Affordable Now, Luxury Later
Aravena’s Ted Talk on community in design brought up some great points on how money and time need to be invested into the community to make significant changes and impact the lives of those in need. Often times in community projects, a major downfall/failure occurs when there is not investment put into the long-term success of the building. One example that I thought of after reflecting on the video was the growing interest and influence of tiny homes. For a lot of people, the idea of living in a tiny home stemmed from the idea of having a more affordable option for housing. Many soon realized that land costs made tiny home living just as unaffordable. Especially, now that the tiny house has become glamorized, there is a luxury cost that comes with it. Throughout eras of architecture, there has been several examples of ‘simple, easy’ fixes to affordable housing that have backfired greatly, and I see this as one of them. While this solution works for some, it still does not offer a long-term solution for those in need of affordable housing.
For anyone who is interested in this topic more, I found this story particularly interesting:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/tiny-houses-grow-in-popularity-yet-drawbacks-abound.html
Tiny houses have always been so intriguing to me, but you raise some good points. Particularly, the tiny house model was meant to prioritize function, utility, affordability. It's almost as if architecture trends in their elegance and formalism got a hold of it and contributed to making its founding concepts irrelevant. Can beautiful architecture hurt the built environment sometimes?
ReplyDelete