RE: Poverty and Architecture
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Historically, affordable housing started to provide adequate and economical homes for people, but, sad to say, it evolves into a towering, box-like concrete structure that lost the sense of community and it seems too isolating. We see that despite good intentions to provide housing for impoverishing people, we forgot to make a built space that accounts for people and their community. We can agree that public housing can shelter us and give us opportunities for poverty reduction, but it has to be affordable and livable.
To design for poverty is designing with people first. It is a bit cliché statement, but it is relevant. Our built cities have disoriented to what matters in the design. We blindly focus on designing a space for people and not with people. We forgot that architecture is about connecting the built world, people and community, to make us comfortable and not just a mere display of aesthetics. City planners can plan out the city by having a dialogue with people and accounting for the needs of people results in better public space. When we account for people's needs, architecture becomes holistic. It is of utility, aesthetics, sustainability, and even has the power to drive someone out of poverty.
For most of the blog, I talked about poverty as a lack of machinery to support everyday life, but architecture doesn't limit that. Architecture can help the poverty of existence, lacking the vigor to live or to be feeling helpless. Material poverty may be a hard case for architecture to find a solution. But existential poverty is where architecture excels most. Again, architecture is more than sketches and aesthetics. It is about connecting our built space and us to have a better experience and motivate us. Well-designed architecture can be emotionally and spiritually uplifting. Some architecture can be a source of pride to wake up every day and strive. It can be an enriching experience that may drive us to work out of poverty.
Dear @juecoree, Do you think architecture can bridge the gap between the rich and the poor in society?
Your idea is great! However, in reality, many constructions and buildings are being used as speculative products by the rich.
So, many poor people often live in prefabricated buildings such as containers.
In the area where I live, many poor people live in containers.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-economy-middleclass-insigh-idUSKCN2520K8