Civil Engineering and Architecture 8(5): 950-962, 2020 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080522 Habitability, a Basic Premise for Home Design and Its Impact on the Curricula of Architecture Schools Gildardo Herrera-Sánchez, Victor Manuel Garcia-Izaguirre * Faculty of Architecture Design and Urbanism, Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, México Received June 9, 2020; Revised August 12, 2020; Accepted August 25, 2020 Cite This Paper in the following Citation Styles (a): [1] Gildardo Herrera-Sánchez, Victor Manuel Garcia-Izaguirre , "Habitability, a Basic Premise for Home Design and Its Impact on the Curricula of Architecture Schools," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 950 - 962, 2020. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080522. (b): Gildardo Herrera-Sánchez, Victor Manuel Garcia-Izaguirre (2020). Habitability, a Basic Premise for Home Design and Its Impact on the Curricula of Architecture Schools. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 8(5), 950 - 962. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080522. Copyright©2020 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The demand for housing in Mexico increases year after year, in which the architects have actively participated in its design and production. This study aims to investigate whether the architectural production generated by professionals graduated from the different three study plans of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas has had a greater impact on the resolution of the habitability of the houses. To resolve the above issues, we apply two data collection instruments that would measure such a situation to a representative sample of the three study plans. The results obtained show that regardless of the study plan, all the graduates demonstrated to have, in addition to knowledge, capacities and skills for the design of comfortable homes, the ability to solve the aspects of habitability in the home, which breaks the paradigm that previous plans were better than current ones. This also implies the recognition of the academic process that is followed in public higher education institutions versus private schools, which is not affected by this condition; as well as the fact that the new technologies that are currently used in all disciplines have not detracted from the abilities that an architect must have. Keywords Architect Training, Habitability of the Houses, Housing Design, Housing Production, Public Higher Education Institutions 1. Introduction Considering the construction of houses is a process as complex as human nature and at the same time a vital necessity and a costly good for all the inhabitants of this planet, the present investigation has raised the fact of identifying cognitive capacities, which occurs specifically in the training of Mexican architects. Various studies were carried out regarding housing in Mexico (Canales [1]; Cabrera [2]); Bazant [3]) have exposed the various problems facing urban areas. One of them is the phenomenon of rural migration, which has generated a population concentration in the cities. This has demanded the creation of housing, mainly in housing complexes of social interest, several of which do not meet the minimum conditions of habitability. This situation occurs when they are located in zones unsuitable to inhabit, are occupied, divided into lots and subdivided; an issue that has been stimulated in part by the low cost of land peripheral to cities, which are incorporated into them without good urban planning. In this sense, the Housing Law, issued by the Government of Mexico in June 2006, has no clear indications regarding the parameters that should be considered to meet the habitability condition, specifying in Article 2 that "A home worthy will be considered to be one that complies… with habitable and auxiliary spaces…”; an issue that does not stipulate parameters to provide an adequate solution to housing needs.