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Adaptable, Expandible, Assisted Self-Build

Site

Monte Sinaí, Guayaquil, Ecuador

 

Main Materials 

Bamboo, Cement blocks 

 

Project Leader 

Dr. Leandro Minuchin

 

 

Designers 

Patrik Cronin

Aida Rodriguez-Vega

Tamara Yazigi

Ellie Shouer

Eira Capelán

 

 

 

Collaborators

Neighbours of Monte Sinaí

MIDUVI - Ministry of Housing

Hogar de Cristo - NGO

 

 

 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Sinaí Urbanizado y Adaptable [SUYA] is a joint project between Material Politics, the NGO Hogar de Cristo and the Ecuadorean Ministry of Housing. The project aims to develop typological and material solutions for the crafting and production of affordable, adaptable and expandable social housing units in the settlement of Monte Sinaí, on the North-Western peripheries of Guayaquil, Ecuador.

 

The objective was to develop a constructive system, assembled through revalued materials, with the aim to assist and empower the process of self-build in the settlement.

With the view of providing rapid and improved material and infrastructural solutions, the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, has sought to empower self-build initiatives. The aim is not only to use a standardized constructive system, but to include local organizations and cooperatives in the production process. Moving away from models which structure the urbanizing process around housing solutions, this project moves the focus to the socio-political dimensions embedded in the construction process. In an area where locals have extended constructive knowledges, the aim of the project is to present the expansion of productive units linked to material and component production as nodes of sociability and to reposition local groups as key actors in the spatial production of their surroundings.

Follow the construction process of the prototype below

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