Housing Solutions Through Design

Housing Solutions through Design explores housing design with a special focus on affordability. It gives the perspectives of academics who research and teach on housing; professionals who design and build, and students who are learning. The book foregrounds innovative approaches of the designers of today and tomorrow.

This book is the second in the Housing the Future Series, one of the aims of which is to collate a broad sample of the work being done from a design perspective in universities across the world on the issue of affordable housing. This very ‘real’ engagement with the issues of housing affordability is a key component of this series and is why the series invites practitioners to discuss their work. In Housing Solutions through Design, those practitioners include an award-winning commercial practice from the UK, Shed KM, and two of the most important reference points in the area of housing affordability and community development internationally – the world-renowned Herman Hertzberger, from the Netherlands, and the US-based but internationally active Habitat for Humanity. The inclusion of the work of such practices is not simply important because of their undoubted international status: it is important because of the work they do and the role models they represent for a generation of architects and designers who, in the coming years, will be faced with the need – and the opportunity – to develop new approaches to housing design.

Graham CairnsDr Graham Cairns has taught at universities in Spain, the UK, Mexico, South Africa and Gambia. He has worked in architectural studios in London and Hong Kong. The author and editor of five books, he has delivered keynote talks internationally and has published multiple articles on architecture, film and advertising in scholarly journals. Previously, he also ran a research-based performing arts company, Hybrid Artworks, with a specialism in video installation and performance. Currently, he is based at Columbia University, New York and is Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is principal editor of the scholarly journal Architecture_MPS and director of the research group AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society).
Kirsten DayDr Kirsten Day is a registered architect, lecturer (Interior Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology) and researcher (Centre for Design Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology). She has worked as a researcher in solar technology, and brings those skills to her practice.
Christakis ChatzichristouDr Christakis Chatzichristou is currently an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Cyprus. Awarded a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies at the University College London in 2002, he has taught at Pratt in New York (visiting professor, Spring 2010), the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University (2002–2003).