From there, we could penetrate the housing market in Eastern Europe and Asia. I hope that La Casa a la Carta can be presented in every language of the world. The last word at the press conference went to Affordable Homes program director Avi Friedman, who designed La Casa a la Carta with students in the program, assisted by Mexican architect Guadalupe Dipp Reyes. New housing developments in Mexico inspired our design. They are usually made of concrete, and are composed of units ranging from 40-60 square metres.
People start small and slowly expand the building to the back and top of the house.
That fits the original concept of the Grow Home, conceived in Friedman's master's thesis and first built as a model on the McGill campus in 1990. In an interview following the press conference, Friedman said that one goal is to get Quebec loan institutions involved, to address another Mexican fact of life. Even developers have trouble borrowing, unless they agree to pay very high interest rates, and then they can borrow only 25 per cent of the cost. We would like lending institutions in Quebec to finance Mexican builders to develop housing projects. They would come with us to Mexico and meet prospective builders, to get guarantees and to make sure that they meet their lending criteria.