Half a Good House

 My favorite bit from last week was the Ted Talk about involving the community in the design process. Cities are still growing every day whether the infrastructure is ready for it or not. I think it's really cool how Alejandro faced the constant issue revolving around costs and space for public housing. If you can’t give the people a full, good house, and don’t want to give them a full, small house, then why not give them half of a good house? Doing this provides the people with the necessities and utilizes their ability to build to fill in the rest. Although I must say that the repetitive concrete cubes appear a little off-putting… but once they are filled in it looks a little bit better.

 

Another thing that majorly stuck out was when he said “the scarcest resource in cities is not money, but coordination.” This made me think of all the times I’d seen the exact same projects just around the corner from one another. If only they had talked to each other and collaborated, maybe it could have been even better? Maybe they could have saved money? There are just so many more opportunities when teams work together – but to be fair, they originally had no idea about the other groups doing the same project at first, so maybe in that moment there is room for intervention?