Hasta La Ideas

Architecture for Humanity Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Village of Igaraí in Brazil have just launched 1.99 Real Housing: Communities + Designers, an open platform competition attempting to locate that middle ground between “top-down and bottom-up systems” in public and emergency housing development.

Designers, makers and thinkers from all over the world are invited to work directly with a group of residents in Igaraí, Brazil who currently live in a public housing development that isn’t working out so well. The title of the competition, 1.99 Real Housing, is based on the nickname locals have developed for the type of structures they live in, “R$1.99”, based on the popular R$1.99 stores (Brazil’s US dollar store equivalent) and a reference to the cheap and flimsy construction of their current homes.

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