Balkrishna Doshi’s Aranya Low Cost Housing

 

FROM BALKRISHNA DOSHI:

“They are not houses but homes where a happy community lives. That is what finally matters.” Aranya Low Cost Housing accommodates over 80,000 individuals through a system of houses, courtyards and a labyrinth of internal pathways.

“It seems I should take an oath and remember it for my lifetime: to provide the lowest class with the proper dwelling.” The community is comprised of over 6,500 residences, amongst six sectors – each of which features a range of housing options, from modest one-room units to spacious houses, to accommodate a range of incomes. 

 One cannot just be an architect. The idea is to become a sthapati as described in the canonical texts.... “to be a yogi, to feel the vibrations of every element in the cosmos including the materials and the user of that space.”¹
—Balkrishna Doshi 

 

 

 

 

source: https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/issues/12/what-you-can-do-with-the-city/58317/balkrishna-doshis-aranya

Sustainable India Compeition!

 

KANAF-crete (building blocks made out of Kanaf!)

Affordable Abodes pioneering KANAF as building block for fast deployment 

 

Effective low cost housing in Mongolia

The Ulaanbaatar Housing Corporation, the GIZ, and Hybrid House LLC built an energy saving housing development in Denjiin Myanga of Chingeltei district, Ulaanbaatar city, Mongolia. This is an effective and viable solution to the city’s cheap heating problem that produces carbon monoxide for its residents trying to keep warm. 

South facing maximum Solar exposure 

 

 

 

Source:  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2022416/

Post Covid relook at Foreign Dormitory standards

source: The Straits Times

1960's Soviet-era housing facing demolition

“We are not against beauty, we are against superfluity,” Nikita Khrushchev told Soviet architects in 1954. 

Speaking a year after Stalin's death, with the Soviet Union damaged by war and repression, Khrushchev ordered a nationwide effort to build housing cheaply and quickly. This, the most ambitious Soviet housing project, gave birth to the Khrushchevka — the distinctive five-story building named after the Soviet leader. Millions of Russians continue to live in them today. 

Sixty years on, however, Moscow authorities have decided they have had enough of the Khrushchevka. In a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on March 1, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced plans to demolish around eight thousand of the post-war buildings. This equates to 25 million square meters of living space and will involve re-housing 1.6 million people – the population of a small European capital. The decision took Muscovites by surprise. After all, the plans to demolish a large part of the city had not been discussed in any public sphere, let alone parliament. “They decided everything for us, once again,” prominent architect Yevgeny Asse told The Moscow Times, adding he first heard about the plans on television. 

A truck transports parts of a Khrushchevka in 1960, Moscow, Soviet Union.

Read More https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/03/09/goodbye-khrushchev

Japan New Wave Public Housing

Kowa Danchi Offers a Renewed Vision of Housing Projects in Japan

The Kowa Public Apartment Complex was planned in Mihama, a coastal town in Aichi prefecture that has suffered from depopulation. A number of 2 and 3-story danchi buildings built in the 1950s plagued with structural deterioration and vacancies were to be torn down and replaced. But rather than building up, the town wanted to prioritize a warmer style of living that was closer to the ground. One that would be friendly to parents raising children but also seniors.

source: https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2018/11/12/kowa-danchi-public-housing-mihama/