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'Released by Ethnoarchitecture.com' showcases personal - professional notes related to Ethnoarch webmaster's current work. In other words, this is Ethnoarch's blog.
The section also details new content added to the site, technical improvements and, in general, how Ethnoarch.com is going.
A building paradox
February 11, 2007
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If every architect in the world figured out how to solve the problem of housing 60 families, homelessness and slums would disappear right away. This, of course, is a fantasy. Even if it worked out, it would be necessary to build 70,000 houses per day. And it would take 65 years to finish the task. Besides, by then the deficit would be much bigger if the world's population keeps growing at its current rate.

This is a particular version of Achilles and the Turtle's paradox. We might never cope with the housing deficit. The solution to this building problem, therefore, might no be in building. The problem of housing, in fact, goes far beyond the lack of housing structures. It is a social problem to be solved from policy, more than from building. And there are very few architects today involved in shaping that policy. But we don't seem to be needed, either.

In "Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works" Sam Davis is aware of the limitations of a building-centered approach to this problem, and sets out to use building for what it's worth in this context. That is, for providing specific temporary support for people who are on the way to improve. The book makes one think however, how in a culture that has objectified so much the act of living, the solution to the housing problem is still seen by many advocates as plain object-creation.

About this article
Starting to post again some reflections here, in order to refresh the contents while I finish the invisible task of Ethnoarch's technical setup (working in this moment on the participatory area of the site). I expect to post at least one of these reflections every two weeks. They come from reading material for school.
This one talks about the world's housing deficit problem, and how it might never be completely solved because of a sort of housing-specific version of Achilles and the Turtle's paradox. But also, where are we architects, and our fondness for creating objects in the middle of that paradox?

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