2016 Pritzker Prize laureate Alejandro Aravena has made four of his much-celebrated social housing designs open source and free to download.

Aravena, who is also the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale creative director, has given the public domain free access to the lot layouts and divisions, plans, sections and elevations of four of his public housing designs to help counter the global housing shortage in a humane way.

The designs, says Aravena, provide a diagram for the kind of low-rise high density development needed to counter the shortage in a way that won’t force those from low socio-economic classes into poor quality buildings in the peripheries of cities. Integral to this goal, and prevalent in all four of his free designs, is the notion of Incrementality, whereby building structures are designed for expansion and growth. The ideas here is that inhabitants are encouraged to stay and improve their home as they increase their wealth rather than move to a community that has been designed to suit it.

Download the designs  or see below for more info on buildings:

QUINTA MONROY

Quinta.jpg

From the architect:


LO BARNECHEA

Lo-Barnechea.jpg

From the architect


MONTERREY

monterrey.jpg

From the architect:


VILLA VERDE

Villa-verde.jpg

From the architect