Current trends in disaster response and management include various stakeholders, including non-government organisations (NGOs), volunteer groups and other humanitarian organisations, working alongside governmental agencies. Together, they are directly involved in reconstruction efforts, with support often extending from the early response to long-term reconstruction. The common goal of reconstruction efforts spanning the last few decades is the ambition to “Build Back Better”. More recently, there have been efforts to expand the scope of the reconstruction efforts to “Build Back Safer” and to raise awareness about the quality and safety of the final products, such as housing and infrastructure. Disaster management studies rarely address the construction process after disasters, or the working conditions of the builders, and often pay little attention to the health and safety of the extended workforce. This study identifies critical factors affecting workers, volunteers, local communities and other staff working on disaster reconstruction projects through a systematic literature review of academic publications. A total of 35 publications were thematically analysed, reduced from an initial selection of 394 publications selected between 2004 to 2022. The findings from this study highlight the vulnerabilities experienced by workers and the broader community involved in post-disaster reconstruction and acknowledge challenges integrating health and safety concerns into the practice and governance of global humanitarian systems.

Abstract The Elemental architecture studio designed Villa Verde, one of the world’s most iconic incremental housing projects. Villa Verde was initiated to house residents of the city of Constitución in southern Chile under a participative framework. The aim was to encourage the residents to complete the “other half” of the “core” houses supplied by the developer, self-managing a process of housing modification and extensions to suit their needs and aspirations. This paper analyzes the residents’ perceptions and the incremental additions to the ‘half-houses’ built in the four years since the occupation and identifies the factors that influenced these adaptations. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the changing residents’ satisfaction levels and the subsequent housing adaptations. This study demonstrates that residents' self-managed housing adaptations were performed according to financial capacities and individual aspirations with more than half of them built beyond the design limits. The self-help constructions followed a variety of formal and informal patterns demonstrating that the incremental process had an initial momentum that decreased as the residents’ needs were covered, but it is likely to continue and take on unpredictable and more complex forms that could impact the neighborhood management, inclusive governance, and financing of future adaptations.

Housing reconstruction is considered the backbone of disaster recovery. The increasing losses in housing due to disasters challenge conventional top-down schemes and call for people-centred approaches to acknowledge their agency and self-recovery resources. This paper examines the pathways for housing self-recovery through resident-controlled incremental housing development. This paper focuses on the Villa Verde settlement built in the Chilean city of Constitución, which was severely impacted by the 2010 Chile Earthquake. Villa Verde, designed by the Chilean architecture studio Elemental, is one of the most notable incremental housing projects worldwide that encourage residents to extend their houses within a provided structural framework. This research aims to provide clarity in the much-needed understanding of disaster-affected people’s agency to self-recover, noted by researchers as one of the crucial elements for improving the humanitarian response in the aftermath of disasters. Through capturing the evolution of incremental housing construction, this paper presents multiple complexities resulting from the variety of households’ characteristics and needs in their process of post-disaster housing self-recovery. The resident-controlled process studied evidence that the people’s capacities and dedication to self-recover challenged the established housing framework with extensions beyond the designers’ parameters requiring further evaluation of the long-term implications of self-help constructions.

The development of the Villa Verde settlement in Chile coincided with the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the city of Constitucion. A private-sector and government-subsidized program developed 484 houses specifically designed to double in size via the efforts of the residents and according to their needs. Low levels of governance have since led to the emergence of several unauthorized self-built extensions that have both reduced livability and increased fire risk. This chapter reveals the benefits and drawbacks of the adopted housing strategy using the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 as a basis for analysis. It shows that the project's architects and developers have been successfully helping to create a dynamic settlement with their "half-house" strategy. Yet, the related development has not been able to effectively deal with another type of risk, namely wildfires, which were overlooked in the design process.

In 2003, the Chilean architecture firm Elemental began to revisit the idea of partially completed housing harnessing the productive capacities of the informal process within a more formal framework. The Quinta Monroy project in the northern Chilean city of Iquique was the first such project and involved the in-situ replacement of an informal settlement. The desire of residents was for a middle-class house that was beyond the scope of their budget or the subsidy. The Elemental project at Quinta Monroy comprised 93 expandable houses designed in parallel buildings and organized in four courtyards aiming to promote community interaction and maintain neighbors' affinities. This paper investigates the process of housing adaptation through self-construction twelve years after the residents received their homes in 2005. The strategy to promote resident-driven expansions has been successful as 92 out of 93 households expanded their homes. The most significant concerns focused on the deterioration of living standards due to progressive and uncontrollable extensions which might have significant impacts on the settlement development. The findings from this paper focus on the neighbors' negotiations for housing extensions and the risk of the re-creation of precarious living environments evidencing limitations for unassisted or spontaneous incremental schemes of housing development.

PurposeThis paper analyses the incremental housing process developed at Villa Verde, a housing project designed by the Chilean architecture firm Elemental, whose director Alejandro Aravena received the Pritzker Prize in 2016. This project is conceived within a social housing framework and designed as an affordable “half-house” to be incrementally extended by the owners.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on research undertaken in August 2017 with data obtained through site surveys, trace analysis, interviews with 32 residents and photographic surveys. The researchers mapped the modifications made by all households at Villa Verde in the four years after occupation.FindingsThe strategy of designing a formal framework for informal additions has generally been successful with most houses undergoing substantial expansion to a high standard of construction. The paper raises concerns regarding the settlement's urban design, response to local climate and the quality of shared open space. We also find evidence of over-development as informal additions extend across front and rear yards that are in some cases fully enclosed.Originality/valueThis project is critiqued within the context of a long series of architectural attempts to harness the productive capacities of self-help housing. Villa Verde engages the freedom to build in a self-organised manner within a formal framework. But what will stop these additions from escalating into a “slum”?

Quinta Monroy is an award-winning co-designed settlement for 93 families on half a hectare of land at Iquique in northern Chile. Neighbors’ complaints about the disorderly settlement peaked after the landowner’s death and provoked untenured residents to seek government subsidies to redevelop the settlement. From 2003, a government social housing project was coordinated by the “Elemental” architecture firm with US$10,000 per household. With the resident’s temporary relocation, 93 modular and interlinked apartments were built around a series of courtyards. These apartments, which were designed as “half-houses,” were subsequently co-opted by residents adding rooms in locations planned in advance by Elemental. Many households have since doubled the size of their apartment and reformed the settlement in ways not anticipated by Elemental. This paper details a spatial and ethnographic study of the Quinta Monroy settlement since redevelopment to identify opportunities and risks that accompany this type of social housing model. The study reveals evidence that residents’ capacities to enlarge apartments commonly exceeds the architect’s expectations and that unregulated expansions often compromise the settlement’s livability. This research anticipates further opportunities for expansion in this semi-regulated settlement and investigates possibilities that another contested slum settlement may emerge.

Despite the lofty ambitions of Elemental, in giving agency to the residents, the aspirations for Quinta Monroy failed to appreciate the perils of the informal.

Post-disaster reconstruction projects in areas with high pre-disaster vulnerabilities can lead to both temporary and permanent resettlement outcomes. During this complex process, efforts are centred to the provision of housing and basic infrastructure. In general, the limited land available restricts opportunities for high-quality spatial design within the settlements to optimize the land and provide the maximum number of houses possible. Open spaces in these settlements are rarely considered during the planning and implementation of the projects, and consequently there is little scholarship of community space. However, the importance of open spaces to the community and the liveability of these new settlements depend on the interactions which spontaneously take place in these areas. This study explores the different uses and characteristics of open spaces in temporary and permanent resettlement sites established in the aftermath of major disasters in Japan and the Philippines. This study addresses the limitations of the immediate post-disaster urban planning, compared to the longer-term urban space that emerges spontaneously in an attempt by the residents to improve their community. It was observed that the planning of open and public spaces was not a priority for the governments and the other stakeholders involved in settlement design. Despite these compromises, this study reveals that resettled communities appreciate any available open spaces and transform these spaces to accommodate their needs and cultural preferences reflecting their vital role as urban elements for convergence of the multiple sociocultural activities towards the recovery and revitalization of the disaster-affected communities.

Post-disaster reconstruction is a complex process engaging various stakeholders who typically respond to the policies and implementation strategies developed by governments and coordination bodies governing affected countries. Among the stakeholders, humanitarian organizations have actively participated in the process of community support and reconstruction, and their role has been widely recognized since they focused their efforts in different events over the last two decades. This study is focused on projects carried out by humanitarian agencies in the aftermath of major disasters in Japan and the Philippines. The aim of this research is to analyse the approaches for recovery and reconstruction adopted in each country and to compare the advantages and constraints for the development and implementation of agency-driven projects. This study found that the government controlled reconstruction efforts in Japan limited the agencies' involvement in the recovery phase, especially in early stages of housing repair and reconstruction. This led to some agencies circumventing the Japanese Government's precarious coordination mechanisms to simplify their independently implemented projects. By contrast the Philippines Government promoted the active participation of agencies through close partnerships to coordinate and support community recovery. These differences in policy have directly impacted the implementation of humanitarian projects by local and international organizations. This paper demonstrates that the establishment of local contacts is crucial for the implementation of reconstruction projects. However NGOs projects are influenced by national post-disaster recovery systems limiting their independency. Additionally communities are often excluded from the process of recovery by the paternalistic approach of NGOs and governments which exacerbates the risk of dependency and restricts possibilities for community resilience and development. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Standardised and mass-produced houses have attracted the interests of many teams of designers and scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first century. A significant proportion of this effort has gone into housing for the least wealthy sectors of society and is based on reducing the costs of production in terms of labour and materials. However there is evidence that significant contributions, in terms of labour and design ingenuity from the future residents, is an potent resource ignored by many designers who see the mass production process as a discreet activity that excludes the end users. This paper highlights three housing examples selected from within northern Chile to highlight roles played by the end users to help facilitate improved mass housing outcomes. Although each project has been conceived quite differently and is characterised by markedly different production processes, each has involved significant contributions from the residents themselves. Despite the end users developing their houses over a period of five to fourteen years, the houses exhibit an organic nature as they have evolved to various degrees of completeness and complexity according to the desires and capacities of the residents. However it is important to recognise that despite this organic process the houses have maintained very strong links with prefabrication frameworks of modularity and materiality and that this has been determined by the mass-produced construction technologies in evidence.

This paper analyses user initiated modifications at one Baan Ua-arthorn housing estate located atRangsit Klong 3 in Prathum Thani Province in the outskirts of Bangkok. By analysing a series of architecturaldrawings and interviews with the residents, results show that housing modifications are driven by a variety offactors – some of which are pragmatic in their nature while others can be about recreating a new expression oftheir personal preferences. The paper suggests that these modifications play an important role in improving theliving standard of the residents and the community as a whole. It suggests that new government-built housingestates should be designed to enable these types of modifications and by doing so the capacity of the residentsto create a harmonious neighbourhood in response to their incremental needs will be enhanced.

This chapter highlights that while architects have contributed to the recovery of affected people in small-scale, scattered projects, they have been less engaged with the broader landscape of displacement of disasters. It explores the achievements gained from rethinking the traditional role of architects in different cases of post-disaster reconstruction and identifies gaps that persist in these practices. Provider supply has been dominant in disaster reconstruction projects, in particular in the 1980s and 1990s. In the provider supply paradigm, the reconstruction is initiated and developed by an external agency, aimed at providing a solution for a perceived problem— that is, inadequate shelter— and enhancing the efficiency of the intervention. Aided self-built housing presents a shift in practices of architects from the technical and aesthetic domain to an advisory one, with a pedagogic agenda being attached to their role. Aided self-help housing after disasters, however, is rarely funded and realized only in small and scattered projects.

After one of the world's most devastating earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis killed 170,000 Indonesians and made 500,000 homeless, a prominent international aid agency completed two new housing settlements in Banda Aceh. These villages are similar in their spatial layouts and use identical house designs. Despite some anxiety about the longer-term ownership of their houses, many households in both communities continue to add to their houses and make a series of incremental improvements. Given that these two villages are so similar in their formal layout, an analysis of both communities allows us to focus on the role location plays in determining the resident's capacity for recovery. Mapping and interviews at both settlements reveals that the location factor plays a role with residents at the more remote Neuheun settlement having diminished capacity for economic security and less capacity to improve their houses. On the other hand, the centrally located Panteriek settlement provides greater economic security and greater capacity for home improvement.

To fulfill their engagement agendas many schools of architecture step from the academy into the ‘real’ world and work with ‘real’ clients. These types of projects have been described as ‘live’ projects and a subsection of these can be described within the ‘design/build’ format as they work towards the production of a built outcome. Reflecting on these projects gives participating schools the confidence to continue their own initiatives and helps strengthen the value of the built outcomes within specific context locations and within participant communities. This paper reflects on the Bower Sala project that took place in 2008 as a joint initiative between Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Thammasat University, Thailand and the Bower Studio team from Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, the University of Melbourne, Australia working with partners not-for-profit Population and Community Development Association (PDA) and the Nong Tong Lim community in Buriram province in the ‘Isaan’ region of Thailand. A team of architecture, landscape architecture and construction students prefabricated and erected a pavilion, literally sala in Thai, in the grounds of the community clinic. This sala had a dual purpose by providing a place for people to wait to visit the clinic and as a place for occasional community gatherings. People from within the community contributed during the on-site construction phase lasting a further four days. Carefully revisiting the Bower Sala project in 2015 helps to see the dynamics of the sala’s usage by the community residents by reviewing the modifications undertaken in the intervening years. Interviews and physical trace analysis assist to identify residents’ modification to the sala. These types of changes are to be expected within the live project model and reflect the changing needs and aspirations of the participant communities. The paper re-establishes the value of cooperative, multidisciplinary and multicultural learning mixing the expertise and values of various stakeholders to work to a built outcome. Reaffirming the capacity of student teams to engage positively with both cultural and technical matters the paper goes on to demonstrate how reflection and reaction of projects of this scale can be a catalyst for on-going and deeper work within marginalized communities concentrating on links between technologies and specific cultural norms. The paper assists in setting improved frameworks for subsequent larger initiatives utilizing the ‘live project’ format as an innovative pedagogy for community-based design project.

This paper draws on research conducted after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, where more than 100,000 houses were built by various agencies following the massive disaster. The research reveals that the residents in Aceh rarely see their reconstruction houses as 'complete' and modify these houses to suit their personal needs and aspirations. The relationships between the global and regional forces that drive reconstruction agency housing procurement and production are explored, and compared with the outcomes of user-initiated modifications to the houses. From the hundreds of houses reviewed, here four houses are discussed in detail, built by the Asian Development Bank, representing a global paradigm, and Bank Mandiri, representing a regional paradigm. These houses were modified and extended to varying degrees by their residents, exemplifying the ways in which reconstruction agencies, perhaps inadvertently, empowered residents by enabling them to improve their own housing. The outcomes of this transformation process underscore the advantages of a hybrid between global and regional styles, and the desire of the reconstruction housing residents to recapture some of the local housing culture and reflect regional housing characteristics.