For years, the social housing sector has been struggling with long waiting lists that just won’t go away. Now that rising interest rates and material costs are making construction increasingly expensive and even the middle class can no longer afford to buy a home, we seem to be heading for a general housing crisis. Yet there are plenty of studies on what affordable housing actually is and how it can be achieved. Filip Canfyn devoted his latest book, Woon(on)betaalbaarheid (Affordable Housing), to this topic, a guide for Edith Wouters (Ar-tur) who, in Betaalbaar wonen: een ontwerpopgave? (Affordable Housing: a Design Challenge?), paints a critical picture of the complexity of the housing problem and suggests ways to cool down the market.

But doesn’t cheaper housing simply mean cheaper construction? We asked various architects about their ways of reducing construction costs and collected eleven tips for a cheaper product, ranging from a plea for ‘cheaper urban development’ and more circularity to scaling back comfort requirements and self-build. Kelly Hendriks (B-ild) sees room for manoeuvre thanks to the correct use of standard sizes of building materials. “We could build much more cheaply by applying them to the maximum and not exceeding the maximum sizes.”