Housing – its affordability, accessibility, and form – is a key preoccupation of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. While not necessarily the core concern for most of the Biennial's participants, housing gets a significant share of the exhibition's floorspace.

Several participants' considerations of contemporary housing issues are exhibited in full-scale, benefitting the visitor with an easily relatable (and, at least by size, literally inhabitable) form. As one of these life-sized installations, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio's sustainable housing project stands out for already being realized outside of the Biennial's walls.

Designed in response to Mexico's housing shortage, referencing the country's overall deficit of 9 million homes, Bilbao's Sustainable Housing project aims to provide a prototype for affordable, adaptable, single-family social housing. After researching with potential users and observing concurrent trends in local social housing design, the firm produced a modified vision of an archetypal house, with two bedrooms, one bathroom, one living room and one kitchen fitted to federal requirements of 43 square meters.

Built with wooden pallets (and what appeared to be medium density fiberboard) surrounding a concrete block core, the house cost under $9,000 USD to build, according to the firm. Additional rooms and expansions can reportedly be adapted onto the house, depending on preferred use. Aiming to be a "dignified" and energy-conscious home for Mexico's urban and rural areas, the prototype hopes to be a panacea for the country's housing woes.

The version constructed in Chicago evolved from houses Bilbao designed a few years ago with Financiera Sustentable, a Mexican micro-financing organization focused on building homes for low-income residents for under $13,000 USD. In total, Bilbao has completed two houses with Financiera Sustentable, with twenty more currently under construction to be completed this month.

h/t to Newcity Design