The Chilean architecture firm Elemental under Alejandro Aravena explored the concept of partially completed housing, often called the half-house approach. The project Quinta Monroy was one of the first architect-driven proposals to address the in-situ replacement of an informal slum settlement project that combines innovation, reduced land use, a tight government budget and a template for future expansion. Rather than putting the entire burden on the government for the full completion of the project, this different approach is aimed at a long-term process of resident-driven-incremental housing.
What was the housing scheme in Chile like?
Any developing country’s experience of rapid urbanization can often have stark contrasts of economic disparities and as a result, provision of adequate housing can be a challenge. The housing policies in Latin American countries were not able to cope with the pressures of housing which meant that the lowest income groups happen to live in slums or favelas. The scheme for incremental housing was started as early as the 1950s in Chile to keep the growth of slums in check and a new concept of self-help housing was introduced. New Proposals for housing in Chile pivoted from providing fully built housing schemes to granting subsidies for new houses and allowing for house improvements or extensions. In this format, a basic housing unit was built, and it slowly became the starting point for subsequent extensions following a pay-as-you-go format.
The Quinta Monroy project in Chile
The Quinta Monroy project is located in the northern Chilean city of Iquique. It was an effort to upgrade the last informal slum settlement of around 100 families in the centre of the city in 2003. The site area of 5722 sqm became a crowded cluster of self-constructed shelters with temporary materials with poor ventilation and light, a lack of basic civic amenities like electricity and water and a breeding ground for fires, crime and drugs. In the early 2000s, when there was uncertainty over the ownership of land, the residents fearing eviction, appealed to the government to provide for permanent settlement in the same site. The Government proposed a housing program without a debt format and the ownership was decided to be in a Joint property ownership format. It contacted Elemental’s principal architect Alejandro Aravena through the Catholic University of Chile and he encouraged the active participation of the residents before as well as during the construction to complete the project.
The project is a complex of 93 housing units organized around 4 courtyards. It tried to retain a sense of community and previous neighbours’ interactions. Each housing module is the size of 3m x 6m, and there were 2 types of housing units. The ground floor had only a Type-1 unit, which occupied 3 housing modules of which only 2 were built and 1 left for future expansion. These units have a backyard of 27 sqm which could be occupied up to 60 per cent as part of later expansion. The Type-2 units were duplex units built on top of one module of Type-1 housing. Each duplex unit had 2 modules built, one on top of the other with 2 more modules to be developed. Of the 93 units, 34nos were of Type-1 and the remaining were Type-2.
This was the half-house approach by Elemental.
One of the key challenges was to allow for incremental construction of housing types without neighbourhood deterioration and the unpredictable nature of the remaining 50 per cent of future resident-driven construction. A top-down approach to preparing systems to follow handing over the projects could undermine the community-driven bottom-up development envisaged for the project.
Changes after 12 years of the project
In the 12 years since the handover, the residents mostly followed the designers’ recommendation of using lightweight materials for the extensions. There were other temporary additions although from the users’ perspective, they were permanent like tents, and gazebos in front of the houses. Some residents have used up more than the 60-per cent allowed backyard area in some cases, fully covering up the courtyard. High fences were added to most households facing the street citing reasons of safety and vulnerability. Most of them were covered later by plywood to prevent views from the street and these paved the way for more permanent roofs, and concrete flooring. Poor ventilation and light, and encroachment into the public space are the major issues seen due to this. There were also cantilevered rooms over the public and private space and in some Type-2 unit cases, another 4th floor above the 3rd floor was also added. Elemental’s published drawings mark the areas for the park, public furniture, trees and children’s play equipment in the common courtyards, but they have become spaces of conflict where it is used to dump cars and have exacerbated the unequal access to public space.
Since Quinta Monroy is in an urban area, some of the extension areas provided were also used for subletting, bringing in people from other communities and driving up tensions in the project. As a result, some of the original residents moved out, renting elsewhere but keeping the ownership of the project – citing a reason for dislike of the new community. Most tenants crossed the original 50% of the extensions allowable almost to the point of calling it uncontrollable. The resident community interaction has reduced to what was originally when it was a slum. Apart from the unregulated growth of the extensions affecting the ventilation and the light, another issue is the overcrowding of the spaces due to the transition from nuclear to extended families. The safety of the extensions is also questionable as there is no oversight on the type of material being used for the extensions. There have been reports of fires caused accidentally due to improper handling of the construction materials, thus putting the whole collective community at risk. The core structure has remained intact even after an earthquake in 2014.
Future of Incremental Housing in Latin America
Aimed to be a collaborative effort and the first of many attempts, the project at Quinta Monroy needs to be studied to avoid the issues it suffers. One of the key factors is to provide a set of boundaries that inhibit encroaching on public space, and the formation of a committee of the residents with support from the local government to oversee the construction of extensions. A nuanced understanding of the community occupied in these areas would help boost the success of the programme. Some of the problems have been better addressed in Elemental’s other incremental housing projects in Lo Barnechea Neighbourhood, Santiago, and Villa Verde. Constitución, Chile by limiting the vertical growth by having completed sloping roofs. A manual as a parting gift to the resident was planned, giving a guideline to better accommodate the future expansion. It is indeed challenging to anticipate and plan for accommodation in a community in a formalized/ unformalized manner. In the coming years, the Quinta Monroy project has paved the way for at least 12 housing projects, including houses in Chile and Mexico and has sparked a deep discussion in planning housing schemes for Latin America.
Citations:
Carrasco, S. and O’Brien, D. (2021). Beyond the freedom to build: Long-term outcomes of Elemental’s incremental housing in Quinta Monroy. urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana, 13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-3369.013.e20200001 [Accessed: 05 November 2024].
