In the words of one of the contributors to this short volume, up to about 250 years ago architects only served the interests of kings, princes and bishops. Their work for more ordinary clients is a relatively recent phenomenon. In Latin America today, architects are able to sell their services only to a very small proportion of people who build, convert or extend their houses. In Uruguay, for example, of the 69% of the population that undertook some construction work in the second half of the 1990s, a mere 6% used the services of an architect. And yet, universities throughout the continent continue to produce professionals whose main aspiration is to work for an individual or corporate client with a private budget.

In societies severely marked by legalism, the inhabitants of Latin American cities all too often have dealings with lawyers. And yet few people know of the existence of architecture as a profession that might be of any use to them. The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of new dwellings erected every year in middle and low-income settlements have no input whatsoever from qualified architects; they are, instead, the result of people’s own ingenuity, with the occasional use of skilled labour such as masons or plumbers. This book transcribes the presentations at a workshop held in the University of Buenos Aires. It consists of ten short chapters documenting the experiences of architects who, over the past two decades or so, have been involved in supporting low-income communities and individuals in building, improving or expanding their own housing. Most chapters focus on Argentina’s experiences, some dating back to the mid-1970s, a time when under a military junta social housing not only received no priority in government programmes but consisted instead of heavy-handed mass evictions from high-priced central locations and frequent land invasions in peripheral areas. Two chapters recount the experience of Cuba’s ‘Community Architects’: at the core of this programme - launched at a time of economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union to more adequately respond to severe housing shortages than the State-supplied blocks so dear to socialist systems was unable to meet - is a number of architects employed by the State to support communities and individuals in a flexible, tailor-made manner. One final chapter discusses how the Cuban experience was adapted to the Uruguayan context.