Caracas: Growing Houses is an architectural case study of two buildings in the informal city of Caracas. It shows the negotiations between the built structure and the infrastructure (energy, communications, and water supply). Unlike the urban culture of the modernist formal city of Caracas, the informal city represents a rural culture, which consists of small, self-built neighbourhoods that form village-like communities. Here, community space prevails over public space, and oral regulations, negotiated through discussion, are more important than written regulations. The rural culture of the Caracas barrios has proved resilient to changes from the outside, particularly from the neighbouring urban culture. The barrio residents prefer to live in a city of communities and not in the modernist city of individualism. Today, around the world, the informal city is one of the two fastest-growing forms of residential organization in cities (the other is the gated community).

In 2006, prepaid water meters were installed in the Soweto township of Phiri in Johannesburg. The residents protested, saying that water is a human right, not a commodity. In 2008, the Johannesburg High Court declared the prepaid water meters unlawful and ordered the city to supply Phiri residents with 50 litres of water per person per day. The case went through two appeals, and in 2009, the Constitutional Court of South Africa found the installation of the prepaid meters to be lawful. The Phiri water case shows us the future that may await other urban communities who as yet do not live under water-stressed conditions. Water is the most precious resource in our century: without water, there is no life.

Ramot Polin Unit with Sukkah is an architectural case study from Israel that combines the pentagonal architecture (by the architect Zvi Hecker) of the Ramot Polin housing development in Jerusalem with a sukkah, a temporary shelter used for the Jewish festival of Sukkoth. The experimental modernist architecture of Ramot Polin was built in 1970s as a social housing project by the Israeli state; it was part of the expansion of Jerusalem into land gained after the Six-Day War of 1967. The residents of Ramot Polin are Orthodox Jews, who over the years have added rectangular extensions on to the facades - in most cases sukkahs - which have substantially transformed the look of the neighbourhood. Perched on the pentagonal facades, they convey a dual message that illustrates the internal divide in Israeli society between secular and religious Jews. On the one hand, by 'balkanizing' modernist architecture, the sukkahs are an implied critique of the modern lifestyle; on the other, as intentionally temporary shelters, or tabernacles, they reaffirm the nomadic spirit of the settlers.

Shotgun House with Rainwater-Harvesting Tank points to two recent trends in New Orleans: the revival of the local architectural style known as the Shotgun House, and the move toward self-sustainability. Both are post-Katrina developments and correspond with the deconstruction of modernist architecture and the search for a new, 21st-century social contract for democracy. Local harvesting of energy resources points to the emergence of new environmental and, consequently, political boundaries. The two caryatids serve as reminders that New Orleans is being rebuilt by its citizens.

The architectural case study Prishtina House exemplifies the kind of defence architecture that appeared in Kosovo after the political changes of the 1990s. After the collapse of modernism, the citizens of Prishtina began building their houses in a wide range of styles, each expressing the taste of the owner. Prishtina House is an example of personal orientalism. Personal styles are the expression of a fragmented society. In Prishtina, the citizens have become the smallest state. Self-sustainability is also an issue, since citizens have to rely on their own resources: a generator powers the streetlight.

The Lucy House, designed by architect Samuel Mockbee and his students in the Rural Studio Outreach Program and constructed in 2002, combines residential architecture with emergency architecture. Home to Anderson and Lucy Harris and their three children, the house includes a built-in tornado shelter, on top of which a bedroom sits inside the "crumpled" tensegrity dome. This tornado shelter is also used by the Harrises as a meditation room and family/TV room.

This is a case study based on a proposal made by architect Josef Plecnik for the city of Ljubljana in 1944. The city builds a roof and provides the infrastructure for a neighborhood. Residents build houses beneath the common roof. A similar concept may be seen in present-day Johannesburg (although on a different scale). Here, a roof and essential infrastructure are provided to individual families, but not to the whole community.

Hybrid House juxtaposes structures from the temporary architecture of Caracas, the West Bank, and West Palm Beach, Florida, and shows how they negotiate space among themselves. Each of the community-based structures formulates its own language, which, in all three cases, has much in common with archetypal (and not modernist) architecture. Emphasis is placed on private space, security, and energy and communication infrastructures.

The social state never really materialized in Caracas. Half the population lives in the informal city in houses constructed without legal title or building permits. Space is creatively negotiated and appropriated. To claim greater space, an additional facade may be built in front of the existing building. Greek columns underline the appropriation of space, too. They represent a human presence on the site.

The structure is based on houses created by untrained architects for Barefoot College in Tilonia, India. Equipped with solar panels and able to harvest water, these houses make it possible for the settlement to generate its own energy. This combination of local knowledge, high technology, and the principle of self-sufficiency has won the Barefoot Architects international recognition.

Rural Studio is an outreach program for architecture students at Auburn University, who work with the residents of Hale County in rural Alabama to design highly personalized dwellings. Construction materials are devised from whatever is at hand in the area and usually include recycled or often overlooked objects. The Butterfly House makes use of natural ventilation, and its roof harvests rainwater, thus making a statement in self-sustainable architecture.