REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE SOCIAL HOUSING, THE PROCESS OF DESIGN AND PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES
Work done by Blanca Pérez García
Subject Social Housing;
Teachers: Claudio Navarrete, Alejandro Toro, and Graciela Pulgar Claudio
Terreros
The process of housing design is increasingly an issue that surpasses the mere discipline of architecture should take into account other factors that belong to other disciplines (sociology, environment, urban planning, geography, etc.).. Today should be talking about housing as a housing system in a context where the mere architectural object will influence factors such as insertion into a housing estate, belonging to a neighborhood, the environment, production environment, the economic context and social-cultural context.
"... ... For It starts talking about the process of designing a home should be handled by multidisciplinary teams composed of diverse agents such as the State, the private sector, professionals from various fields and users of housing .... You can not talk about housing, but housing process with different stages, prospecting, planning, programming, design, construction, placement and processing, housing, processing and evaluation. "
Source: Alejandro Toro,
teaching sessions of 14 - August -2007
In the context of social housing in Chile there is a problem of uprooting of the population on the whole housing. Housing developments are built to respond to the lack of accommodation, but do not take into account the context in which they are inserted. The population does not feel the house as theirs, do not feel in the neighborhood, which causes problems of isolation, lack of public life, deterioration of public spaces, crime, etc.. Therefore now one of the objectives of social housing programs in Chile should be to increase the participation of users in the design of housing developments.
An example supporting this argument is the success of development cooperation projects have been carried out including the beneficiary population as part fundamental to the implementation of the project. Many cooperation projects have failed because users do not identify as their own. There is money to do it, technically they are very well resolved, but may not meet the aspirations of the people they want to help. The result is the abandonment of buildings. When users participate in some stage of the process of housing, cooperation projects are successful in this regard.
But the general problem of uprooting of users on the housing complexes is not a problem of scale and an economic issue, not a problem of social housing in Chile or cooperative housing projects economic investment projects are limited. It is a fact that occurs in all socio-economic and cultural and is reflected in the high percentage of renovations carried out in dwellings nothing else comes to live in them. I take as examples two findings: the introductory study on changes made in the same home as the user, by John Habraken in his book Design of supports and the fact that 85% of homes delivered in the district of Madrid were Sanchinarro remodeled during the first two years since he came to live in them.
Therefore, my position on the issue is that the housing policies of Chile's social housing should aspire, not to increase the amount of housing or the size of them, but to introduce users to the housing process. I say the housing process, because it speaks of participation in the design process, but that's only part of the entire project process. The challenge therefore is citizen participation, but this well is utopian and abstract, what methods, management tools, forms of organization that can accommodate the user in the process? If the architect is no longer the exclusive designer has what role in this process?
John Habraken explains in his book Design of supports the need for housing is adapted to user and attacks the construction of townhouses, putting at risk to obtain a social or economic benefit. He advocates product differentiation within the housing, support and individual cell. The book questions whether it can perform direct user participation in design, because it considers the individual design for each user would have a very high complexity. We therefore propose as a solution, a design method of media broadly define the partitions between units in the division of these margins (facilities, traffic areas) and areas (rooms). Thus from a carrier, could give different distributions housing that respond to the various users of the same. The role of the architect, according to this book, would be the designer of a media room where they have multiple distribution options, the architect must also meet the various options and present them to the user, so you feel identified with any of them. The user will not take part directly in the design.
The book A Pattern Language: towns, buildings, constructions of Christofer Alexander goes further. Intended to be, according to the author in the introduction, a design manual for users who travels to different scales of architecture, from urban issues as the design of a neighborhood, to personalization of housing in its smallest detail. With this book defends the idea of \u200b\u200bdirect user capacity in carrying out a design, through a prior process of education in the field, which is what the book intended. In this case, the role of the architect is that of an educator, a professional who transmitted their knowledge to the users so that they themselves carry out the process. But this book reflects only one option or solution on a problem, which is next to the architect thinks fit.
The same author, Christopher Alexander, goes a step further in their experience of user involvement in the book Planning and Participation: The Case of the University of Oregon. It reflects the process of design for the expansion project of the University of Oregon, where the users (teachers and students) were directly involved by making drawings and diagrams of what he wanted the project. The architect is no longer listening to user requests and designs, but in this case the architect and the user work together to design artwork done by both. The architect must be able to be the mediator in the process so that the various proposals made end up being one. With this book it is proposed a method Customer Involvement in the design directly. However
it make a criticism, the fact that the building responds only to the vision of a set of users who use the building at any given time the same lifetime. Are the desires of a group of users at any given moment, the desires of any user during the lifetime of the building? The problem begins to complicate.
Joan McDonald in his book The Architect and the progressive model in his book Haramoto social housing. Type of progressive development, provide another perspective on participation. Proposes a model home seed, which evolves over time as the needs of users. The resulting homes have the great virtue of which have been processed directly by them over time so that it creates a direct link between product and user, a correlation that overcomes the problems of uprooting of housing designs. The architect in this case is the role of product design a core housing, unfinished, leaving room for the possibility of extending the same over time, where the user takes over the task and becomes direct designer.
housing policies in social housing in Chile was raised a similar model, the incremental housing, against key housing hand. They had the problem of being a finished product, in which the user had not taken part. Progressive housing have the advantage, first of being cheaper, with the consequent effect that the same economic resources can meet the basic coverage of housing a larger number of families, and secondly to accommodate User participation in the design of it, that evolves over time. What at first might have emerged as a solution to economic benefits, is a significant advance regarding your participation in the design. The housing projects of social housing programs in Chile and are just a fragment of a city where all houses are alike, autism is designed by an architect under state approval, regardless of the user, but offer a diverse and dynamic tissue that evolves over time and must make a city.
In these cases the architect's role may seem to shrink and lose importance in the design, since it boils down to a minimum, a living germ. Yet it is critical that design to accommodate all the basic needs of users from the outset and allow for a favorable time. The architect must plan how it will be that evolution, individual cases that may be, must anticipate what might happen, so they always give basic living conditions in the progressive housing.
After a full scan on the various methods of user involvement in the design process, it should book a small comment on the material that allows these processes.
The design language is a visual graphic language and in any case. The argue that the participation of various actors in the design problem can be solved through multidisciplinary debates, it is naive. The design must be solved by the means used to express it, diagrams, sketches, planimetry, collages, pictures, models, etc. The problem is that in a multidisciplinary work, not all agents taking part are able to generate the graphics, which can lead to a failure in the communication process between them. For this reason, the architect plays an important role, being a professional in that field. The architect has the ability to use tools that allow a debate on the design, to design its own language and should be subservient to the agents for them to get a graphical way to express the vision of each regard. The architect is in any case shall be a generator of all possible options and display, in order to generate debate around artwork.
During the course of social housing, our students have taken the role of architect, we generated several solutions to the same problem of expanding the St. Bernard housing. By dehierarchized and without any preference in the beginning, many options have been developed and have been presented to the neighbors with the intention of accommodating the largest number of situations. Now, what is the most effective way to express in the language of graphic design with a person who is not familiar with it? After that experience it was concluded that the models detachable and dynamics that allow combinations of volumetric and sketches were the best means of communication between the architect and the user.
After analyzing the issue of user participation in housing design, it is worth mentioning that the participation can occur not only in design but also in other processes of the housing process, such as the self or self-management.
Returning to make an example of the development cooperation projects in many states that the project is not only an architectural theme but also training. Are the same people who built the houses. This implies a greater empathy with the project and the acquisition of skills that are essential to a future investment to further develop the area once the proposed project. This will designate groups of people who will be trained in conducting a specialized construction elements (roof teachers, teachers of beams, fencing master).
Another interesting issue is self-management of a project by users, so that behind the projects there is an organizational framework of committees and working groups are organized to make the project starts, to get funding to manage material and financial resources, etc.
no doubt that the participation of users in the process, makes it more complex and slow, even in difficult times. However, it is becoming increasingly necessary and desirable to make the housing process is satisfactory. Housing policies in social housing in Chile invest limited budgets for the implementation of housing projects, so it is necessary that these resources are optimized to achieve excellent results with every dollar that goes to that effect. Participation is synonymous with empathy and training. For that to happen there must be space platforms to stop the organization of the structures that allow these processes, and information and experience of how it carried out the process so that it does not result in chaos. In it, the architect must have a role as organizer of the methodology, the role of generating physical options to be discussed, a design professional role of the service users and a role of moderator in the discussion of options and guidance regarding the technical feasibility of the project. Contrary to what may seem, your participation in the process, but that power does not diminish the role of the architect in the process.
Blanca Pérez García, English, architecture student exchange of ETSAM of Madrid.
blanquipeich@gmail.com 
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