NFF Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop 14-18 November 2022, First Edition Supported by: Contents Report
4 6 7 8 9 16 Workshop Report Contents 23 27 42 44 46 54 1. Workshop Introduction Norman Foster Foundation Supported by the Holcim foundation for Sustainable Construction Workshop Statement by Stuart Smith 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Academic Body Selection Process of Scholars 2. Workshop Development Scholars’ Introductions Seminars Public Debates Working Sessions Mobile Workshops, Tours and Talks 3. Outcomes Scholars’ Final Presentations
Norman Foster Foundation Supported by the Holcim Foundation for Sustainbale Construction Workshop Statement by Stuart Smith 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Academic Body Selection Process of Scholars 1. Workshop Introduction
Page 4 Norman Foster Foundation Goals and Governance The Norman Foster Foundation promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations anticipate the future. The first mission of the Norman Foster Foundation is to promote the importance of architecture, infrastructure and urbanism for the betterment of society. To this end, the second mission is to encourage new thinking and research across traditional boundaries to help younger generations anticipate the challenges of future change. The Foundation holds the Norman Foster Archive and Library, which provide a window into the larger narrative and history of our built environment through the work of Norman Foster. This is complemented and supported by drawings and models from other significant architects such as Tadao Ando, Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller, Zaha Hadid, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Richard Rogers and Mies van der Rohe. The Norman Foster Foundation is based in Madrid and operates globally. Norman Foster Foundation Board of Trustees President Norman Foster Vice President Elena Ochoa Foster Trustees Richard Burdett Norman Foster Elena Ochoa Foster Paola Foster Fiona Shackleton Belinda Tato General Secretary David González Márquez American Friends of the Norman Foster Foundation Chairman Norman Foster President David Fialkow Secretary and Treasurer Hume Steyer Honorary Trustees Diego del Alcázar Deborah Berke Michael Bloomberg Vishaan Chakrabarti Eugenio Galdón Jonathan Ive Carlos Loring Martínez de Irujo Gregorio Marañón y Bertrán de Lis Gilbert C. Maurer Mohsen Mostafavi Neri Oxman Kenneth Rogoff Deyan Sudjic Advisory Board Beatriz Colomina Hugo Corres Estrella de Diego Niall Ferguson Kenneth Frampton Paul Goldberger Francis Kéré Kent Larson Jonathan Ledgard Maya Lin Amory B. Lovins Marc Newson Hans Ulrich Obrist Tim Stonor Directors Richard Cashin David Fialkow Norman Foster Elena Ochoa Foster Richard Grogan 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 5 Norman Foster Foundation Education + Research Programme The Norman Foster Foundation is a research centre with a strong commitment to education rooted in Norman Foster’s own passion for teaching in his early years of practice, when he taught at London’s Architectural Association (AA), the Regent Street Polytechnic and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Architecture. Since then, he has continued to regularly lecture around the world. Through its research initiatives and programmes, the Norman Foster Foundation encourages the transfer of advanced knowledge in a wide range of design fields. The Foundation’s educational initiatives are structured around research, seminars, fellowships and forums around the Foundation’s core objectives. This Workshop was organised by the following Units of the Norman Foster Foundation: Architecture, Design and Technology Unit Palmira Carnero Alberto Cendoya Diego López Modelmaking Unit Camila Chamorro Natalia Olivera Exhibitions Unit Esperanza Pino Archive and Library Units James Jago Irene Pedrazuela Alicia Valdivieso Education + Research Unit Irene Martín Diego Tobalina Claudia Zambrano Communication Unit Celia Redondo Santiago Riveiro 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 6 Supporter of the 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction helps to drive systemic change towards a more sustainable built environment. It was founded in 2003 to define and promote the key principles of sustainability for the construction sector and is committed to accelerating the sector’s transformation so that people and the planet can thrive. The Holcim Foundation has investigated various aspects of sustainable housing via a series of roundtables and conferences with international experts. It has also recognised excellent contributions to the field of sustainable construction with the Holcim Awards, which are considered the world’s most significant competition for sustainable design. Affordable housing solutions will play an important role to address the effects of rapid population growth and urbanisation combined with climate change. To address this issue, the Holcim Foundation is now joining forces with the Norman Foster Foundation to support the Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop. This workshop offers a platform for the next generation of researchers and practitioners to meet in a weeklong laboratory. Talented students and experts from a range of universities and disciplines are coming together to reflect on and extend the possibilities for dignified housing solutions in cities. The workshops will work on case studies to identify challenges and propositions in relation to specific urban contexts in the world with respect to social, economic and environmental issues. Norman Foster, Laura Viscovich Representative of the Holcim Foundation and Workshop Mentor, Stuart Smith Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 7 Mentor Statement by Stuart Smith Madrid, November 2022 The foundation of sustainable development is arguably access to affordable housing. Provision of this housing is essential for people to continue to thrive in our cities through a period of rapid urbanisation. By 2030, UN-Habitat estimates that 3 billion people, about 40 percent of the world’s population, will need access to adequate housing. This translates into a demand for 96,000 new affordable and accessible housing units every day. Additionally, an estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless and one in four people live in harmful conditions that to their health, safety and prosperity. The importance of decent housing to health, education, access to basic services, economic opportunity, safety and business is well understood. However, a shortage of decent, affordable housing remains a global problem that impacts upon both developed and developing economies. Despite relative wealth, many developed regions face a shortage of affordable housing for low and middle-income populations. In the United States, for example, there is a high housing cost burden: the last census revealed 88 percent of the population spent over 30 percent of income on housing. One billion people live in slums, lacking access to water, sanitation, safe electricity and secure tenure. This number will double by 2050—the majority being absorbed by developing world cities. Debates on dealing with impacts on health, environment, economy, infrastructure and security dominate the housing field. The design and construction industry must step up to this challenge with urgency. The challenge is unprecedented. We are facing rapid and unplanned urbanisation, climate change together with an energy crisis and rising cost of living, migration and the financialisation of housing. Productivity in our construction industry has remained flat for decades and we are slow to adopt new methods and technologies. We have resource scarcity leading in part to rapidly increasing material prices and a big carbon footprint associated with our traditional materials and methods. With contributions from a multidisciplinary range of leading experts, the workshop will address the provision of affordable housing in cities of different contexts globally. We will seek to explore these issues in different contexts through a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and dialogue with leading experts and through field trips within the city of Madrid to see examples in practice. Workshop Mentor Stuart Smith, during his introduction at the Norman Foster Foundation’s library 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Workshop participants, including scholars and members of the Academic Body, with Norman and Elena Foster and members of the Norman Foster Foundation’s team Page 8 As Workshop Mentor Stuart Smith points out, the provision of Affordable Housing in our cities is central to delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals and for people to continue to thrive in our cities through a period of urbanisation. The challenge is unprecedented. We are facing rapid and unplanned urbanisation, climate change together with an energy crisis and rising cost of living, migration, and the financialization of housing. Productivity in our construction industry has remained flat for decades and we are slow to adopt new methods and technologies. With a focus on innovative design and construction, urban planning and social and public matters the Norman Foster Foundation’s 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop invited scholars and members of its Academic Body to address the provision of affordable housing in cities of different contexts globally. Considering the existing built environment as a resource for future building. With the participation of ten scholars selected to develop their projects under the mentorship of Stuart Smith, the Workshop included seven seminars given by academic professors and industry professionals, working sessions and one-on-one tutoring, as well as a guided tour of the Acciona Ombú and Reina Sofía Museum. Additionally, more than 250 guests were invited to attend the Public Debates on Wednesday 16 November, in which six members of the academic body took part. All lectures and working sessions were documented and recorded for their contents to be included in the Norman Foster Foundation’s Archive, accessible to students and researchers around the globe. Ten scholarships were awarded to students selected by the Norman Foster Foundation’s Selection Committee. The selection process began in September 2022 with an open call shared by hundreds of universities and institutions. Using criteria based on worldwide representation and gender equality, the Selection Committee announced the final selection of students representing the following institutions: University of Cape Town (UCT), Cape Town, South Africa Technishe Universitat Munchen (TUM), Munich, Germany Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Columbia University, New York, NY Institute for Advance Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Zurich, Switzerland Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop at the Norman Foster Foundation 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Members of the Academic Body, Alejandro Aravena, Tatiana Bilbao and Stuart Smith, in conversation with Norman Foster in the kitchen of the Norman Foster Foundation Page 9 Academic Body Norman Foster President, Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid, Spain and London, United Kingdom Stuart Smith Workshop Mentor Director, Arup Germany, Berlin Germany Alejandro Aravena Executive Director, ELEMENTAL, Santiago, Chile; ELEMENTAL Copec Chair, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Peter van Assche Founding Principal, bureau SLA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Lector of Architecture and Circular Thinking, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tatiana Bilbao Principal, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico Jonathan Ledgard Founder, Rossums Studio, Lausanne, Switzerland; Director, Afrotech Future Africa Initiative (Afrotech-EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland Susana Saiz Director, Arup Spain, Madrid, Spain Maria Vassilakou Former Vice Mayor, Vienna, Austria Mobile Workshop Arenas Basabe Palacios Arquitectos, Madrid, Spain Javier Camacho and Maria Eugenia Maciá, Founding Directors, cmA Arquitectos, Madrid, Spain; Professors of Architectural and Construction Projects, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain Francisco Javier Sáenz Guerra, Professor of Architecture and Design, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 10 Academic Body Members Stuart Smith Workshop Mentor Director, Arup Germany. Berlin, Germany Stuart Smith contributes to the themes of circular economy in the built environment, regenerative design and the development of low-carbon buildings through active projects, research and thought leadership to clients and organisations. Working as structural engineer for Arup, based in Berlin, he has been engaged in the design of some of the world’s most challenging building projects including CCTV with OMA in Beijing and Perez Art Museum Miami with Herzog de Meuron. He has experimented with prototype buildings such as the Wikihouse; the world’s first open source, digitally printed house built and The Circular Building in 2016 that explored the application of circular economy principles to the built environment. He is a member of the Board of the Holcim Foundation and is currently collaborating with the Norman Foster Foundation on various projects including the masterplan for the reconstruction of Kharkiv in Ukraine. Alejandro Aravena Executive Director, ELEMENTAL, Santiago, Chile; ELEMENTAL Copec Chair, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Alejandro Aravena graduated as an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992. Between 2000 and 2005 he was a professor at Harvard University, where ELEMENTAL originated. ELEMENTAL is a Do Tank founded in 2001, lead by Alejandro Aravena with partners Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó and Diego Torres. In 2010 he was named an Honorary International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Since 2011, he has been a member of the Council of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics (LSE). In 2014, he gave a TED Global Talk. The work of Aravena and ELEMENTAL has been recognised with - among other awards - the Silver Lion at Venice Biennale in 2008 and the Gothenburg Award for sustainability in 2017. In 2016, Aravena was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Since 2020, he has been President of the Jury for the same award. more recently at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Mori Gallery, in Tokyo and the MAK in Vienna. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 11 Academic Body Members Peter van Assche Founding Principal, bureau SLA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Lector of Architecture and Circular Thinking, Amsterdam University of the Arts; After beginning his career in science and experimental mathematics, Peter van Assche transitioned into architecture and is now the Founding Principal of bureau SLA, an Amsterdam-based firm focused on the necessity of transitioning to a circular economy through design. The studio does not wait for commissions to be given, but builds and develops in the city in an innovative way—from their own initiatives and with their own manpower. Van Assche is the Chairman of the Committee for Architectural Review in Utrecht, Supervisor for the Utrecht station area and Professor of Architecture and Circular Thinking at the Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam. He received a Master of Information Technology (cum laude) from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) and obtained his architecture degree from the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture. He was Visiting Professor at Erfurt and at Cornell universities and, since 2022, at KIT. Tatiana Bilbao Principal, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico Tatiana Bilbao began her eponymous studio in 2004 with the aim of integrating social values, collaboration and sensitive design approaches to architectural work. The work of the office intersects with research allowing to design for diverse circumstances and in reconstruction or crisis scenarios. Prior to founding her firm, Bilbao was an Advisor in the Ministry of Development and Housing of the Government of the Federal District of Mexico City, as well as part of the General Development Directorate of the Advisory Council for Urban Development in the city. Bilbao holds a recurring teaching position at Yale University School of Architecture and has taught at Harvard University GSD, the AA and Columbia University GSAPP among others. Her work has been published in media such as The New York Times, A + U and Domus. Bilbao has been recognised with several awards, including the 2012 Kuntspreis Berlin and the 2012 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize by the LOCUS Foundation. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 12 Jonathan Ledgard Founder, Rossums Studio, Lausanne, Switzerland; Director, Afrotech Future Africa Initiative (Afrotech-EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland Jonathan Ledgard is Founding Advisor of the Norman Foster Foundation (NFF). He is a futurist thinker on advanced technology, risk and nature in emerging economies. He is particularly interested with the NFF in advanced technology solutions for towns in Africa. As a Director at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, he worked on robotics, AI and complex network systems across the tropics. His concept of medical delivery by drone has been scaled in more than a dozen countries and his affordable droneport concept was developed by Norman Foster for the 2017 Venice Biennale. Previously, he was an awardwinning foreign and war correspondent for The Economist reporting lead stories from over fifty countries and many wars. Separately, as J.M. Ledgard, he is an acclaimed literary novelist. Both Giraffe and Submergence were New York Times Book of the Year and adapted by Hollywood. Academic Body Members Susana Saiz Director, Arup Spain, Madrid, Spain Susana Saiz—PhD in Architecture, MASc in Civil Engineering, LEED AP, WELL AP and Faculty, is an architect specialised in Sustainability Advisory with twenty four years of experience. She is Director of ARUP’s Climate and Sustainability Services Portfolio within the Europe Region, as well as a Global Leader for the Human Health and Wellbeing Skills Network. She is a member of the leadership team in the Spain Group, with responsibility for innovation and development in her group. Saiz specialises in sustainability metrics and assessment and combines her advisory work with academia as an expert in whole life cycle environmental and carbon assessment methodology at post-graduate level. She leads teams on a wide range of advisory projects related to climate and sustainability as well as impacts on human health, bringing a systemic approach to problem solving. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 13 Academic Body Members Maria Vassilakou Former Vice Mayor, Vienna, Austria Maria Vassilakou is an experienced, inspiring urban leader, devoted to open, inclusive and green cities. She served as Vienna’s Vice Mayor responsible for Urban Planning, Traffic and Transport, Climate Protection, Energy and Public Participation from November 2010 to July 2019. Vassilakou envisages cities as open, green, affordable, family friendly and diverse places for life. In her nine years serving as Vice Mayor she implemented successfully a vast transformation agenda comprising numerous innovative projects, contributing substantially to Vienna’s number one position in all major international livability rankings within the last decade. Maria Vassilakou now works worldwide as an independent advisor on urban transformation. After leaving office, she founded Vienna Solutions—a network of experienced Viennese urban experts and practitioners, with whom she cooperates building flexible teams to deliver complex urban projects. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 14 Mobile Workshop Members Arenas Basabe Palacios Arquitectos Arenas Basabe Palacios is a young architecture and urbanism studio based in Madrid, Spain. Its partners Enrique Arenas Laorga, Luis Basabe Montalvo and Luis Palacios Labrador have been working together since 2006, winning more than thirty awards in architecture and urbanism competitions, including the Europan. The studio partners have given lectures in diverse institutions such as the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), the Politecnico di Milano, RWTH Aachen and Cambridge University, and have presented their work and investigation in international exhibitions; their work being published in Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Cyprus, India and Corea. Some notorious works by Arenas Basabe Palacios Arquitectos include the Siemensäcker eight-hectare neighbourhood in Vienna, the Wildgarten eleven-hectare neighbourhood also in Vienna and the CC121 collective housing project in Madrid. Javier Camacho and Maria Eugenia Macia Javier Camacho and Maria Eugenia Maciá are Spanish architects and Professors of Architectural and Construction Projects at the Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad CEU San Pablo, in Madrid, Spain. They are joint co-founders of cmA Arquitectos, also based in Madrid. Since 1998, their studio has worked intensively in the field of architecture, with a decidedly interdisciplinary profile combining interests in professional activities, research and teaching. cmA has been involved in both national and international competitions and obtained numerous accolades and awards. The studio has also carried out architecture and urban planning projects, from large-scale developments to individual commissions. Particularly noteworthy projects include the Campo de Criptana Auditorium, the Alcorcón Arts Creation Centre, the Olympic Village for Madrid 2016-2020 and social housing projects for the EMVS and the Spanish Ministry of Housing. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 15 Mobile Workshop Members Francisco Javier Saenz Guerra Francisco Javier Sáenz Guerra is a Spanish Architect and Associate Professor of Architectural Projects and Final Thesis Projects at the School of Architecture of the Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain. Sáenz graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), in 1985, where he was also awarded his PhD in 2005. Sáenz has taught and carried out research in collaborations with different universities, including ETSAM, Milan, Naples and Edinburgh. He has published several books, including Oiza: Una Capilla en el Camino de Santiago (1954), in collaboration with Museo Jorge Oteiza, and Sáenz de Oiza y Torres Blancas. From 1985 to 1999, he practiced as an architect in Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza’s studio. After that, Sáenz founded his own practice which continues to the present day. 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
01 02 03 05 08 10 04 06 07 09 Page 16 01 Ismaeel Davids, University of Cape Town (UCT), Cape Town, South Africa 02 Marcus Ming Fricke, Technische Universität München (TUM), Munich, Germany 03 Shannon Hui, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Columbia University, New York, NY, United States 04 Leticia Izquierdo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States 05 Keiron Curn de Nobriga, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States 06 Nabila Larasati Pranoto, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Zurich, Switzerland 07 Maria Papadimitraki, Advanced Computation for Architecture and Design (MaCAD), Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain 08 Amna Pervaiz, Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, US 09 Parshav Sheth, City and Technology (Cand T), Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain 10 Michael Zajakowski Uhll, Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States Selection Process of Scholars How can we best combine vernacular architecture techniques with the developments of new technologies to design affordable housing solutions? The selection process commenced in Septemer 2022 with a virtual open call for applications for which several universities from around the globe were invited to share the open call among their most outstanding students from the fields of architecture, engineering, design and technology. After receiving arround 200 applications, the first phase of the Selection Process considered 50 proposals, from which 50 students were selected for interviews. The Selection Committee met in 10 October 2022 and, after the review of all submitted applications and one-to-one interviews of preselected applicants, ten grants were awarded to students from the following universities and research centres: 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Marcus Ming Fricke Technische Universität München (TUM), Munich, Germany Marcus Ming Fricke is an Honours Graduate from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) and M.Sc. student in Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building at the Technische Universität München (TUM) in the pursuit of regenerative design. Fricke’s master thesis aids in the fundamental understanding and novel working with ecological knowledge to improve built environment planning and practice with an ecosystem service perspective to safeguard the foundations of human wellbeing. Fricke is an alumni of the Oskar von Miller Forum, an independent education initiative of the Bavarian construction industry and former Sustainability Consultant at ARUP. In 2020, Fricke co-founded the German Collaborative which represents the Living Building Challenge (LBC), the world’s most rigorous performance based green building standard. He is the German Ambassador for LBC and one of the first two Living Future Accredited professionals (LFA). Ismaeel Davids University of Cape Town (UCT), Cape Town, South Africa Ismaeel Davids is a Master of Architecture student at the University of Cape Town. The area of focus throughout his personal and academic endevours is centered around acts of resilience in the face of political and social adversity. His dissertation ‘Co-Building for a Displaced Community’ falls within the discourse of spatial justice. Further, it ignites a conversation that extends beyond the building of homes for the purposes of just shelter. He is greatly inspired by community resilience and believes that there are valuable lessons to be learned from an architecture of need. His current architectural design exploration is centred around community and individual agency, as he believes that the act of participation of the end user is essential in creating a sense of place. Page 17 Selected Scholars 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Leticia Izquierdo Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States Leticia Izquiero is an architect, urban planner and researcher on the future of cities. Currently a Masters student in the City Science group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Izquierdo is conducting research on decentralised energy systems, highperformance housing and incentive policies to cope with the current climate crisis. She also designs tangible interfaces to help achieve better urban design practices. Izquierdo was part of the United Nations (UN) Chair on Equality Policies in Science, Tech and Innovation, where she worked in public-private collaborations such as the new urban development of Madrid Nuevo Norte. She has practiced as an urban planner at EIT Climate KIC and Balkrishna Doshi Studio. Some of her projects have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale (ICT Tools for safer cities) and International Conferences on Data for Actionable Policy and Computational Social Sciences. Shannon Hui Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Columbia University, New York, NY, United States Shannon Hui is a designer and design thinker, currently, studying Urban Planning at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), with a background in Architecture and Psychology from Barnard College. Hui thrives on the exploration of multidisciplinary and multi-scalar urban mediations that centre meaningful inclusion, equity and well-being. She has served on an award-winning design team for the Van Alen Institute and New York City Council, conducted research on healthy housing for ARCHIVE Global and is co-founding a start-up for modular ADUs incubated at MIT designX. These experiences have oriented her toward a systems-thinking approach to intersectional place-making, attentive to the immense value of community-driven design and programming. Whilst born and raised in Hong Kong, her perspective of the built environment has been further nurtured by New York City. Page 18 Selected Scholars 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 19 Nabila Larasati Pranoto Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Zurich, Switzerland Nabila Larasati Pranoto is an Indonesian artist and architectural designer. She holds a Master of Architecture degree from Singapore University of Technology and Design and is currently attending a Masters in Urban and Territorial Design at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She has diverse experiences in countries like Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Singapore, working for design studios such as Balmond Studio and WOHA Architects. Her M.Arch thesis, ‘A Living Organism’, was awarded SUTD’s Best Thesis in the Sustainable Designs category and also the recipient of the 2019 Coup de Coeur Award of the Jacques Rougerie Competition. With experiences in public housing and community projects, her work revolves around the empowerment of marginalised and vulnerable communities through architecture and urbanism in Asia and beyond. Keiron Curn de Nobriga Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States Keiron de Nobriga became interested in architecture as a sculpture student at Pratt Institute. As an artist, de Nobriga was compelled by questions of space, materiality and movement. He worked as a custodian at the Isamu Noguchi Museum and his time there fostered his curiosity and deepened his appreciation for architectural spaces. De Nobriga is interested in the relationship between architecture and inequality and how architecture conceptualise and address diverse sets of inequality. He is also interested in the intersections between socioeconomic differences and computational strategies; How can architects use techniques to address economic disparity and existential or spiritual difference? Selected Scholars 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 20 Amna Pervaiz Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States Amna Pervaiz is an urban planner and an affordable-accessibleadequate housing advocate with a background in Architecture. A Fulbright Scholar from Pakistan, she is a Master’s in Urban Planning candidate at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), class of 2023, with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the National College of Arts (2019), where she graduated with Honours. She is interested in developing and preserving affordable housing through climate resiliency, fiscally healthy policy development, social and environmental justice, land use and innovative sustainable design and construction strategies founded on local knowledge, experiences and different modes of community engagement. She has experience in research, real estate non-profits, data analysis, fieldwork, architecture offices and freelancing. Maria Papadimitraki Advanced Computation for Architecture and Design (MaCAD), Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain Maria Papadimitraki is an architect with a focus on computational, environmental and urban design, Building Intelligent Modelling (BIM) and artificial intelligence in architecture. She has worked on various projects in Germany and Greece as an architect, BIM + coordinator and project leader. Since 2016, she has worked at HPP Architects in Stuttgart. Recently, Papadimitraki became a teaching assistant at the Institute for Advance Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC) for the Course ‘Digital Tools for Environmental Analysis for Architectural Design’. Papadimitraki holds a diploma degree in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a Master’s degree in Advanced Computation in Architecture and Design (MaCAD) from IaaC. As an Erasmus student, she undertook a Masters in Architecture / MArch and a Masters in Urban Design at the Hafencity University of Hamburg (HCU). Selected Scholars 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 21 Michael Zajakowski Uhll Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States Michael Zajakowski Uhll grew up in Chicago, IL, and attended Vassar College for his Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies. After graduation, Zajakowski Uhll spent a year on a research fellowship in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following that, he moved to Brooklyn, NY, to work for the New York City municipal government. In 2021, he began his Master in Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). Currently a second-year student, he is also a researcher with the Just City Lab and a writer for the Journal of the American Planning Association. His commitment to issues of affordable housing was solidified this past summer when he worked for the New York City Housing Authority and he maintains the belief that all design, especially of affordable housing, must be sensitive to context, policy and community. Parshav Sheth City and Technology (Cand T), Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain Parshav Sheth is an architect and urban researcher from Mumbai, India. He is currently pursuing a Master in City and Technology (Cand T) at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC). As part of this, he is developing his thesis on democratising city technologies by using big data as a digital urban-common for developing megacities. He has been engaged in the sculpting of sustainable narratives through tangible practices via developing projects which act as catalysts for architecture, urban design and planning, to improve the condition of human settlements in India. He envisions new forms of education in architecture and space making through strategic interventions and collective policy making. Sheth’s strategic speciality is in understanding and analysing multilateral stakeholder relationships that enable the creation of circular policies and open platforms. Selected Scholars 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Scholars’ Introductions Seminars Public Debates Working Sessions Mobile Workshop, Tours and Talks 2. Workshop Development
Page 23 Scholars’ Introductions Monday, 14 November 2022 To begin the Workshop, scholars were given the opportunity to present their backgrounds and interests to the Academic Body members by way of an introductory, five-minute presentation in which they were requested to respond to what design and construction solutions were they most excited about to solve the affordable housing crisis in the city they knew best. Scholars had to respond by identifying the nature of the problems in their chosen city and identify some of their innovative ideas to approach those problems. The presentations given in response to that challenge varied greatly and covered a diverse range of perspectives. Present in their research, however, was a visible link between the scholars’ own backgrounds and experiences and the introductory assignment given by the Mentor. Because of the diversity of the site proposals brought up by the scholars, they provided the opportunity to get in contact with the affordable housing problem in many countries, cities, scales and contexts. From Munich, to Mumbai, to Chicago, all sites posed a need for a different a specific approach. These unique and insightful proposals of sites and solutions served as a starting point for the conversations and perspectives then proposed by the Academic Body Members on which to develop new ideas. Norman Foster, Laura Viscovich and Stuart Smith in discussion with scholars and Academic Body during the scholars’ introductory presentations 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 24 Ismaeel Davids Marcus Ming Fricke Shannon Hui Slide from Davids’s presentation showing spaces of community resilience Slide from Fricke’s presentation of an urban underused land of Theresienwiese Photo from Hui’s presentation, featuring the analysis of Lok Ma Chau Loop in Hong Kong Leticia Izquierdo García Photo from Izquierdo’s presentation, showing the location of Kendal Square in Boston, United States 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 25 Keiron Curn de Nobriga Nabila Larasati Pranoto De Nobriga’s proposed site and context plan of Crown Heights in Brooklyn New York, United States Pranoto’s proposal site, Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore Maria Papadimitraki Slide from Papadimitraki’s presentation showing the current state of her site proposal in Athens, Greece Amna Pervaiz Pervaiz’s urban ‘background’ in Lahore, Pakistan 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 26 Parshav Sheth Slide from Sheth’s presentation showing urban development in Padwal Nagar, Mumbai India Michael Zajakowski Uhll Introductory slide from Zajakowski’s presentation showing East Garfield Park in Chicago United States 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 27 Monday, 14 Nov. Introduction to the Workshop Stuart Smith, Director Arup Germany, Berlin, Germany The House as a Social Care Act Tatiana Bilbao, Principal, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico Tuesday, 15 Nov. The Vienna Story Maria Vassilakou, Former Vice Mayor, Vienna, Austria From Emergency Housing to the Housing Emergency Alejandro Aravena, Executive Director, ELEMENTAL, Santiago, Chile; ELEMENTAL Copec Chair, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Wednesday, 16 Nov. Marking Time Jonathan Ledgard, Founder, Rossums Studio, Lausanne, Switzerland; Director, Afrotech Future Africa Initiative (Afrotech-EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland Thursday, 17 Nov. Architecture and Regenerative Thinking Peter van Assche, Founding Principal, bureau SLA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Lector of Architecture and Circular Thinking, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; STO Foundation Visiting Professor, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany Sustainable and Healthy Social Housing Susana Saiz, Director, Arup Spain, Madrid, Spain Seminars Content and Structure A multidisciplinary Academic Body, whose backgrounds ranged from the fields of architecture and design to politics and activism, was selected in order to provide a social, economic and environmental approach to the multiple aspects surrounding the provision of affordable housing in different contexts. The Workshop seminars were spread throughout the first four days of the workshop, providing scholars with continuous input from the Academic Body throughout the various stages of the Workshop’s development. The seminars were structured as follows: 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 28 Introduction to the Workshop Stuart Smith Stuart Smith during his introduction to the Workshop at the Norman Foster Foundation’s Library Workshop Mentor Stuart Smith began the inaugural seminar with a brief introduction on the projects he has been involved in during his long career in ARUP. Smith started the conversation on Affordable Housing by acknowledging the metrics we are dealing with nowadays. In an unprecedented growth 4,2 billion people live in cities; that sums about 55 percent of the population, and it has resulted in 1.1 billion of that people living in informal settlements or inadequate housing. Because of this, he explained, house prices have gone up and almost every city has a crisis of lack of affordable housing. He exposed there is also a political aspect to the problematic but focused on how the architecture, design and construction sectors can meet the need and improve the current situation. As emphasised by Smith, this problematic will continue to grow and by 2050—on top of the already existing shortage of housing, we are going to keep adding a bigger demand which will result in a necessity to build 100,000 houses per day to close the gap. As emphasised by Smith, it is not only about building quickly because most of the materials and technology involved in industrialised processes have bigger carbon footprints. To this end, Smith also devoted some time to unwrap the ‘tower block typology’ which has been perceived as a failure in the past but that, with careful design, planning and management, can become a good example of affordable housing. Smith emphasised how infrastructure is also key to developing affordable housing, because it is not only about the house itself, but the community, the local services and the infrastructure that determine the success of a model because most of the times people does not want to move, they just want their basic needs to be updated. To conclude, Smith also talked about the different challenges surrounding the affordable housing crisis such as the carbon footprint of the materials used, the shortage in materials or the enormous amount of waste produced by the construction industry without counting the demolitions. He concluded the seminar arguing that although ‘cities are our great invention’, our invention is far from finished and quoted Ed Glaser ‘So much of what humankind has achieved over the past three millennia has come out of the remarkable collaborative creations that come out of cities. We are a social species.’ 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 29 Introduction to the Workshop Stuart Smith Slide from Stuart Smith’s presentation Construction process of the WikiHouse, an open source modular building system Slide from Stuart Smith’s presentation on one of the solutions for the Affordable Housing Crisis 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 30 Tatiana Bilbao during her seminar, ‘The House as a Social Care Act’ Tatiana Bilbao opened her seminar stating that the importance of architecture lies in that it is the provider of a primary form of care and it shapes the way humans live. Bilbao’s main interest has always been the domestic environment as it is the most essential unit of human existence. Bilbao explained how, at least her generation, never thought of the city as a project. According to her, the most spread idea was that the city was shaped by ‘abstract or organic forces’ that are in reality ‘market forces’. Within this context, Bilbao explained how those forces are determining who lives in what territory and are therefore expelling the majority of the population out of the cities. Presenting the different model of cities that have shaped the way of living in every decade, Bilbao concluded that nowadays we live in a society shaped by consumerism, designed for humans to be as productive as possible. In that city, the house was merely a place to rest and where people depended on the infrastructure surrounding it to exist. This model has been replicated massively founded in the thought that it covered all human necessities. Bilbao exposed that housing is a Human Right that was declared by the United Nations in 1947 and that in Mexico it is a Constitutional Right. To this end, Bilbao explained that in the law they have a definition of what is a house with minimums that, because of the market, have become maximums. One of the main problems Bilbao pointed out is that the idyllic ‘dream house’ created in the United States has now become a desire for everyone that is impossible to fulfil. Bilbao proposed a new model called the city of care that puts in the centre the notions of reproductive labour, affective relations and the feminist struggle; an architectural revolution that starts with the understanding of housework, community and that respects the different ways of living. The House as a Social Care Act Tatiana Bilbao 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 31 ‘The City’ La Ciudad by tatiana Bilbao STUDIO Body Rituals (2021-ongoing) collage by Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO with Ayesha Ghosh, 2021 Territorio de Gigantes, Social Housing Complex by DOGMA, MOS, Dellekamp Arquitectos, HHF, MAIO, coordinated by Tatiana Bilbao A House, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO (2015-2019) The House as a Social Care Act Tatiana Bilbao Community Kitchen in San Simon el Alto, ReconstruirMX A House, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO (2015-2019) 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Maria Vassilakou during her seminar at the Norman Foster Foundation’s library Page 32 Maria Vassilakou opened her seminar with a summary of her goals as Vice Mayor of Vienna and how her vision always tried to look at the role of social housing in the creation of a city. Vassilakou explained that Vienna is rapidly growing and that each year they have the challenge to accommodate a population of around twenty thousand in the city. She emphasised then, that this challenge does not only include the creation of affordable housing, but also all the infrastructure needed for life, such as schools, hospitals, among other services. Vassilakou explained how the city wanted to tackle the issue of affordable housing from an urban quarters perspective, using housing strategies to develop a city that is ‘a place for life’. According to her, this way of thinking has been inherited through 100 years of housing tradition in Vienna. After World War I, the government of Vienna took on one of the most ambitious plans on housing provision, putting an emphasis in providing good life quality through the implementation of open and green spaces, communal areas, libraries and services, among other facilities directed towards modern working families. Presenting various examples, Vassilakou showed how in the masterplan of Vienna, affordable housing is at the centre of the city so that they do not have excluded communities. Vassilakou closed her seminar by enumerating the three pillars of the Vienna strategy: local land, subsidised construction and subsidised individuals that can afford the housing. The Former Vice Mayor stated that the philosophy around social housing should always have a focus on green spaces, promoting walking and cycling over vehicles with collective parking on the edges, broad social and use mix, transport access and collaborative housing projects. As a closing reflection, she identified publicprivate involvement, having a clear idea of the city that you want, strong leadership, legal tools, affordability, liveability and community involvement as key factors to their model’s success. The Vienna Story: A Century of Social Housing Tradition in the World’s N1 Maria Vassilakou 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 33 The Vienna Story: A Century of Social Housing Tradition in the World’s N1 Maria Vassilakou Reumannhof project from 1926, Vienna, Austria Wooden City Breitenlee housing project, including desirable green spaces, Vienna, Austria Affordability, livability and community, Seestadt neighbourhood in Vienna, Austria Financing Model for Affordable Housing in Vienna, Austria depicted by Vassilakou’s team Karl Marx Hof housing complex in Vienna, Austria +7.000 subsidised housing units per year, Rudolf Bednar Park in Vienna, Austria 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
Page 34 Alejandro Aravena during his seminar, pictured at the Norman Foster Foundation’s library Alejandro Aravena began his seminar by identifying what he named ‘the 3S menace’— scale, speed and scarcity of means, as the main cause behind the affordable housing crisis. As he exposed, oftentimes, the number of resources and timeframes that are provided by the funding governments are insufficient to promote efficient solutions to this pressing crisis. Architects can only work with ‘affordability’ as the type of buildings that are resultant from these conditions cannot even be called a house. To be able to fill the gap of housing demand, Aravena has come up with an Affordable Supra-Structure to ignite the process of providing housing to the population in need. This Unit of Basic Services, as Aravena calls it, consists on building the parts of the house that require more technical knowledge and leaving the structure for the rest of the house to be built on account of the owners. Aravena explained how this model breaks the cycle of affordable housing losing its value when bought; with this scheme the houses increased the value and became, not only a protection against the climate, but a tool to overcome poverty. Through different examples, Aravena explained the reasons behind slums always appearing next to cities and why creating satellite cities of affordable housing does not seem to be a good solution. As he explained, people are willing to give up on life quality to be near opportunities, jobs, schools, healthcare. Aravena then made an exercise on the importance of the different models and the practice of distributing the land in the most efficient way, taking in consideration that these houses will expand. To conclude, Aravena emphasised the importance of facts in making a successful model. For instance, he broke down, a family can live reasonably well in 80m2. However, the budget that his practice was given allowed them to solely build 40m2. This ‘half-good house’ left, however, the path for the owners to build it properly and safely. As he stated, cities reflect societies, particularly in developing countries, so setting the correct rules of play and promoting the participation of the people architecture could achieve great results. From Emergency Housing to the Housing Emergency Alejandro Aravena 2022 Cities: Affordable Housing Workshop Contents Report
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