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The Executive Director of the Chilean firm Elemental has won the highest architecture award, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Alejandro Aravena was praised by Tom Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation (which sponsors the award), for his ingenuity in tackling major social issues — such as the global housing crisis — through design.
Himself a former member of the Pritzker Prize jury, the 48-year-old architect has earned a reputation for collaboration. Elemental has developed over 2,500 units of social housing in Latin America by working directly with local governments and communities to harness local knowledge and alleviate social deprivation. The Chilean government tasked the firm with developing social housing units that would increase in value rather than depreciate. The firm's solution was an incremental approach, in which they built only half of the structure and then left the remainder to be built by its residents.
This method was employed in Quinta Monroy, Iquique, where a paltry $7,500 government subsidy was allocated for each unit's land and construction in a 93-family housing development. The top and bottom floors of the buildings were constructed, including the kitchen and bathroom. Leaving space for future expansion, the residents were responsible for building the remaining living areas, and subsequently raising the value of the property while ensuring pride of ownership.
Aravena has also applied his innovative techniques to areas devastated by natural disasters. Given only 100 days to create a master plan for Constitución, which was damaged by the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, Aravena and his firm worked directly with the community to craft improved disaster-proof housing. The very instrument that caused the devastation, nature, turned out to be the solution: the firm developed a forest of trees to help protect the area from flooding. Again utilizing the principle of incrementality and participatory design, the resulting 484 dwellings set aside half of their structural frames for expansion.
In addition to his strong housing portfolio, Aravena has taken on private and educational projects in Chile and around the world. The UC Innovation Center at Santiago's Universidad Católica de Chile borrows ideas from brutalism with its concrete form. The 14-storey building's facade features numerous recesses which allow air flow into the structure. It avoids the typical contemporary glass-clad wall systems that are generally associated with solar heat gain.
On the same campus, Aravena and his team were asked to design a glass tower, but they came up with something different citing the challenges posed by Santiago's climate. Dubbed the Siamese Tower, the outer skin of the building is glazed, but another internal skin maintains the energy efficiency Aravena had been seeking. His other projects, like the St. Edward's University Dorms in Austin, opt for rougher exterior textures, moving towards the softer use of glass for interior spaces.
Aravena's emphasis on local materials and expertise to solve global problems has certainly served him well. He is the first Pritzker laureate from Chile, and he joins a growing list of award winners from Latin America, after Luis Barragán, Oscar Niemeyer, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha took home the prize in 1980, 1988 and 2006, respectively.
What do you think of Aravena's work? Can his social housing model be used successfully in your city? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
