Empowering Urban Resilience: Innovative Architectural Solutions for Sustainable and Affordable Low-Income Settlements in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Low-income settlements’ are emerging as an upcoming situation within the current economic situation within Sri Lanka, which makes people’s lives even harder to fulfill their basic needs. Within such a scenario of rising living cost issues within the country, most people tend to accept the implementation of ‘low-income settlements’ which are not the fulfillment of the essentiality in facilitiesthat need to exist within a properly constructed house. This study intends firstly, to assess the current architectural issues and their implications that impoverished people, secondly, to find creative, affordable, and environmentally friendly housing prototypes that are suited to the requirements and thirdly, to engage with swaying the residents' hearts and minds toward capturing innovative, affordable, and sustainable housing solutions. This will be conducted as a case study by specifying the community of Lake Crest Residence, Mandawila, and another housing scheme in Borella, near to Grama Niladhari Office, Narahenpita as destinations for thegreater emergence of low-income housing settlements. Respective data would be gathered based on primary sources of semi-structured interviews from the community. This presents a detailed analysis of prevailing architectural issues and their implications to suggest creative, affordable, and environmentally friendly housing solutions. Therefore, the researchfindings can be utilized to improve the current standard of living of these dwellers to sustain the qualityof their lives within the challenge of increasing global population.