INSITE Journal_07 A Timeless Way to Build

Social architecture is shaped by acts of imagination and resistance for a community that is always unfolding. In 1975–76 an experiment in popular housing was developed in northern Mexico, based on the “pattern language” invented by architect Christopher Alexander. The complex of houses, a cluster with vaulted roofs surrounding a central courtyard, was intended to be a small functional community, and an affordable prototype to be replicated in different cities beyond Mexicali, where it was built. Like many other social architecture efforts of the time, its future inhabitants were encouraged to participate in the self-construction and design of their homes. In a collective effort between Mexican and American architects, students from the state university, and the working-class families who responded to the call, the complex was erected without architectural plans in one year. The difference between this experiment and other “progressive” models of the 1970s lies in the ideas behind its construction: beauty, emotion, and wholeness as possible catalysts to individualize each of the houses and as a response to what Alexander called “soulless” modular mass housing developments.