Elemental

Elemental, a Chilean architectural firm that has transformed the role of design in addressing social housing over the last decade, has been recognized as a winner of the 2010 Curry Stone Design Prize.

A self-described “Do Tank” as opposed to think tank, Elemental has immersed itself in the “grey areas” of the housing market, examining how to provide quality design services as well as affect media perception and political will in support of new housing opportunities. The firm recognized that many social housing programs are limited by their funding mechanisms: typically no money is allocated to design, only construction; secondly, projects seek out inexpensive land typically found on the outskirts of a city, which limits the housing development’s residents access to local economic opportunities.

Elemental’s strategy is two-fold. First they devote a larger percentage of the budget to land costs, and find building sites within the economic core of the city. Second, they build the core of a house for each resident, but allow additional space for expansion of the house by the residents themselves, in a striking diagonal pattern; this reduces the building costs, to balance the higher land costs, and keeps the project within budget.

This has several advantages for the residents. It creates residences in proximity to more economic opportunities for the residents. It gives them the opportunity to shape their own living circumstances within the larger design. These combined processes allow the projects to grow in value due to market forces, and the residents to build equity in their housing investment over time, affording them future economic opportunities.

Founders Pablo Allard, Andres Iacobelli, and Alejandro Arevena came together with an “interest in contributing ideas and projects to alleviate the social housing problem” in a for-profit design firm. Their goal from the outset was to emphasize “professional quality over professional charity,” in the words of Aravena. An innovative partnership with a university and major corporation in Chile provided the seed capital for several projects. This model of development is presently expanding to new projects across South America and even Europe. Aravena notes a measure of the firm’s success is the fact that it is “unusual to be exporting work to countries with a higher standard of living [than Chile].”

After the devastating Chilean earthquake and subsequent tsunami in early 2010, Elemental was asked to design a new city for 50,000 inhabitants for the city of Constitución, where 80% of the population was homeless. In just 90 days, working with the public as well as political officials, they produced a design that is ready for construction. Speaking on behalf of his firm and partners, Aravena describes the measure of Elemental’s success as “real outcomes for real people – we want photos of people living in our projects,” not just of the architecture alone.