Back to the Basics

I appreciated Aravena's approach to solving the architectural problems he was faced with. He went back to the basics...simple architecture that did not rely on fancy technology to make the building function. It is through this approach that he was able to make truly affordable housing. Today the middle class worker is not able to just quit working and spend 4 or more months building his own house. They instead have the money to pay someone else to build it and simply choose the finishes. However, most people in poverty are there because they do not have jobs. Thus, most of them have more time, something that most middle class people seem to lack. If we could empower those in poverty with the skills to build their own house, then we can make "affordable" housing by taking out one of the most expensive factors in building...labor.

Going to Aravena's approach to the affordable houses, he simply gave the people a space to infill and let the community take over. We keep trying to solve problems with technology in architecture, but what if we instead went back to the basics? Is technology really helping us solve problems? Or is it instead helping us mask the problem? For example, going back to junkspace, air conditioning has allowed us to build whatever kind of building we want with little thought to solar gain because we have the power to offset the problem...but we are not really solving the problem, only creating a mask to the problem.