"A cure that is worse than the disease"

I have seen from up close how the contemporary architecture of poverty can bring down a city. In the case of my city the slums are located in the hills and mountains surrounding the city in the valley. I will not lie at night its a beautiful view of floating lights on the sky, but during the day these constructions are right on your face and because everyone knows the danger inside those neighborhoods the feeling of threat gets closer. The government on its "effort" to give people a better home and decrease the population of the slums started a huge project of social housing "Housing Mission." Architects supporting the president had the opportunity to create buildings for these people in need. The result was far from useful or beneficial for anyone.


"Floating lights" during the night in Caracas

These projects were developed with very cheap construction and no quality control. Buildings would start cracking after just months of the opening, and the designs were not thought for their specific users. Small apartments with no community quality, no opportunities of expansion (which is a huge concept for the ones used to live in the slums), no chance of close job opportunities, and in some cases the projects would be located far away from the city. The users were clearly not happy and started selling these apartments and coming back to their old places. We have seen a few examples of successful social housing, and I believe we ought to learn from them and fix what was not wholly right.





Only somewhat successful project with community spaces and opportunity to create commercial spaces on the bottom