Exclusive interview: universities are failing to give architects the training that will enable them to find solutions for an imminent global housing crisis, says 2016 Pritzker Prize laureate Alejandro Aravena.
Poverty, population growth, natural disasters and war are combining to create demand for more than a billion homes, according to the Chilean architect.
But architects are unable to overcome the challenges posed by politics, economics and building codes to deliver viable solutions, he said.
"It would be great, with more than one million architects in the world, that more solutions and more proposals try to address the issue," Aravena told Dezeen.
UC Innovation Center at the San Joaqui?n Campus, Universidad Cato?lica de Chile, Santiago, 2014. Photograph by Nina Vidic "But the constraints are not just budget constraints ? the building logic, the political framework, and the policies, are part of the equation and we're not well trained for that," he said. "We're never taught the right thing at university."
Aravena, 48, was speaking to Dezeen ahead of being named the recipient of this year's Pritzker Prize, architecture's equivalent to the Nobel prize. In its citation, the Pritzker jury described him as the leader of a new generation of socially minded architects.

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Aravena graduated from the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago in 1992 an...