techo Resilient Housing

The MIT Urban Risk Lab is working on a four-project collaboration with TECHO México to analyze, iterate upon, and reimagine climate-resilient affordable housing, leveraging advanced modeling and design methodologies to enhance thermal comfort, improve multi-hazard resilience, and co-develop a novel framework for future emergency housing solutions towards more permanent housing. This project will include research on sustainable and circular building materials, innovative construction methods, and temporary to permanent expansion models.

TECHO is a youth-led nonprofit working hand-in-hand with communities in informal settlements across Latin America and the Caribbean. One of TECHO's main goals is to bring families closer to decent housing. TECHO seeks to respond to the housing deficit caused by poverty or and natural disasters that affect thousands of people.

Communities across Mexico face increasing risks from climate change, including extreme heat, flooding, and high winds, all of which disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. TECHO México has demonstrated remarkable leadership by developing a low-cost, volunteer-assembled emergency housing. This initiative aligns directly with the mission of the MIT Urban Risk Lab, which focuses on developing methods and technologies to reduce risk and promote equity in the face of disasters.

The emergency houses are made out of prefabricated wood panels, which allows for their efficient construction. They are built in two days by the families who receive the house alongside volunteers.

The team is undergoing the first study, Habitar Después, led by TECHO México to understand how families use, transform, and expand the housing solutions built by the organization over time. The project seeks to generate evidence that can strengthen the design of future housing solutions, improve their progressive housing approach, and understand housing not only as a delivered product, but as a living process of transformation.

MIT Urban Risk Lab: Larisa Ovalles, Nathan Phipps, Miho Mazereeuw

TECHO México: Maria Andrea Contreras, Daniel Ortiz, René Jiménez, Maria Fernanda Vazquez Campos