Give your ear to the user, not your pen

 

Aravena’s approach to designing architecture includes the user. This strategy is not new but in my opinion very necessary. In the TedTalk lecture he talks about the design process for the Villa Verde project in Chile. He mentions how many social housing projects build based on what they feel are necessities. Aravena’s strategy had multiple interviews with the users, each time asking not only their needs but their wants. He asks what were the problems with past social housing they lived in. 

In my opinion the Villa Verde and Quinta Monroy social housing projects are a lazy way to respond to the users needs. Instead of designing for what has been bothering them, Aravena designed half of the housing and left space for the users to figure it out. I understand it gives them a chance to customize what they want and create their own spaces. When you look at the housing after it is occupied and the users have created their own additions It becomes a mismatch. The role of an architect is to design for a user and make sure it also looks great through the use of materials. In the case of Quinta Monroy social housing he creates this bare concrete mass with the ability to add on one side of the structure. When you see how the users filled in that open space they fill it in with rough scrap materials. These structures start to look more and more like the slum architecture we see around the world rather than social housing design by an architect. You're the architect, it should be your design for the user not just leave it for them to figure it out.