Prefabrication experiments - 407 - Incremental Housing

 

Open Building theory encompasses several concepts that mark out a prospective systemic adaptability in a building’s design and production: modular construction details, flexible planning principles and user participation. Founded on the idea that malleable and interoperable systems could evolve readily according to changing needs or requirements during a building's lifespan, the theory recommends fluid or circular processes rather than fixed linear ones. Planning for change in function and lifestyle requires a holistic view of how patterns fluctuate over time. Open building protagonists have developed products, techniques, and methods to mitigate the waste that usually goes along with inevitable change.  

 

Two approaches that are sometimes related to open building and adapting to change are unfinished housing and core-housing which relate to the supply of necessary functional elements around which a more complex system could stem. Both strategies are extracted from understanding that populations might not have the resources or the need to build a complete housing infrastructure from the onset. 

 

Incremental housing, a combination of unfinished and core, has been promoted by Priztker Prize winning architect, Alejandro Aravena in multiple projects as an instruction manual to develop resilient communities from first core-service elements to planning strategies for aggregating all appended spaces over time. A series of predetermined elements (basic needs) designed as linear, radial, or dynamic arrangements outline networks onto which private and individual units can organically take shape matching their community’s evolutions. 

 

Incremental housing also involves indetermined spaces that are added, adapted, constructed, or deconstructed over time. Gradual adaptations link two complementary spaces, a first step core and an adjacent flexible space. From this simple juxtaposition, neighborhoods could expand horizontally or vertically. This core principle has informed many experiments in developing countries where informal or even crisis planning principles sometimes impede the bulk supply and rationalized procurement of edifices. Planning informal, undetermined infrastructure over 5, 10,15 years commands systematic governance where inhabitants are given authority over certain types of changes made to their environment while other modifications are approved by the group. A symbiotic relationship between collective and individual is the most basic criteria of incremental house planning.    

 

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