good examples in Europe, but the constrains are way different than the ones in developing countries. In these countries, almost all the constructions are done by anyone but architects. Clearly, in these countries architects can do something way better than just designing or constructing, developing strategies together with communities to achieve housing solutions that not only address today´s necessities, but that can also be extended over time as families grow, once again by themselves and without architects.

A good example on this is Elemental, lead by Alejandro Aravena, which has been changing not only design aspects of social housing, but also public policy. Currently, they have built and on going projects in Chile, Mexico and more countries.

But also, there´s the work that Filipe Balestra and Sara Göransson have been doing in India, invited by Sheela Patel and Jockin Arputham from SPARC to develop an Incremental Housing Strategy that could be implemented anywhere.

Housing may come in different ways, different forms, and different places. So to start this week of Round Up, we bring you previously featured “Housing” works on ArchDaily.