Dwelling with the Other Half
Architectural Education for the Design of Affordable Housing in the Global South
Nelson J.A. Mota (TU Delft - Public Building and Housing Design)
Dirk van Gameren (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
This essay reviews critical design pedagogies developed recently to explore the complexities of designing affordable housing in the global South. The essay examines in particular the pedagogical approach and the student work produced for the Global Housing design studios, offered by the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the TU Delft (The Netherlands). The essay discusses the extent to which TU Delft's Global Housing studios contributed to build up an alternative approach to the methodological protocols inherited from the 'techno-social' moment that dominated architectural education in the postwar period. The essay concludes that the Global Housing studios' combination of critical accounts of vernacular social and spatial patterns of inhabitation with disciplinary methods and positions inspired by cross-cultural practices plays a key role in the student's projective methodology, avoiding the pitfalls of paternalist 'social models' of design education.