McGill University’s Minimum Cost Housing Group launched in 1970 as a small postgraduate program and research unit with a sober focus on “the human settlement problems of the poor.”1 Under its first director—Colombian architect and United Nations housing expert Álvaro Ortega—the MCHG set out to devise low-cost housing technologies and technological transfers for so-called developing countries. This ambition positioned the MCHG among the myriad forms in which architects and other built environment professions engage with the vast project of post–World War II “development.” The group was subsequently led by two more directors (Witold Rybczynski and Vikram Bhatt, both former MCHG students) and hosted several generations of students from diverse countries and backgrounds. The MCHG’s activities were driven by its students’ research interests, channeled into hands-on projects that were documented in masters’ theses and the MCHG’s own publications. Over the years, the group’s interests stretched and shifted to include innovative...

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