There is an increased interest among architects, urban specialists and design professionals to contribute to solve ‘the housing problem’ in developing countries. The Invisible Houses takes us on a journey through the slums and informal settlements of South Africa, India, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and many other countries of the global south, revealing the challenges of, and opportunities for, improving the fate of millions of poor families. Stressing the limitations of current approaches to housing development, Gonzalo Lizarralde examines the short, mid, and long term consequences of housing intervention.

The book covers the issues of planning, design, infrastructure and project management, explaining the different variables that need to be addressed and the causes of common failures and mistakes, while outlining successful strategies based on embracing a sustained engagement with the complexity of processes that are generally invisible.

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“The ‘housing problem’ in developing countries is not … a problem of missing or inadequate dwellings, and its solution is not … the provision of shelters. Rather, it involves creating conditions in which people can live lives they have reason to value.” This profound statement is the thesis and opening paragraph to The Invisible Houses, by Lizarralde (Univ. of Montreal), a well-written book on low-cost housing. The author focuses on developing countries, but the premise can and should apply anywhere to all building stock. This refreshing read rallies around people instead of merely architecture or the bottom line of a developer."

L. B. Allsopp, University of Oregon


The Invisible Houses wins the 2016 ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award

The Housing Design Education Award is given by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). This year the award recognizes the architecture studios, conferences, community partnerships and network created by the academic and research project “The Invisible Houses”. This project is directed by Université de Montréal Professor Gonzalo Lizarralde, author of the book “The Invisible Houses: Rethinking and Designing Low-Cost Housing in Developing Countries”. More information here

A specialist in planning, management and evaluation of international architecture projects, Gonzalo Lizarralde is a professor at the School of Architecture at the Université de Montréal. He has fifteen years of experience in consulting for architecture and construction projects and has published numerous articles in the fields of low-cost housing and project management.

Dr. Lizarralde has taught at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), McGill University, Université de Montréal, Universidad del Valle and Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) and has given lectures in universities in Europe, the United States and Latin America. He has a post-doctorate from the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of Cape Town. Dr. Lizarralde has been awarded research grants and/or scholarships from the South African NRF, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), the Canadian government and other funding agencies. Dr. Lizarralde is director of the IF Research Group (grif) at the Université de Montréal, which studies the processes related to the planning and development of construction projects. He is also the leader of the Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance, a scientific research program funded by the Quebec research funds (FQRSC). He is a founding member of i-Rec, an international network for improving post-disaster reconstruction. He is also the co-author of the book Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability.