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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2008

  • Work on this object began.

2013

  • Work on this object ended.

2016

2025

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Make a House Intelligent

This is a Project. It was architect: Arturo Ortiz Struck, Pamela Basañez, Salomón Rojas and Daniela Kleinman. It is dated 2008–2013. Its medium is gabion, sandbag, hollow concrete block, wire fence, corrugated steel sheet, steel beam.

In 2008, Arturo Ortiz Struck and the firm Taller Territorial de México organized workshops with families new to one Mexico City settlement, Chimalhuacán, to share basic design principles to “make a house intelligent” for the residents’ self-built houses. Since the new residents must occupy a lot within thirty days, the architects designed a new type of housing that could be built quickly and inexpensively. They devised a flexible system whose principal structure consists of sand, concrete blocks, gabions (metal mesh retaining structures), and steel beams. The gabions are laid out in the desired location and filled with rock or sandbags, and a small concrete slab is anchored with rebar at the top. With all the material at hand, the construction takes a team of five people between five and seven days to complete the full layout.

  • 10 x 10 Sandbag House
  • sandbags, timber ecobeams, cement plaster, timber cladding, metal sheet roof,....
  • CITIES.001

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<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420778949/ |title=Make a House Intelligent |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=6 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>