
The concept of fast, cheap, integrated housing is fleeting unless it is strictly regulated, flexible and profitable to do so. Due to low cost construction, sub-standard design and low maintenance, housing in this range often results in overcrowded, unsightly and unhygienic conditions. Inevitably, neighboring real estate values fall, squatter or slums might develop and incidences of petty crime might increase.
Sunday, 10 July 2016
Monday, 4 January 2016
French Social Housing Experiments (1950s-1980s)
The Fading "Grands Ensembles" of Paris
Laurent Kronental's Souvenir d'un Futur photos capture these stigmatized housing experiments and their aging residents.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Paris erected a series of massive apartment complexes to address a burgeoning housing crisis and accommodate an influx of foreign immigrants after WWII. Once seen as impressive manifestations of modern and postmodern ideology, these days the buildings are often stigmatized by the public and in the media, viewed largely as places of unemployment, delinquency, and exclusion.



Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3052176/exposure/the-fading-grands-ensembles-of-paris




Tuesday, 3 November 2015
"Gwapotel" transient worker housing solution in Metro Manila
Gwapotel is a portmanteau of gwapo, Filipino term which means good-looking, and hotel. The word is used by Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Bayani Fernando to a worker's inn he founded in the old refurbished 4 story building which formerly houses the National Power Corporation located along Bonifacio Drive, Port Area, Manila.
Presently, it has been renamed as the MMDA Worker's Inn, and is in operation.
First Gwapotel[edit]
On September 6, 2007, Chairman Fernando said that the “Gwapotel Inn” (Overnight stay: P20 a night, P5 a bath) run by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority has become a big hit with transients due to safe and decent lodgings. 40,000 transients have registered in the 4-story “hotel” on Bonifacio Drive, Port Area, Manila, since its May 14, 2007 opening. The 710-bed inn, painted in Mr. Fernando's signature pink and blue, posted an average occupancy rate of 73%, or 519 guests daily. The overnighters share a common sleeping area with double-deck beds.[1]
Now under the current chairmanship of MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino, they renovated and upgraded the Gwapotel in 2015, adding more amenities, improvements, and CCTV cameras.
Second Gwapotel[edit]
On December 23, 2007, Chairman Bayani Fernando announced the building of a 2nd Gwapotel: a 3-story lodging house at Tondo, Manila, in the abandoned 2,800-sq.m. Emmanuel Hospital at Jose Abad Santos St. Renovation started in January 2008, and is expected to be completed by May 1, 2008 (coinciding with Labor Day). [2]
Unfortunately, this branch was closed down due to low occupancy, and its facilities were donated to various institutions. The area is now the agency's training barracks.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwapotel
Sunday, 9 November 2014
Typhoon Haiyan: 1 Year On: 205,000 Families still without Homes
By Raul Dancel Philippines Correspondent In Manila
Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest typhoon to make landfall in recorded history, left a trail of destruction and some 6,300 deaths across central Philippines. President Benigno Aquino has come under fire for having very little to show since Haiyan devastated communities in 171 cities and towns. By his government's own estimate, 205,128 families are still living in bunkhouses, tents and shanties in "unsafe areas". However, only 1,252 houses have been built for them. In Tacloban city, a provincial capital that Haiyan nearly wiped off the map, around 400 families have refused to leave a "no-build zone" that stretches 40m from the coasts wrapping the city. Also, only 50 families have so far been relocated to permanent shelters out of more than 14,500 still hunkered down in evacuation centres in the city. Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez said he is hoping construction of a new "township" for these families can be finished by 2017, but he conceded that problems over expropriating private land and scarcity of manpower and construction materials could delay the project by 10 years.
Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest typhoon to make landfall in recorded history, left a trail of destruction and some 6,300 deaths across central Philippines. President Benigno Aquino has come under fire for having very little to show since Haiyan devastated communities in 171 cities and towns. By his government's own estimate, 205,128 families are still living in bunkhouses, tents and shanties in "unsafe areas". However, only 1,252 houses have been built for them. In Tacloban city, a provincial capital that Haiyan nearly wiped off the map, around 400 families have refused to leave a "no-build zone" that stretches 40m from the coasts wrapping the city. Also, only 50 families have so far been relocated to permanent shelters out of more than 14,500 still hunkered down in evacuation centres in the city. Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez said he is hoping construction of a new "township" for these families can be finished by 2017, but he conceded that problems over expropriating private land and scarcity of manpower and construction materials could delay the project by 10 years.
In a briefing paper, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Rehabilitation and Recovery defended the pace of reconstruction in the Philippines, saying it has, in fact, been faster than in Banda Aceh in Indonesia, after it was hit by a tsunami in 2004.It said it took two years before Banda Aceh could transition from relief to reconstruction. Most of the rebuilding so far is being done by international aid groups and private foundations, including the Singapore Red Cross, which has raised $12.26 million to fund 87 programmes for some 1.5 million people. Today, Tacloban will mark a year since Haiyan struck with a "candlelight memorial".Thousands are expected to light 24,000 candles along a 24km stretch from the city airport to a memorial park where more than 2,000 of those who died in the city last year were buried.
The powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has declared today a "national day of prayer", instructing all Catholic churches in the archipelago to simultaneously ring their bells at 6pm. A "climate change envoy", meanwhile, will end his one- month, 1,000km march from Manila in Tacloban. Mr Naderev Sano, the Philippine representative to the United Nations' climate change negotiations, and 12 others have been travelling an average of 25km a day since leaving Manila. He made world headlines last year when he fasted during the annual summit in Poland to protest against the lack of meaningful progress on global warming.
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
Akitek Tenggara's legacy
676 experimental two-storey houses, each with a small garden of 13 square metres, were completed in 1976 by Akitek Tenggara's preeminent Tay Kheng Soon and Chung Meng Ker. It was the result of a critical morphological study into alternatives to high-rise and walk-up apartments at densities of up to plot ratio of 2:1. What Cheras showed is that a plot ratio of 0.68:1 is possible at a cost significantly lower than for medium and high-rise solutions. High-density low-rise can even be attractive given its ground-hugging typology. To date, after nearly 20 years and with minimum maintenance, the project still looks reasonably well-maintained. With its tree-lined roads and paths, and little sign of vandalism, it has matured. It also shows that 144 ground-based dwellings, each with a private garden, can be accommodated for each hectare of land.
http://www.akitektenggara.com/projects/cheras/cheras.htm
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
Paper Housing - Shigeru Ban
Master Architect ! Emergency Shelters and Housing TED TALK

Source: http://www.architectural-review.com/Pictures/web/v/s/t/Shigeru_Ban_Col_0_390.jpg
Source: http://www.architectural-review.com/Pictures/web/v/s/t/Shigeru_Ban_Col_0_390.jpg
Friday, 15 March 2013
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