Center for Urban and Regional Planning Research
Design Proposal Shortlisted for International Housing Award
August 1, 2022
A jury of leading architects has shortlisted for the Center design proposal for an international housing award. The Second Annual Modular Home International Competition, sponsored by Buildner, asked participants to submit innovative design proposals for modular housing sites across the globe. Modular systems offer flexible, efficient, and sustainable solutions to the contemporary housing crisis.
The Center’s proposal, developed in collaboration with landscape architect Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, Founding Partner of LABOR Studio, is located in the Rio Grande Valley, a transborder region that lies in the floodplain of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo River adjacent to the Mexican State of Tamaulipas. The region is home to more than 2,000 colonias–informal, unincorporated settlements that flood regularly and lack civil infrastructure such as sewer systems, paved roads, and potable water. In Texas, 400,000 people live in colonias. Many are migrant workers from Northern Mexico who come for seasonal agricultural jobs. The Center’s submission imagines a farming cooperative that extends modular efficiencies beyond housing to the entire site, unitizing the subdivision of land, utilities, flood control, and food production.
