ALEJANDRO ARAVENA, THEARCHITECT REBUILDING A

COUNTRY
SUMMARY
THE EARTHQUAKE, one of the biggest ever recorded, hit in the
middle of a late February night in 2010. More than 500 people
died. Residents were left without homes, electricity and clean water.
The architect Alejandro Aravena was on a helicopter days later, surveying the
damage. His firm, Elemental, and a team of consultants had been enlisted to
put together a reconstruction plan.
We dont think of ourselves as artists, he adds. Architects like to build
things that are unique. But if something is unique it cant be repeated, so in
terms of it serving many people in many places, the value is close to zero.
Climate change is reshaping the globe. For architects, todays challenges and
opportunities are historic. In the name of artistic freedom, architects made
themselves irrelevant, Aravena says. I think we may look back and see this
as a tipping point.
If so, one place well look to is Constitucin. After the tsunami, construction
companies there floated the predictable and self-serving idea of erecting an
immense protective sea wall, which would have made a kind of fortress, or
prison, of the ravaged riverfront.
Then Aravena presented residents with a choice: Build the wall and rebuild
the houses destroyed along the river, or get nearly everything else they asked
for, for millions less. Relocate displaced families and make the waterfront
into a public forest, Elemental proposed.
Looking back, Aravena says, the sea wall would have provoked riots because
it would not have done what people wanted. The participatory process
revealed public priorities, of which the tsunami turned out to be last.
But then we drove up to Villa Verde, a housing project Elemental designed
for a number of the displaced residents of Constitucin and others.
Incremental housing, its called: a response to scarcity. Elementals first
incremental housing project was in Iquique, in northern Chile, in 2003. The
government puts up money for a new home, but not enough to cover the cost
of land, construction and a place much bigger than a studio apartment.

So Elemental provides half a good house. Residents get what they couldnt
easily build or pay for on their own: a two-story, two-bedroom home, with
roof, kitchen and bathroom plus an equivalent empty space next to it.
And it transforms what is often a deteriorating commodity the social
housing project into a generator of new wealth. The state puts up $22,300.
Poor families, who buy these homes for $700, put in two or three thousand
dollars to customize the second half and voil. Equivalent-sized houses on
the open market here can sell for more than $100,000. Residents of Villa
Verde, who had next to nothing, gain equity.

Alejandro
Aravena

The Architect
rebuilding a country

THE EARTHQUAKE

one of the biggest ever

recorded, hit in the middle
of a late February night in
2010.

Chile happens to be
producing some of the
worlds most gifted
architects

Cecilia Puga, Sebastian

Irarrazaval, Pezo von
Ellrichshausen, Mathias
Klotz, Teresa Moller,
Smiljan Radic

We dont think of
ourselves as artists,

Architects like to build

things that are unique. But
if something is unique it
cant be repeated, so in
terms of it serving many
people in many places,
the value is close to zero.

The Constitucin.

After the tsunami,

construction companies
there floated the
predictable and selfserving idea of erecting an
immense protective sea
wall, which would have
made a kind of fortress, or
prison, of the ravaged
riverfront.

Villa Verde

The government puts up

money for a new home,
but not enough to cover
the cost of land,
construction and a place
much bigger than a studio
apartment. So Elemental
provides half a good
house.