ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 513

When the company starts developing the housing schemes the scope of the solution has already been narrowed by the some pre-established design specifications. There are three types of housing that can be built: new and simplified dwellings with no finishing materials for a lower price, new and complete dwellings, or dwellings in a refurbished building. For each category, dwelling units within the same scheme need to have the same price. The design of the housing is based on minimum requirements previous established by the government. Previous studies identified that companies use a concept of generic and specific product design (Leite et al., 2005). The city government opens the period of application for interested families. A demand of 4 families for each unit is necessary for the housing scheme to start to be built. Credit conditions of these households are then analysed. Once the families are qualified, social workers contact them to collect information and provide some advice about the leasing process and on how to live in a condominium. Housing construction is clearly mass p roduction oriented. Repetitiveness is used to reduce overall costs of production, large batches of materials are bought and dwellings are produced sequentially. Although the houses are repetitive, the product design cannot be characterized as modular. As in the CCA program, the product has an integral architecture, consisted of load-bearing block walls, with hydraulic and electrical systems closed attached to it. The construction process has to follow a bar chart that is proposed by the company and approved by the financial institution. During the construction period the financial institution visits the construction site periodically to check if the chronogram is being followed. When construction is done, the construction company delivers it to the financial institution, which will distribute dwellings among selected families at random. After dwellings are delivered, a facilities management company is hired to take care of managing the condominium, so that that the housing estate is properly managed. Units are not supposed to be modified during the leasing period. Only after 15 years, when leasers can become homeowners it is possible to realize changes on the dwelling space. In the PAR case, three main groups were identified (figure 6). Since data about income were not available, it was used the variable level of education instead. In this case, the variable that most distinguished households was the level of education. Also, differently from the previous case, a larger amount of mature households were identified. Interestingly, lower levels of education were found among older households, while higher levels of education were found among the young ones. The largest cluster is formed by families with children and secondary education. There are also a group of households with higher education composed by single parents and young couples, and a group with primary education composed by mature couples and mature couples with children living at home. Opportunities and challenges to mass customize low-income housing in Brazil 511