Maya Sorabjee


Projects
Writing
About

Maya Sorabjee


Projects
Writing
About

Incremental Housing in the Global South: A Working Atlas


This is an open source atlas that documents incremental housing projects from the 1960s onwards in the global south, seeking to understand the political climates and housing policies that have influenced the conditions of each project. These case studies differ from the many sites-and-services schemes that have been implemented in the same period and places in that they are designed by architects who leave room for their works to grow according to the needs and desires of the inhabitants.

The case studies in this working atlas take an expanded view of housing, or what the British architect John Turner provocatively refers to as “housing as a verb”­—an active set of ongoing practices. This perspective considers the value of a housing project not in its immediate results but in its transformation over decades. These projects warrant extended studies that combine ethnography with architectural survey in order to allow their assessment as ever-changing combinations of the best of architectural and local practices, inextricable from the communities that keep them alive.

The entire document can be found here.