Dr Felipe Hernandez "Housing the Poor in Latin America: Changing Attitudes towards Urban Informality"

ABSTRACT: This seminar will examine four case studies that show the innovative ways in which contemporary architects throughout Latin American are responding to the challenge of building for the poor. The analysis of these four cases also highlights a significant shift in governmental policy. Instead of the large relocation schemes that were common in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, today there is an increasing tendency to tackle social housing via small-scale projects directed to specific communities. Small-scale projects help to reduce the cost of investment, shorten construction times, minimize effect on the rest of the city and, more importantly, allow architects to address the needs of particular groups. BIOGRAPHY: Felipe Hernández is an Architect and lecturer in architectural design, history and theory at the University of Cambridge. He has an MA in Architecture and Critical Theory and received his PhD from the University of Nottingham. Felipe taught previously in the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, and has also taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), the Universities of Nottingham, East London and Nottingham Trent. He is the author of Beyond Modernist Masters: Contemporary Architecture in Latin America (Birkhäuser 2009) and Bhabha for Architects (Routledge 2010). He is also co-editor of Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America (Berghahn 2009) and Transculturation: Cities, Space and Architecture in Latin America (Rodopi 2005).