Designing Homes For the World’s Poor

BA VI, Vietnam — Just below a hilltop pagoda, steel frames the size of two- car garages were popping up on a bluff that overlooked a valley of electric-green rice paddies.

They were prefabricated homes designed by the Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia, and the construction team said it was impressed by the speed of its own handiwork: nearly one frame hoisted per hour, including smoke breaks, and largely without power tools.

“Looks like Legos, and it’s easy to install,” said Nguyen Duc Trung, a supervisor.

“Much easier than building a normal house,” said one of the workers, Le Van Dung. Far cheaper, too: a small fraction of the $35,000 that he said it would cost to build a home in his northern Vietnamese village.

Known as “S Houses,” for “strong, sustainable and steel,” these prefab structures going up here in Ba Vi, about 50 kilometers from Hanoi, are iterations of a prototype that Mr. Nghia has been honing since about 2013. They will serve as the living quarters for a new Buddhist meditation center.

But Mr. Nghia says that his plan is to mass-manufacture this portable, easy-to-assemble design for people in slums, remote areas or refugee camps around the world, beginning later this year, for the starting price of $1,500.

“We architects always do designs for clients with lots of money, but there are a lot of needs” in poor communities as well, said Mr. Nghia, whose work often transposes Japanese- style minimalism to a Southeast Asian context. His staff says it is fielding inquiries from prospective buyers as far away as Peru, Nigeria, Vanuatu, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Mr. Nghia, 40, said the S House was designed to last at least 30 years and to withstand tropical storms like the ones his “super poor” family once experienced in their farming village. “That’s really important,” he said. Otherwise, villagers will “spend their lives building houses over and over.”

Mr. Nghia is the latest high-profile architect to design an inexpensive, prefabricated home as an antidote to urban sprawl, mass displacement or natural disasters. Experts say the S House is one of several projects worldwide that highlight a rising social consciousness in the profession at a moment when the estimated number of displaced people worldwide — 65.6 million last year — is the highest since the aftermath of World War II.

Some of these projects are recognized as much for their form as their function. The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban designed shelters from recyclable paper tubes for victims of violence and natural disasters, for example, while the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has pioneered what he calls “incremental” social housing projects, in which residents buy half of a two- story home at a state- subsidized rate and complete it when they can.

Other designs are known for their high- profile sponsors. The Sweden-based Better Shelter project, for instance, partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the furniture giant Ikea to mass- produce an emergency shelter with a solar panel, UV-protective roofing and siding, and parts that can be individually replaced.

Mr. Ban and Mr. Aravena have both recently won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s top honor, and the Museum of Modern Art in New

Easily built units for remote areas or refugee camps.

York last year selected a Better Shelter unit for its collection.

Some critics say that high-profile humanitarian architecture often ignores the complexities of housing policy and finance, as well as local variations in climate, building materials and aesthetic tastes.

The S House is suitable for remote areas because no single component weighs more than 50 kilos, and its design could be modified to suit local conditions — higher ceilings for hotter climates or bigger units for larger families.

Mr. Nghia said he planned to scale up production to meet whatever demand materializes, from individuals or institutions. He will sell S Houses to the United Nations, at cost, as refugee shelters, he said.

Mr. Nghia said he would be watching to see how the 38 new S Houses in Ba Vi hold up during their first test: an eight-week silent meditation course that he planned to attend.

“I’ll know what the problems are” after so much time for reflection, he said with a laugh. “But I believe it will be really comfortable.”