Consolidated informal housing as a collaborative habitat: the case of Santa María de las Lomas, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Abstract

The recent pandemic has set goals for our habitat on a global level: how to share our homes, the street, or the roof, or how to work and produce from home. These issues, brought to the table after the current crisis, have been addressed for decades in contexts of continuous crisis, such as informal housing. In these cases, the low and irregular incomes, forces polynuclear families to live under the same roof, demanding a flexible and productive use of the home. In contrast to the rigidity of the house, it is the set of objects that is responsible for providing this flexibility, as it is made up of a system of elements capable of transforming to the rhythm of the families.

The article analyzes how these homes response, on different scales, to this need of cohabitation in conditions of confinement, in an already consolidated informal housing neighborhood in the city of Guayaquil, Santa María de las Lomas. It analyzes the transformations inside and outside several case study homes, and how they allowed the coexistence and interaction among its inhabitants. For that, the research compared how residents from different nuclei use their home, and its immediate surroundings, to the physical transformations of the dwelling along the day. Also, several interviews were conducted, and interior and exterior activities were traced and mapped out allowing the identification of a system of objects within the house. This system can be rearranged in different groups, and add, remove or relocate elements inside and outside the house, enabling the capacity to meet the demands of the families´ transformations.