| Santiago, Chile December, 2014 |
| Structural joints are an essential aspect of safety in user built constructions. When users build their own houses from scratch, they decide the type of structure and materials for incremental growth without many restrictions. On the contrary, when houses are designed and build predicting incremental growth its structural design guides the type of joints and materiales. In the case of Elemental, houses where designed to doble their area over time with design and materiales restrictions. The purpose of this field research was to determine which types of estructural joints people choose to build on their own. More specifically, for the case of Elemental the goal is to determine if the design and material restrictions were followed. The sites to visit in Santiago were: Elemental Renca, Lo Espejo and Lo Barnachea. Other incremental housing projects similar to Elemental were visited in Santiago: Los Sauces, Comunidad Andalucía, Casas Chubi and los Torreones de la Reina. Overall, it seems that the choice of materials for incremental growth is usually limited by the starter structure and varies between wood and steel structure. All the projects visited had survived very well the earthquake that stroke Santiago in 2010. Another interesting aspect was that in most cases the incremental part of the house was not built incrementally beacuse families managed to find subsidies from the gorvernment to pay for that part of the house before moving in.
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