The power of architecture to change the world is an idea that many a design student believes in. Recently, an inspirational speech given by Professor Irma Ramirez at U.C. Berkeley regarding her and her students’ work on a Low Cost Sustainable Tijuana Housing Prototype, is helping to reinforce that belief. The prototype was built using local accessible materials and passive heating/cooling systems at a minimal cost while being socially responsive to the communities’ needs; a poverty stricken immigrant population on the Mexico-US border.

Reminiscent of Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio, the Tijuana project has an even tighter construction budget of < $1000, and is limited to using materials and building systems that local residents can reproduce and utilize according to their own needs.

The design is an academic collaboration with architecture students at Cal Poly Pomona, the John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies, Corazon (a local non-profit), and families in Tijuana, Mexico. Their work won them the NCARB prize in 2008.

See the presentation boards here

December 04, 2009, 7:25am  Comments