I introduce a Chilean Architect, Alejandro Aravena, who is paid the most attention in the world. He won the Pritzker Prize this year, so called Nobel Prize of architecture. He designed a lot of buildings and houses, but this project is the most impressive for me.
Villa Verde Housing / ELEMENTAL
He tackled a problem of urbanization in Chile.
Population concentration, urbanization, and housing problem usually take a huge part of problems of developing countries. Chile is no exception. This kind of problem seems a government problem since it contains many social aspects. However, if we can perceive it as a management problem, it means that we business people might face similar problems in the future.
Alejandro Aravena tried to resolve this problem in terms of ‘design’. Of course, his design skills is great, which a lot of people believe as a special skill for limited to ‘creative’ people. His solution was led not only by traditional meaning of design, but also the new meaning of design that we are learning in the design class nowadays. It represents not only beautiful or cutting-edge drawings, but also a new principle for problem solving. And "creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you”, as Tom Kelley, a CEO of IDEO, described in his book.
If you haven’t watched his TED talk, I recommend to watch it. I believe you could learn both one of Chilean problems and what real creativity means.
References
TED talk / My architectural philosophy? Bring the community into the process
Tom and David Kelley / Creative Confidence (Crown Business New York 2013)