Elemental Monterrey

“Public money allows to build 36m2. The market designs that as if it was a small house. We thought of reframing the problem: what if 36m2 are thought as half of a good house instead of a small one? Once the problem is reframed, the key question is which half do we do?”, Alejandro Aravena asks. ELEMENTAL Monterrey uses the strategy of investing state resources to build “the difficult half” of the home, the one that requires coordination. Given that almost 50 percent of the square meters of the complex will be self-built, it allows for growth to occur within the structure and within people’s (economic) capabilities. By using the old 1970’s incremental housing, an open system was introduced that allows a family’s own capacity of action and selfconstruction to be added to the solution. This openness dissolves the old critique to social housing, namely the monotonous repetition of solutions which is unable to accommodate the diversity of needs, preferences and expectations of people. “The design of ELEMENTAL Monterrey takes a different approach to a complex problem, and it is clear that the design team considered the whole system. Normally you’d use 30 percent of the development budget to buy the land, and 70 percent to build the house. In this case, they used 80 percent to buy the land, in the city, closer to where people work, which allows for less commuting, and only 20 percent to build the house. This ensures that residents can save substantial sums of their limited disposable which all together creates a new and very interesting value transfer”, the INDEX: Jury explains.