This project provided worker housing in Villa Verde, Chile following a severe 2010 earthquake. The architect Alejandra Aravena designed the homes using an incremental construction approach. Residents were provided an initial base build home that could be expanded over time as funds allowed. The base build comprised a kitchen/living area, bathroom and two bedrooms on the ground and first floors. An open space next to each home allowed for future expansion. This approach aimed to provide better quality initial shelters that could grow with residents' means, rather than building incomplete small homes.
3. REASON FOR MAKING THIS HOUSING
HC&P
Severe earthquake that
occurred on February 27,
2010, off the coast of south-
central Chile, causing
widespread damage on land
and initiating a tsunami that
devastated some coastal areas
of the country. Together, the
earthquake and tsunami were
responsible for more than 500
deaths.
6. More than 50,000 provisional homes had been erected, and housing
subsidies had been disbursed to many who had been left without
shelter.
In July2013 the government reported that some 74 percent of the
2,22,000 home-rebuilding projects it had subsidized were complete.
Reconstruction
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8. HC&P
Villa Verde project that provides worker housing for the forestry
company Arauco, it decided to apply the same strategy of incremental
construction with higher construction and finish standards.
9. HC&P
The scale of the development — a total of 9,000 units are estimated
within 30 different towns – allowed the research costs to be absorbed
within the overall development budget. In this first phase 484 houses
have been built, together with three community centers.
10. HC&P
As with Elemental’s other
recent housing projects
the concept of user-led
expansion is at the heart
of the scheme’s design. A
base build is provided
that allows the residents
to purchase a simple
house within a relatively
constrained budget: the
houses sell at between
$25,000-40,000.
11. HC&P
Elemental proposed
combining the funds
available for temporary
emergency shelters and
social housing to provide
better-quality shelters
with a higher initial cost
that could then be
dismantled and reused in
an incremental social-
housing scheme. The
architects designed the
social housing units as
half of a good house
instead of a complete,
but small one: building-in
the possibility for
residents to double the
floor area of the house
to 80 square meters.
12. HC&P
Next to each built section
of the row house is an
open space of the same
size into which residents
can expand their house.
Innovation in the built
environment in this
project did not come from
new materials, new
techniques or new
systems: it came from
having the courage to
follow common sense
ideas, to understand the
needs of the people of
Constitución, and by
viewing the problem in
terms of both the micro-
and macro-environments.
13. HC&P
On the ground floor this base build comprises a small, shared space combining kitchen, dining
and living room, plus a bathroom and outside laundry space. On the first floor there are two
bedrooms and an additional bathroom.
14. HC&P
The buildings are
constructed as timber
frames, supported on
concrete foundations,
roofed in zinc, and clad
internally in 10mm gypsum
board and externally in
6mm fiber cement board.
