ZEMCH 2019 International Conference Proceedings April.2020 | Page 70
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Introduction
A worldwide agreement for a more sustainable built environment gave rise to the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets for the agenda 2030. The (SDGs) [1,2], in conjunction with
the New Urban Agenda (NUA) [3] and the Paris Agreement [4] are nowadays the most important
global initiatives to protect the planet [5]. Their main objectives are to foster resilience from climate‐
related hazards as well as natural disasters. That is to diminish the consequences and its costs, whilst
the core of those resilience actions is human life and the protection of social vulnerabilities [6].
Chile, a developing country placed within the Pacific Ring of Fire, has to deal with natural
hazardous events in a periodic cycle. Earthquakes and many other events are matters of concern
amongst authorities and the general population. As an example, in 2018 only, the number of
earthquakes according to the National Seismic Centre (CSN) reached 275 [7]. Back in 2010, an 8,8 Richter
scale earthquake followed by a tsunami stroke the Bio‐Bio region, leaving a number of 521 fatalities and
more than 370.000 seriously damaged dwellings amongst them 200.000 completely destroyed [7,8]. The
period of reconstruction that followed the events tends to be slow and inefficient in many cases.
Temporary accommodations are required as a response to give shelter and a place to live for large parts
of the population residing particularly in coastal areas [9–11].
Figure 1 shows a few examples of post‐disaster emergency housing delivered to affected families
right after the occurrence of a destructive event in Chile. These are small and precarious dwellings,
based on timber walls‐panels and far away from normal standards of habitability [12]. Mass
construction is the required response to an enormous need for immediate shelter counting the affected
families in thousands. Nevertheless, these initially provisory dwellings are inhabited throughout many
years, almost like a permanent solution, which is not. The latter is responsible for a reduction on place
attachment in regards to inhabitants’ living conditions.
Following the principle of continuity of Quarantelli and Dyne (1977) [13], a large part of the
problem can be traced before the events, and right when social emergency housing policies are set in
place. This goes in line with Garay (2015) arguing that in Chile no legal norms are guiding the quality
criteria on emergency housing design and construction. That is why the only applied criteria are the
economic one and the fixation of sale price [12]. Therefore, there is an urgent need for sustainable
development of emergency post‐disaster housing, and to achieve it is necessary an array of new policies,
but also, the exchange of knowledge and cooperation amongst Government, universities, industry,
developers, and stakeholders [14].
Recognizing the need to discuss and take some actions within the emergency housing actors, Bio‐
Bio University, Chile; and the ZEMCH Lab of Melbourne University, Australia, managed to organize
and hold a five‐day workshop in June of 2019, in Chile.
ZEMCH (Zero‐energy Mass Custom Home) is an initiative created and developed to improve the
housing response to social, economic, and environmental sustainability needs [15]. The workshop is an
intensive personal and group experience‐oriented to the design stages previous to the mass industry of
houses as more than just objects of inhabitation. Since 2014 the workshop has been held in countries
like Mexico, Brazil and Australia. This presentation is about the ZEMCH workshop held in Chile‐2019,
which was surveyed in order to evaluate the participants’ perceptions of value in regards to the
interdisciplinary experience.
Figure 2: Examples of emergency homes built in Chile
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ZEMCH 2019 International Conference l Seoul, Korea