Abstract

In 1978, after a decade of designing eccentric cybernetic installations—such as labyrinths for living animals and computationally controlled plant environments—Luis Fernando Benedit, a conceptual artist and architect from Buenos Aires, drew a series of eight houses for a World Congress in Mexico City organized by the Union of International Architects (UIA).1 The series title, Las casas que cuestan un millón (Houses that cost a million), was a sardonic critique of the conference’s theme of “Architecture and National Development” and openly mocked the rhetoric of low-cost housing presented to development aid organizations throughout the decade such as Christopher Alexander’s Low-Cost Housing, Yona Friedman’s No-Cost Housing, and the work done by the Minimum Cost Housing Group.2