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Low cost housing II

Low Cost Housing in Mega Cities

 

by Prof. Andreas Heider, TFH Berlin

The 2nd year of the ALFA project (América Latina Formación Académica) which focuses on Chile and its capital Santiago. “Low cost housing in mega cities“ was the connecting theme for all participating countries (Cuba, Chile, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Germany). The Faculty IV, Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences of Berlin, represented by Prof. Dr. Holger Kühnel and Prof. Dr. Susanne Junker, offered a workshop as a regular course for the 6th semester. My part, which encompassed of two hours per week as the construction engineer from the Faculty III, Civil Engineering was to:

  • elaborate the project lines with my architectural colleagues,
  • give lectures on the constructive aereas of the project,
  • advise the students in the workshop as a consultant engineer.

Further intentions were

  • closing the gap between architects and engineers in establishing a fruitful collaboration between the two faculties,
  • integrating civil engineering students in the next ALFA project as well,
  • motivating the students to study and travel abroad.

During meetings before the beginning of the summer semester 2006 we established the project lines: we defined the project zone in the Inner Circle of Santiago de Chile, based on the material and results of the Rio de Janeiro Project and the time schedule for input information and output as the following tasks for the students:

  • master planning,
  • block planning,
  • house design,
  • construction details.

As none of us had seen the site directly we lacked of detailed information about the project zone. The communication with our partners in Chile was handicapped by the lost of our most important partner Prof. Pablo Allard. That was compensated by the annual European meeting in Milan/ Italy in the middle of the semester when I met Prof. Ivan Produje. He is an excellent source of information, however we could not solve all questions and I had to learn about changes in the land use destination of the project zone. Some research in the Ibero-Amerikanische Bibliothek of Berlin completed missing information in geotechnical aspects. One student, for practical assignment in Santiago de Chile, sent us current photos from the project district.

For my part I planned five lecture themes on the input information:

  • General information about Chile and Santiago related to construction (seismic activities, flooding, climatic and soil conditions).
  • Global climatic changes: consequences for construction.
  • Comparative project: earthquake resistant house constructions for Banda Ace/ Indonesia, a German Red Cross project.
  • Earthquake resistant construction, part 1: design rules affecting the master and block planning.
  • Earthquake resistant construction, part 2: design rules affecting the structure design.

Summaries of the five lectures may be found in two manuscripts, available on the Internet here:

  • “Städtebauliche Rahmenbedingungen für Santiago de Chile“ (Vorlesung 1)
  • “Earthquakes: Script sketches about aspects of planning and construction” (Vorlesung 2)


Output: We had around 14 workgroups of more or less two students. We integrated one student from our partner university Milan and three participants from our partner university Rio de Janeiro. As the eastern parts of Germany are not affected by earthquakes, the students had received no information on the topic of earthquake resistant construction. They observed and applied the rules in their master and block planning easily but had some difficulties in the structure design and construction details for example joints between load bearing parts and not load bearing parts. In the tutorials we solved most of the problems. The variety of structure types (cantilever, frames, framework, rigid plates) and construction materials (reinforced brickwork, steel structure, reinforced concrete, clad/ wood) was surprising.

Another difficulty was to reduce the construction level, normally studied in German and Europe, to an absolute low cost version. Not only in the economical aspects (costs of material and human labour) and social aspects (size of living area, organizing future building amplification), but also in technical areas: how to design a simple window frame, roof drainage, thermal insulation, if there is no central heating etc.

Finally it was an enriching experience for me with regard to new topics of teaching, and an excellent collaboration with all colleagues and students. The final presentation of the students work took part in the last days of the semester. Some results were outstanding and in general we were able to give good evaluations. As a spin-off we consolidated the collaboration between the two faculties, some students showed interest in studying or carrying out projects abroad and some civil engineer students will participate in the 2007 ALFA project (Havana/ Cuba).