Discussion on:

Bringing high design modular housing to South America

I came back to Argentina in 2005. Since then delinquency has been growing spectacularly day after day. Today it's impossible for example to live in Buenos Aires and its surrounding belt without risking your life.

(That's why I left that fabulous city as soon as I could and now live in the hills of Cordoba, where life is less exciting but you don't risk a bullet in the head or a knife any place every moment of your life).

The rest of the country is slightly better because its an underpopulated country and being so large, there are vasts expanses of territory almost empty. Delinquency is quite rare outside the handful of large cities in this country.

The house in the picture looks splendid, but knowing my country of origin and looking at those huge expanses of glass..., I shudder. A temptation for the thieves!!
Nobody lives here without grates on the windows!! and the stronger the better.

Besides..., all that wood..., in a country that already has been savagely deforested in order to plant soybean (money, always money) I find it outrageous to keep cutting down more trees.

And the article is right about the Argentinian prejudice for prefab houses. Don't invest your money in one because the resale will be disastrous. People here want BRICKS.
For the wall bricks, for the floor ceramics or marble, for the roof terracotta tiles --Spanish or French style-- and nothing else will do.

A few will go for the contemporary or minimalist with flat roof tops --reinforced concrete-- but even those have a difficult resale outcome, since this style is only for the cognoscenti, and there are only but a few of them.

When I lived in the States I was appalled at the all wood houses, I felt like living in a shoebox. I remember knocking on the partition walls and that hollowed sound made my skin crawled. No wonder one sees all that destruction when heavy winds sweep over a neighborhood!!

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