Social Housing in Brasil (Podium renders)
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Edson.
I'm really sorry, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not a fan of this design. It looks far too much like a parking lot to me, and I especially don't like the parking/ social area underneath. Can you imagine gangs of youths using it for parties late at night? The low ceiling would cause a reverberation effect, amplifying their voices, making it nigh impossible for anyone upstairs to get any sleep. And what happens if someone drives, at high speed into one of the supporting pillars? I think I would feel very nervous living upstairs.
To be honest, I've never really been a fan of 'social housing' projects anyway. Tony Benn made a big mess of this country with his flat building schemes. Most became ghetto'ised, and imprisoned many of the more frail and elderly people living in them in later life. Developers who have built new flats in inner Birmingham city, hoping to make a profit during the housing boom of the last decade, are now having major problems selling them on. They are actually largely empty (all over the country in fact). People want houses with gardens and their own parking spaces, not flats.
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Edson
Mate I like the images but that alone is not showing the solution which is more about the solutions of private access, security, private open space, privacy etc.
From the images I'm envisaging all units are accessed from the long balcony that runs around the perimeter, for me this actually creates more issues in this type of housing than it solves. This is somewhat further exaggerated by the stair access direct to ground level with no arrival / entry sequence. For me these few simple factors are tending to replicate issues that exist now in this style of development.
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To tfdesign and Richard - this is in Brasil, different social context
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@srx said:
To tfdesign and Richard - this is in Brasil, different social context
Sorry srx, Brazil or elsewhere, the context is the same. We are all human beings!
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Disagree. If it is the same then there would be no difference between houses around the World...People live different - houses are different.
The one obvious thing - amount of $! -
Sure I understand that provincial factors most often drive designs. That said I still think some general principles if considered can enact a break from the norn, that is in part the beauty of the global community. Ideas can cross boundaries.
As this is designed as infill within a slum, is it wise to replicate what first created it?
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@richard said:
As this is designed as infill within a slum, is it wise to replicate what first created it?
Quite right.
The British social housing experiment has been a disaster. In some cases it has also created housing estates where people are afraid to venture. In Britain we are only beginning to understand the main causes, except now it has become very difficult to change because we too lack the funds to build better housing. I agree that much is to do with capital, but there, I wholeheartedly agree with Richard's point above. Look at the west, look a Britain, once one of the richest countries in the world- now has one of the largest western poor/rich divides (for Europe).
Flats are a developer's 'dream' (cheap, easy to construct, and you can stack them high- but only if developers can then sell them), but are curse on the people who buy them, and eventually get caught there, because no one really wants to live stacked on top of one another. They are even worse if they have been built by a council to aid 'social development'
A really good film worth watching (and which really highlights this 'social housing is good' myth) is the Sicilian/ Italian film "Gomorrah".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film
Tom
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tfdesign and richard,
I often regret posting renders here as people tend to focus on the little piece of design they see and not on the renders.
of course, people are entitled to dislike what one posts here. I just wish they would base their opinions on a sounder foundation, to use an architectural metaphor.
I can only agree with srx: brasil is not australia or the UK. in fact, they are worlds apart. unless you have spent some time in brasil, and more particularly in that community, you are talking about a local context of which you have no knowledge. perhaps social housing here is not the same as in the UK, nor are the local youth similar their british counterparts in terms of behaviour. have you thought of that?
yes, we are all human beings, no matter where we come from. however, there are huge cultural differences between brazilians, aussies and britons.
that particular community is a close knit one. the main problem there is the fact that many houses were irregularly built too close to a stream, with obviously bad consequences for the immediate areas. the people there accept to have their houses removed from the stream banks but do not want to be moved to a distant location, as is the usual practice. the equation is like that: if people want to stay there and the area will be reduced by the removal of the houses on the stream the only way to build is up: thus the three story buildings.
observation of their living habits showed that there are small shops interspersed between the houses, the houses always have a parking space, and the space immediately in front of their houses is used as a place for sitting outside and socializing. thus the proposed buildings have a flexible ground floor that could absorb all those uses and whose actual occupation will be decided in agreement with the residents. thus the access balcony, wide enough for them to use for more than circulation. thus the absence of an arrival/entry sequence. they do not see a need for that as today their front doors face directly onto the street and they do not wish to change that.
as you can easily see, matters are not as simple as they appear. applying 1st world standards to a situation like that will simply not work.
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@edson said:
perhaps social housing here is not the same as in the UK, nor are the local youth similar their british counterparts in terms of behaviour. have you thought of that?
Of course I have (thought of that).
But in my experience, it is poverty that causes corruption as well as powers that stay in place for years on end. South America is a third world region, but putting people in badly designed housing is a problem which is universal right across the globe. Just because you are in Brazil, it doesn't make much of a difference.
I commented on the design, because I thought it was right to discuss design on a design forum! If we can't make constructive criticism, then what is the point in having an open forum? After all, the very word "Forum" is latin for "a large meeting square at the middle of a city", where perhaps people meet to share ideas.
regards,
Tom
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@unknownuser said:
South America is a third world region, but putting people in badly designed housing is a problem which is universal right across the globe. Just because you are in Brazil, it doesn't make much of a difference.
...but it is not badly designed housing for a given context. Author has just explained it. I'd really like to see some real world examples.
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@srx said:
I'd really like to see some real world examples.
Okay.
Here is a good example- close to near where I live, Castle Vale. Built in Birmingham as 'an answer' to Birmingham's slum problems of the mid 20th century (1960's )
Castle Vale consisted of tower blocks as commissioned by then Labour MP Tony Benn, as an answer to the housing crisis of the city. The "solution" was a disaster. You may read about it here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/4314049.stm
During the 1990's the whole estate was demolished, and much smaller houses were built, with gardens and proper play areas for children. Yes we still have problems, all cities have problems, but nowhere near like the times during the 1970's and on.
I'm sure that these circumstances are repeated worldwide, no, in fact I know they are, because I've worked as a photojournalist and have documented similar problems in both Sri Lanka and Portugal!
As a Serbian, I'm rather shocked that you don't think this exists in our modern world, especially as your own country used to be part of the Soviet Union?
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tom,
you are right as far as those examples are concerned, but you are forgetting there has been much change in architecture since the 60s. no one in his or her right mind thinks any more about subsidized housing in terms of razing the existing to the ground and building towers to replace it. this kind of thinking has been dead since the 1980s, thanks to people like jane jacobs.
if you research the subject you will not find in the last 20 or 30 years more than a couple of examples of that kind of rootless "social housing" as opposed to hundreds of very good and livable examples everywhere.
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I would also like to add that giving people individual houses, and a yard etc. although it sound nice, is also not necessarily the answer. This policy was followed by the Govt. of Canada in its dealings with the First Nations people. We went about supplying standard housing on the reserves.
Most of these are now mold infested nightmares.
I don't think there is one answer, as social context is so important.
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Maybe you need to take an Architect's holiday here in Britain, where flats (okay maybe they are only 5 or 6 stories high) are still being raised from the ground from areas that needed redeveloping anyway! We haven't learnt yet, and we are a country that was supposed to have been one of the richest in the world.
Maybe it is ONLY Britain where we still have to endure this? FWIW, we do have such architectural luminaries such as Prince Charles. I wish Prince Charlie would take a very long running jump!
But, that still hasn't answered my original question about the space underneath between the stilts/pillars. Are these buildings intended for long-stay tenancies? I'm just trying to think of how anti-social it would be if someone was trying to start their car at say 4am in the morning, when you had to get up for work the following day. Are they sound proofed?
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@dale said:
I would also like to add that giving people individual houses, and a yard etc. although it sound nice, is also not necessarily the answer. This policy was followed by the Govt. of Canada in its dealings with the First Nations people. We went about supplying standard housing on the reserves.
Most of these are now mold infested nightmares.
I don't think there is one answer, as social context is so important.Well of course, and this is probably another really good reason that social housing shouldn't necessarily be cheap or badly built either. You get mould because wood is either badly treated, or it is in contact with the floor, causing rising damp, and judging by that photo you have provided, that's hardly surprising!
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@tfdesign said:
Well of course, and this is probably another really good reason that social housing shouldn't necessarily be cheap or badly built either.
you are absolutely right. I would even say that social housing must be well built as the people living there will have no money for costly maintenance.
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Good piece of social housing Edson. Would like to see more renders.
I do not want to get into discussion as it is without point. I would just say: Saying that flats are bad is quite brave comment. Sayng that everybody likes living in the house with 2 cats in the yard is not true and also not possible.
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I presume and hope that anythingthe govn't of Brazil will build will be better (cleaner/safer) than the squatter dwellings that are stacked miles high, just waiting for a Haiti-style-earthquake disaster to strike.
From what I saw in my time in Brazil and Haiti they are both equal in construction quality for most residential buildings. Brazil is FAR better than Haiti in quality of construction when professionally builtprojects are done! But most housing in Brazil and Haiti is built one clay block at a time by the dweller, with little understanding of proper construction techniques.I can't imagine the constraints you must be under with this project, Edson, but I wish it all success. I, too, hope that it will be well lit, and safe. This type of open ground concept has been done over and over and over, and I know you've done your research, so... I wish all the best.
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I'm a big fan of Richard Rogers' social housing designs. These are a nice example;
http://news.architecture.sk/2007/10/145-inteligent-prefab-modules-houses-by.php
I'm slightly worried though about what some class as "sustainability", using cheaper, more readily available materials as a basis for "good design". You can't use cheap materials, because after 10 years, they need replacing. That's why we need mass production, so that well designed and built houses can be sustained. The German Huf Haus is a prefab design, but these are mostly bespoke, and don't use off the shelf components, making them very expensive to construct and erect. A well designed and mass-produced solution is what is really needed, and not a sticking plaster (which is often the case in Britain for eg, largely because of architectural idiots such as Prince Charles!).
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@sepo said:
Saying that flats are bad is quite brave comment.
Well it's true. Flats are bad!
Do you want to live in a house where you can hear a car being revved up underneath, while someone else has loud sex above you? Would you like a garden for your children and would you like not to have to carry every single bag of shopping up the stairs one at a time? Of course you don't! Flat's are a bad invention!
In England we need to stop moaning about the environment (despite that 70% of land is actually owned by the aristocracy), and build on both brown and green sites. We have a really bad housing crisis in the UK, where few can get on the property ladder. Heck my brother-in-law cannot afford a house, and he and his wife are both solicitors!
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