housing – AAAA magazine

The experiment of Community

Spangen State de J.P. Oud – Rotterdam ©Pablo Abad Fernández

<<The three of them went upstairs to the “Saddam’s block”, as everyone calls that building in popular argot. Some visionary and cheap Gropius, a middling urbanist, thought that the blocks in the suburbs were structured so ingeniously that, sooner or later, the upper classes would go crazy for living somewhere like this. And, as result of this revolutionary idea, the block where Simpel is living with his family is located in one of the better districts; it’s the worst kind of building, and the aforementioned urbanist, in his blind faith, had to fight for his vision-of-a-block-of-family-housing-for-the-upper-class as if he was fighting for his own life, in order for the building to be constructed in this district. (…)

No one likes the block; and the people who live in the district don’t like the people in the block; just as the people in the block don’t like the people in the district; and, at the same time, the people in the districtdon’t like the block, and the people in the block don’t like the block itself, and they don’t even like themselves. >>

Cocka-Hola Company,Matias Faldbakken

I have been lucky enough to visit several examples of blocks of flats designed by some of the most important architects. I have visited, photographed, observed and walked around them, some of them from the outside and others also inside. I remember with huge interest and admiration El Ruedo by Sáenz de Oíza in Madrid, the Unités d’Habitation by Le Corbusier for Marsella and Berlin, the Spangen State by Oud in Rotterdam or the social dwellings by Siza in Oporto.

Do these blocks really work?

15/08/2014

Español

Popular Architecture: Earth housing… out-dated?

Earth Housing could be considered the paradigm of both human adaptation to the environment and the utilization of its resources. Yet, as is often the case with ‘natural’ housing models, it has been disregarded as ‘sub-standard housing’ for far too many years.

This has brought us to a situation in which Earth Housing continues to be overlooked by current regulations. Even though in this article we will be focussing on Andalucía (Spain) and its challenges regarding Earth Housing, it is important to consider that this model of habitat has sheltered millions of people all around the globe since prehistoric times: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Sub-Saharan Sahel, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, China, Tibet, Mexico, California, Turkey, the Balkans, Sicily, France, Sardinia, Spain…

As we can see, earth houses are often found in arid areas with very specific conditions, not only in a natural and climatic sense but also social and economic.

In Spain earth houses are spread throughout the majority of the country, but it’s in Andalusia where they take on a special importance since they are still used as the default way of living for much of the population.

03/02/2014