Low cost housing

Building for the urban poor - to build in the third world countries

 

by Prof. Dr. Holger Kühnel, TFH Berlin

Urbanism and architecture are an expression of cultural and human development of a society.  

Today we are find increasing cities with millions of inhabitants in Asia, Africa and South and Middle America. In the old continent, Europe the population is going down, decreasing. In these growing cities we still have tough conditions for living. Poverty, not enough food and so on are daily reality.

• 15 Mill. Children starve to death (dying) p. a.
• many citizens have no place to live, except in self-made huts
• there are no hospitals, no schools or any chance to go out of these places  

We have to ask and to discuss, if there is a real chance to navigate, to influence these developments in such big cities, or if there are instruments to control these developments?

Let us have a look at the Greek Antique urbanism. The Polis in the Greece was a community of free and independent citizens based on equal rights. If a town increase more than 25000 inhabitants, they decided to develop another town in another place, but even in the same manner. The urban concept was made by an architect called Hippodamus of Milet. Each citizen in such a town had a small townhouse, a typical house which looked like all the other houses in town. (Here you will see an example of Priene, a greek town situated in the West of Turkey.

Throughout the past, in the meantime about 30 years, we collected lot of experiences about those developments with such problems of social housing. The following aspects are some of the results of these experiences.

• These projects were successful when the support went directly to the affected people (Betroffene) in order to fortify , to support their power and energy of the poor  to improve their lives, to immediate the improvement of live (Verbesserung der Lebensumstände). These pictures from 1920th show you proud people working on a street for common affairs.
• Official help should be concentrated on putting support to technical infrastructure, Water supply and water disposal, electricity and also medical supply and a chance to learn. (Education)  
• Also a supply in self-made building houses and self responsible organisation of cooperative Purchase of materials
• Also it has proved necessary to initiate the building of self-made house and to organize the purchase of building materials

In Europe, especially in Germany, we have experiences with these developments since the 1920 of the last century. A lot of people, architects, industrials and politicians were thinking and discussing, how to help the urban poor. There are two strategies to solve these problems:

• Some people found the reason for poverty in the conditions of money. They think capitalism produces poverty in an inevitable way. Their representatives proposed a new form of organisation of the workers, such as the socialist party. They meant that poverty could only be changed in fighting for a new socialistic society. Now, these societies no longer exist, The DDR went down in 1989, you know.
• Others, intellectuals, industrials and architects began to work directly at the problems for a better improvement of live, to improve life conditions. For example some industrials founded towns for their workers such as the industrial city of 1848, or another example is the “Krupp-village” from Essen in Germany.

Architects began to discuss the problems. Bruno Taut a famous German architect declared the dissolution of towns in 1920. Ebenezer Howard created the idea of new garden cities from removed. New town were designed in connection to nature and landscape, so in Berlin or Dresden.

The “Bauhütten” and Cooperative societies started successful strategies against the privation of housing. (against the lack of housing). The management structure was concentrated on helping for self-help. They organized a cooperative system to buy materials and to build low cost buildings.

Here I will show you an example from the 20th century in Germany. Martin Wagner and Bruno Taut, both famous German architects and town planners decided to develop a competition against the housing problems in 1920 after the First World War. The competition was titled Increasing growing housing (Das Wachsende Haus). These pictures will give you an expression of the results of this strategy (Master plan with small units include place where a little self-made agriculture could be placed, and small one room huts with possibilities to add more rooms on both sides of the house or to build one more, a second level.

Only a few of those huts were built, the reason was, because  the economical and social situation changed at the end of the 1920th. (the black Friday in 1929). Some other architects of the modern (such as LeCorbusier, Hilbersheimer, Costa, Niemeyer,..) preferred a different model of urbanism in the future.

The housing situation was discussed during the great conferences of the CIAM in 1927 to 1933, it ended with the Manifest “charta of Athens” in 1933. In 1929 the congress in Frankfurt /Main was titled “housing for a minimum existence”. One result was to create typical flats as industrial products, built by great companies for all people in equal houses. Each house is like a small city itself.   That was the birth of the social housing program in Germany. You know, how this story is going on.

After the second world war most of the modern architects came back, starting the program of social housing in each city , first in suburban area and later on in the older quarters of the existing towns. At one point they decided to destroy the old living quarters for a reconstruction with social housing.  The design was always equal as a block of typical flats in a new urban structure with grebe between and landscape. In the 70th years it was clear that this way of creating new towns and social housing collapsed. There was no way to create personal living in a self responsible way. Criminal affairs and social problems (drugs, ..) increased. And for the communities, they were not able to finance these program. The financial investment added to 150 – 200 % of the real costs for the buildings. In the 1990th these programs were dropped completely. Today we have new programs, called Reconstruction of towns in the East “Stadtumbau Ost” to give money for destroying the urban mistakes of this period. Nowadays the problems of housing solutions are much more relaxed than in the past, in reason why  (because) the population is decreasing.

Results/Experiences

First of all, human rights include a place to live, enough food and a chance to learn.   Official help from the government is very effective when it is organised as help for self-help with very low administration and bureaucracy, with Fortification (support for) to self - organisations and self responsibilities and independence.

To build simple means, to give assistance for self-helping, in order to reach more independence.  I think, that is nearly the same as we have it today in the program to stabilize the favelas.

“The architecture of the favelas is not baroque, not post-modernity, not deconstructive,  its in consequently, functional and modern architecture, not expensive and it looks beautiful.” (Dietmar Starke)   Help should be concentrated:

• an offering units and ground to built on, in an official and juristic acceptable way
• to chare for water supply and water disposal and
  
• to supply for social support especially for medicine and education.

Beyond that we should think about help

• in designing a typical house as a system of structure using typical materials, such as  wood or loam
• in designing a master plan  with small units, streets for transport and  for a ecological and healthy living.  

The technical infrastructure (water, electric and ..) is available by the community, Also using traditional techniques of acclimatisation, there are existing a  lot of experience p.e. from a famous architect, called Hassan Fathy, he is  from Egypt. 

All helpful programs should start with the available resources and with financial support for the affected people.

We should mediate (discuss) the known strategies and techniques of how to build in a simple way,  this is a question for us, as  teachers and professors of urbanism and architecture, Students often learning to look forward to a great event, showing a design that never was existing before. Sometimes they are more interested in having personal success rather than in looking for solutions for real problems. The training for self-made building could be done by students from architecture and urbanism just as well as from the faculties of agriculture.

And as a big challenge for all of us, we should think about, how to stop the impression of the population development in the metropolitan cities and to stabilize the landscape and smaller villages in the suburban areas. I think this project of Sao Jose for a durable urban development is the right way, it is very important to stabilize both, the metropolitan area and the landscape, the burls areas.