The social system of the house. In the consolidated informal dwellings of Guayaquil

Abstract

The post-pandemic crisis of contemporary housing, triggered by COVID-19, only but extends, to the entire world, many of the questions in which, permanently, housing is immersed within, in an ongoing crisis of developing countries. How to make houses more shareable, flexible, transformable, productive, participatory, livable, etc.? In that sense, by studying low-income housing in these countries, it is possible to analyze alternatives to the current dwellings, that arise from informality as a response to those questions shared worldwide today. This article describes part of a research carried out at Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, which analyzes the physical and social transformations in consolidated informal dwellings within the city center. The techniques used, include planimetric surveys of case studies, interviews to users, and mapping out the use of the dwellings throughout the day. The analysis focuses on the interaction exerted between several nuclear families inside the dwelling and their objects. Thus describing a habitat transformational and production system linked to objects, where the dwelling is understood as a social system of objects and people, in continuous interaction and transformation.