This is an educational experience that includes teaching, outreach, and applied research, launched in 2024, which challenges the traditional and hegemonic paradigm of professional education. La Usina del Hábitat brings together students from the Architecture and Graphic Design programs at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the National University of the Northeast (FAU UNNE) and an interdisciplinary faculty team (architects, social workers, graphic designers, and a lawyer), and seeks to integrate knowledge across different disciplines and social actors to address the complexity of social housing issues.

Students and faculty from the UNNE School of Architecture and Urbanism, as well as residents of low-income neighborhoods in the cities of Resistencia and Corrientes. Specifically, in 2024 and 2025, it benefits the San Antonio neighborhood in the city of Resistencia and institutions involved the creation of “popular habitat”, such as the Undersecretariat of Land Use Planning of the Province of Chaco and the Municipality of Resistencia.

• 270 families (according to the National Registry of Low-Income Neighborhoods—ReNaBaP 2022)
• 20 architecture and graphic design students
• 9 faculty members from various disciplines (architecture, graphic design, social work, and law)

San Antonio is an urban neighborhood that is over 30 years old. Its spontaneous and irregular land subdivision hinders, among other things, the extension of utility networks and basic infrastructure, with an emerging social organization that has been unsuccessfully advocating for improvements to transform the living conditions in which they currently reside. Neighborhood residents welcomed the academic institution, and shared their realities and knowledge to collectively explore, from different perspectives and with varying resources, the possibilities for improving living conditions in the neighborhood.

In the current context, ethical and socially responsible education can no longer be considered merely a desirable complement to professional training, but rather a fundamental pillar of university graduates’ competencies, enabling them to address the multidimensional nature of the question of “popular habitat”.

It relates to all of HIC’s thematic areas, as the university’s pedagogical approach addresses the issue of human habitat in all its complexity through the “Aula Territorio” space—a forum for the exchange of knowledge among different disciplines, social actors, and those involved in the social production of habitat.

La Usina del Hábitat faces the challenge of deepening, cultivating, prioritizing, and implementing a university learning model—complementary to the conventional and hegemonic one—that contributes to training aimed at transforming the pressing needs of the population living in poverty in northeastern Argentina. The work involved the joint identification and management of problems (clogged storm drains, drinking water contamination, etc.) and included surveys and interviews with residents and local institutional actors. The goal was to generate useful tools that synthesize the material developed collaboratively so that residents can continue or initiate new procedures and interactions with public agencies.

The experience of La Usina del Hábitat evolved into an approach whose purpose is to go beyond an academic exercise to jointly develop—among faculty, students, residents, officials, and others—the skills and perspectives inherent in critical reflection and action, thereby contributing to constructive social change in a specific context.

Reflections shared by students at the end of the course that reflect the educational impact of the experience: “Grappling with harsher realities. I couldn’t believe it.” “At home, I turn on the faucet and have water; I have electricity. Understanding that there are other realities.” “Seeing that we can contribute something through our field of study.” “Getting out of the classroom, getting to know the area, and understanding reality from a different perspective.” “Understanding the absence of the state and the support networks that form in the neighborhood.” “Realizing that it wasn’t what we wanted to do or propose, but rather that the residents were the ones leading the way.” “The neighborhood’s dynamics shaped the final product.” “It was a real space, with real people—it was no longer the imaginary client we work with in the workshop.” (Students from La Usina del Hábitat 2024).

Addressing the city and the human habitat in all their complexity today requires a perspective that goes beyond the strictly technical or disciplinary. Training ourselves in interdisciplinarity is essential to understanding the complexity of contemporary urban phenomena.