unit plan

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE - ALEJANDRO ARAVENA I. LEAD-IN 1. Work in small groups - share the information about this year's Pritzker Prize laureate, Alejandro Aravena. 2. What is social architecture? - brainstorm as a class. 3. Watch a short video about Alejandro Aravena's project. What is his idea of social architecture? 4. Watch the video again and answer the questions: a. What are the architect's priorities for social projects? b. What does the participatory designing lie in? 5. Tick the words and phrases that you expect to find in the text about Aravena's social projects. Compare your ticks with another student. • pioneering • valuable site • arbitrariness •

grand cultural monuments

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relocate

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abundance

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economic opportunity

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outer suburbs

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refurbishment

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less privileged

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terraced houses

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lucrative

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rehouse

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identikit slabs

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tsunami mitigation

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housing subsidy

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scarce resources

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segregation

II. READING COMPREHENSION 1. Read the text and check your answers to I/5. What is the architect's idea of "half a good house"? 2. Read the text again and answer the questions: a. What is Alejandro Aravena known for? b. In what ways is he different from usual Pritzker Prize laureates? c. How did Tom Pritzker justify the jury's verdict? d. Which project by Aravena and his architecture practice, Elemental, gained international attention? e. What does Aravena's idea of "half a good house" lie in? f. What are Chilean architects influenced by in Aravena's opinion? g. What projects by Alejandro Aravena are enumerated in the text? h. What is meant by "Robin Hood structure"? i. How did Aravena along with Elemental deal with the post-tsunami reconstruction of the city of Constitucion? j. What are the biggest challenges that architects have to face up to and mistakes that architects make? 3. Discuss in small groups - are the ideas of social architecture effective? Can you see any weaknesses? III. VOCABULARY PRACTICE 1. Work in pairs and do the activity communicative word search. 2. Write your own example sentences with some of the words and phrases from task III/1. 3. Translate the underlined fragments of the text into Polish.