Gallery: Alejandro Aravena, Winner of This Year's Pritzker Prize, Is Giving Away His Designs
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Quinta Monroy Housing, Iquique, Chile: Elemental built each of the 93 houses in this complex with a $7,500 government subsidy. That doesn’t allow for much, so Aravena and Elemental used the funds to build basic reinforced concrete structures, designed to expand and adapt.
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Quinta Monroy Housing, Iquique, Chile: Once residents moved in, they were, over time, able to invest in their own homes. This is incremental design. After one year each property was valued at $20,000.
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Lo Barnechea, Santiago, Chile: In 2010 Aravena and Elemental built this simple housing complex on the cheap, but in one of Santiago’s most expensive neighborhoods. The residents are able to benefit from the good jobs, schools, and transportation nearby, giving them the means to healthy income.
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Lo Barnechea, Santiago, Chile: The 430-square-feet homes are initially built to be easily renovated, if families want to build second floors or loft floors to add bedrooms and bathrooms.
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Elemental Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico: This 70-home complex follows Elemental’s principles of incremental design, but with a different geometry.
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Elemental Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico: Each building is vertically split, with one half left vacant and open. Elemental built the “difficult half”---the stairs, bathrooms, and kitchens---and left the other half open to remodeling.
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Villa Verde Housing, Constitución, Chile: Forestry company Arauco asked Elemental to create this housing scheme, for its workers. Incremental design is used here as well, but private funding allowed for higher construction standards, which translate into higher standards for the finished project.
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Villa Verde Housing, Constitución, Chile: The total development will comprise 9,000 units.
