Scarcity

This studio is about doing Social Housing in Chile. Why? Because the scarcity of time (urgency to solve the need for shelter) and money (lack of resources to satisfy that need) forces any project to be intelligent and design to be precise. Elementary housing, as we from now on will call it, is not just an humanitarian duty, a scar in our cities and our consciences, but also a privileged opportunity to intensify architectural operations to its limits.Three real housing committees of around 100 families each, with concrete requirements and in specific sites of radically different climatic conditions throughout the Chilean territory, are going to be the field where to test a new architectural typology for the Housing Ministry that has to solve the following equation:How should it be the initial state of a building capable to conform urban space and deal with urban sprawl by densifying without overcrowding, for which the amount of available funds forces to consider self-construction as the only way to transform a mere housing solution into an inhabitation, and so that individual growth can be performed as easy as possible without deteriorating the neighborhood?Answer: the Zip-building, an architectural type that follows 10 very concrete and restrictive rules where architectural talent is challenged by a necessity of containment.But this is not just a test of a new housing policy; it is also the final test for the call for entries for an International Competition that should end up with 10 built projects of 100 units each throughout the Chilean territory, from Patagonia to the Easter Island, calling architects from all over the world to think with works what this \’almost nothing\’ could be.