Harnessing the Opulence within: Re-positioning the quest for housing the economically disadvantaged

Abstract

This paper argues that designing for the economically disadvantaged should perhaps be built on the resilience, resourcefulness, and survival skills of the poor. This would require a repositioning of our perceptions - of both professionals and the poor alike - on many facets of housing the poor. It advocates that architecture for the deprived should be considered a culture-supportive design process, in which we attempt to (a) empower the communities; (b) focus on small-scale localized efforts; (c) emphasize incremental improvement of living standards; (d) perhaps, begin to work with substandard living conditions in place of holding contempt for them; and (e) reconsider values attributed to certain materials, technology, and spatial aspects in order to harness their sustainable and functional merits. The paper then illustrates this thesis based on two community designs created by a group of architecture students from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, USA for housing two disadvantaged groups in Sri Lanka: a tea plantation worker community in the central hills and a tsunami-affected community along the southern coast.