Can Lessons learned
from Informal Architecture,
be applied to Formal
Situations?
Timothy
Samuel Barringer
4057442
Architecture
of Informality
Dessau
Institute of Architectures
When
first discussing the issue of “Informal Architecture”, I have to
admit, I was quite surprised. Not only that my initial impression of
the topic was completely off, but just how much of a serious part of
the world around us it is. As an American I am not faced with it so
often, or at least so obviously. Quite frankly I thought the
discussion would be the random meeting points between formal spaces,
kiosks, food trucks, temporary structures and installations, or even
the temporary settlements resulting from things such as music
festivals. But briefly researching the topic and discussing it with
peers from Eastern Europe, to Africa, to Southeast Asia, I was quite
surprised. Not only of the realization of what the issue was really
about, but just how varied, complicated, big and, quite honestly,
impressive it really is. And that began to lead me to the question,
can lessons learned from Informal Architecture, be applied to Formal
situations? This will of course require looking at what are the
lessons learned, or at least what do we know about informal
architecture, and what is being done about it. What is it about
Formal Architecture that needs to change, or at least warrants the
discussion of whether or not Informal could provide answers. And
Ultimately; are they, or their approach, really that different.
Ultimately I believe that not only can use what is being learned from
Informal to address the Formal, but in terms of planning, we should
stop looking at both situations as holistically different and
unrelated.
As
stated, It will be very important to discuss what we are learning
about Informal Architecture. As researchers and professionals are
already filling books, essays, and lectures on the topic, this will
only be skimming the surface of the subject. I do believe however,
that even the broadest of pictures can begin to shed a lot of light
on the topic, and be able to provide
a good background of understand on what is going on. So what about
it? In most cases Informal Settlements are the result of a need based
solution to a serious problem. Usually that problem is lack of
housing, due to the high influx of the worlds population moving to
urban centers. By 2050 India will add almost 500 million inhabitants
to its cities. In Nigeria the urban population is expected to grow by
200 million, up from the 65 million between 1970 and 2010. And a
majority of Latin America is already urban with 85% of Brazilians
living in cities (Chakravorti). People are moving to cities for a
variety of reasons, but most commonly people are flocking to cities
in search of work, or are displaced because of political turmoil. The
inhabitants of Informal Settlements are usually below the poverty
line and often migrant workers. Because of the rise in urban
migration, many cities are incapable of keeping up with the influx of
people, often causing the cost of housing to rise while incomes
remain low. A prime example of this is in Brazil, where the minimum
wage is R$675 (about 204 euro) a month, the cities of Sao Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro are the 10th
and 12th
most expensive cities in the world and there is up to 8 million fewer
residential properties than it needs. So people have had to resort to
solving the issues themselves, many with little or no money,
resulting in the many Informal Settlements around the world. Though
not all of these settlements are poverty based, they general have
resulted in slums, favelas, and shantytowns. In Brazil alone there it
is estimated that more than 50 million people live in inadequate
housing, about 26 million without access to potable water, and 83
million are not connected to sewerage systems. (Bezgachina)
Although
it is in fact a serious problem the world is facing, It is still a
very impressive to think that many people are finding was to deal
with the problem themselves, often with little to no help from the
government, and are finding was to not only solve their housing
problems, but some are even beginning to create new communities and
economies as well. As Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner of the young
South African firm 26'10 South Architects state;
The
informal should really give city planners and architects strong clues
about how people, within their limited field of choice, make the best
decisions for themselves. People are incredibly resourceful in
exploiting the lac of formal control, making ends meet with often
minimal means. I think there’s quite a malaise that we as
professionals suffer if we believe we know what we're doing after a
certain period of study or work. I've not physically built my own
house, whereas some people have already reconstructed their own home
several times over in the informal economy. There's incredible
potential for more of an exchange without so much prejudice between
formal and informal modes of operating. (Wesseler)
Deckler
continues to explain that the government often makes the Informal
illegal because they feel it is backwards, but points out how
incredible it is that people have constructed their own city and
housed themselves at hardly any cost to the state. And if there is
one lesson that should be learned from the informal; it is that
people in extreme situations, can achieve impressive feats with
little to no resources. So it should be no surprise that in
addressing the Informal, many of the approaches that are working tend
to be grassroots or bottom up approaches empowering the people and
communities, and not top down from the government. As Deckler and
Graupner explain in their interview with Sarah Wesseler, They were
commissioned by the city of Johannesburg to fix a road going through
a squatters settlement, but they realized the road was only a
symptom, and that only fixing it was like putting a plaster
(band-aide) on it. Which is a common occurrence when dealing with top
down approaches. They realized that fixing the road meant addressing
the question of housing, services, storm water, and really basic
infrastructure. Ultimately, they were able to convince the city to
not rush ahead with a politically expedient project, and in turn do a
frame work for the entire Diepsloot area. Realizing that the
seemingly chaotic fabric is actually highly organized and thus
requires a different strategy. (Wesseler)
So
how are we dealing with the Informal? As already mentioned many of
the grassroots approaches that empower the people, seem to far more
successful than top down. In Haiti, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe
launched a project to try to spruce up the slums, he's quoted saying
“Our goal is to empower the youth and the vulnerable so that they
may have the tools they need to develop their communities and live in
a more dignified way.”(Haiti) The goal of the project is to repair
homes, install solar street lights and setting up community centers
restaurants, schools, and computer and internet cafes. Although this
may be more of a “Top-Down” approach in that it is being
initiated by the government, but the restaurants for example will not
only help provide jobs, but also offer subsidized meals at a cost of
US$0.25. And the Internet cafes will provide opportunities for people
to do their own research, and help the community themselves.(Haiti)
In Brazil, Demostenes Moreas and Katerina Bezgachina propose that
“Evictions, or state actions to get rid of shantytowns, will not be
effective.” and that their work “has shown that only by involving
local communities can we achieve a long-term solution to this housing
crisis. Communities need to become their own agents of change.”
They believe that “when residents have security in their home
ownership, they will be more willing to invest in renovating and
upgrading existing housing.”(Bezgachina) And why wouldn't they? It
would make sense that people are only willing to take care, and
invest in something that the government may come in at any moment and
strip away from them. Allow people to claim proper ownership of there
homes, remove the fear of the temporary, and its quite possible, that
like in solving the housing issue, they will then be more willing to
address the quality of that housing. Deckler and Graupner pointed out
that at first when they hit the streets to study the Diepsloot
district outside of Johannesburg that at first people were
apprehensive to talk to them, because many of the residents
technically have an illegal status, but once they understood what
26'10 was doing, the people were “amazing, just incredibly open and
generous.” While doing a competition for Johannesburg Water, as way
to generate other approaches they observed a local “gray economy”
putting into practice what was both launched in Haiti, and proposed
in Brazil. That in some areas people who cleaned the public
neighborhood toilets would also charge a small fee to people from
other streets. This creates not only a economic opportunity, but also
a sense of ownership. (Wesseler)
Another
approach that is not only offering people a sense of ownership, but
helping provide access to social welfare, health care, utilities, and
other benefits, is providing address. The program, Addressing
the Unaddressed
is doing exactly that by translating geo-coordinates into unique Ids
that residents can use ass addresses. In an article on
rockefellerfoundtion.org about the program, It points out that
governments often respond to informal settlements by clearing the
slums, and relocating the residents which usually end up far from
their jobs and social networks. (Addressing the Unaddressed) This is
often another issue with Top-down interventions, that locally
economies, such as the toilets, are unknown or unconsidered, and as a
result often destroyed, leaving the residents in a much worse
situation, and in often add to strain on the public transit to
transport more people. Like Addressing the Unaddressed, options to to
keep people near their work and communities, help provide access to
more amenities, give people the sense of ownership (if not actual
ownership). Like the work by 26'10 South Architects, solutions can
not be skin deep. A better understanding of the issues is needed, and
paying attention to what is already working, engaging the community
as well as public institutions, and building from there.
If
“Top-down” approaches are not working for the Informal, then
surely they must be working for the Formal? Well many would argue,
not. “We have reached a point at which any attempt to find a
complete and self-contained urban system is doomed to failure from
the outset” (Ungers p.13) In his book The
Dialectic City,
O.M. Ungers argues that traditional ways of looking at a uniform city
have failed, that “The ideology of the modern, cleaned up, tidied,
standardized city, has produced just the opposite, a chaotic,
confused and totally degenerated urban sprawl that nobody cares for
any more because it has become totally run-down and hopelessly
decayed.” (Ungers p.14) Surprisingly, and unintentionally I'm sure,
it seems like Ungers is saying that the Informal is ultimately a
result of (failed) modern urban design. So when it comes to the
question of what is it about the Formal that we need to change
anyways; the answer seems obvious. If Informal is the result poor
planning of our cities in the past leading to a failed or inadequate
system, then how could that same approach imaginably work for the
Informal, and why is it continually applied to the formal? At a
formal level, Ungers argues that we can no longer look at the city as
a uniform work of total art. He says that the “contemporary town is
not one but many places. It is a complex, many-layered, multifarious
structure, made up of complementary and interconnected ideas,
concepts and systems.”(Ungers p.17) In addressing and revitalizing
the formal cities, The “Top-down” master plan approach is still
proving to fail. Like looking at and understanding the special
situations of individual Informal communities, the same is required
in the formal. Ungers proposes these two approaches: The strategy of
complementary places. And the strategy of the city as layers. These
recognize that the city is no longer one homogeneous structure, that
it is a collection, and over lap of pieces with varying size,
function, importance. Like it or not, the informal peripheral
settlements and very much a part of the dialectical city.
Applying
lessons from the Informal to the Formal. As stated, informal
settlements are often the result of formal systems failing. And as
the world population continues to shift toward urbanization, the
problem will only grow unless we can be prepared for it if not even
cities like Berlin, London, and New York (which already suffer from
high housing demands, and homelessness) will be addressing rapidly
growing informal peripheral settlements at the scale of Johannesburg,
or even Lagos. With the world having an estimated one billion
informal inhabitants, and an expected 2 billion by 2030. “Slums
offer a an informal global network of living laboratories. Each
offers a staggering variety of local solutions to universal urban
problems that re rapidly catching up with all of us.”(Chakravorti)
in the blog Tomorrow's
City Living Ideas from Today's Slums
on BOSTON + acumen, they list 4 points garnished from the slums:
- Adapt construction and design to the context
- Displace ad hoc practices with systematic innovation
- Recycle for sustainable living
- Facilitate bottom-up entrepreneurship
these
points emphasize designs that are not only innovated structurally.
But can affect the attitude of the inhabitants, and trying to reduce
unhealthy behaviors. It also emphasizes bottom up ways of improving
the their environments physically and economically.
All
urban dwellers need to solve a universal set of needs: shelter,
health, water, education, energy, and transportation. Slums are
providing ideas to do so by showing us how to adapt to the context,
use and reuse locally available resources, and scale up in order to
have and impact on the largest number of people. (Chakravorti)
What
we are seeing is the need and ability to adapt easier and quicker and
the and to do more with less. A prime example of seeing this being
applied into a formal setting, is in Detroit, Michigan. Looking at
this as an example is quite interesting, because many points from the
infromal can and are being applied to address a formal situation in
dyer need of help. However it is suffering from a polar opposite
issue than has already been discussed. The city of Detroit, instead
of dealing with gross over population, is shrinking at a rapid rate,
a city built for almost 1.7 million people, has shrank to nearly
600,000. like the informal, it has been though many, failed
government revitalization programs. The government has been spending
millions on construction projects, such as the $500 million
Renaissance Center, which later sold for $76 million and is mostly
empty. The underutilized People Mover transit loop around the
downtown. And also new stadiums for the cities Major League Baseball
t and National League Football teams. These projects however, did
little to solve the high unemployment rate, and the rapid population
loss. (Fletcher) But like in the slums, people when faced with
extreme situations they get creative. Amanda Gregory says about
Detroit “I have seen more innovation and creation than anywhere
else; more everyday people doing extraordinary things than anywhere
else.” (Gregory) Whats going on in Detroit is that people are
figuring out how to deal with the the situation themselves, they are
learning how to create new economy, raising money in creative manors,
and dealing with the physical issues in intriguing ways. Using
grassroots methods, Detroit is rebuilding itself. One of these
methods is an organization called Detroit SOUP, which creates
micro-grants for projects. It operates by hosting a dinner, everyone
donates $5 for the dinner, for people will present a project, and
during dinner, the diners will vote on a project, and the winner
receives the money raised that evening. (SOUP) This is people
empowering themselves to change their communities. Another example is
the Detroit Food Justice Task Force which focuses on urban-farming
and Detroit is the home to over 1000 small farms and community
gardens. Which not only begins to address many of the vacant spaces
in the city, but also the lack of easily accessible foods in some
areas. (Abowd)
Detroit
however, is not the only place we see this happening. In Atlanta,
Georgia the Central Atlanta Progress is proposing a program that will
help create a new micro economy, as well as boost a soon to open
transit line. When the Atlanta streetcar begins, civic officials want
temporary “pop-up” galleries and businesses to enliven currently
vacant storefronts along its route. So the CAP will be accepting
applications for $500 grants to set up temporary rent-free shops in
vacant spaces. Allowing these small, informal-esque will not only
bring activity to empty areas, provide more job and economic
opportunities, and help to create permanent activity around a new
proposed transit line which should bust the ridership, and income of
the transit line. This is very much an informal approach being
applied to a formal city, and funded by the government to help
improve the city. (Ruch)
Another
direct example is looking back at the interview by Sarah Wesseler of
Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner of 26'10 South Architects. In
dealing with the City and the infromal community, Deckler and
Graupner also became involved with the cities formal housing
settlements known as the Reconstruction and Development Programme or
RPD, and in the interview they discuss some of the issues of the
program, some of which includes the perpetuation of suburban
settlements, removing people from communities and their work, and
additional congestion and loads on transit. But when asked if they
are making recommendations on the formal program, Deckler replies
“Yes, ultimately what we'd like to have a public platform to raise
public and professional debate... We'd just like to raise the level
of debate with institutions that educate architects as well as the
public and the government role-players. In the process we are also
educating ourselves” (Wesseler) What this begins to do is get
everyone involved at the same table. We have already discussed
empowering the people, finding out what individual communities need,
give the residence a sense of ownership or a say in the subject as
well as the governments often putting band-aides on issues often with
discovering or addressing the real problems. Creating a platfrom
where everyone is involved can help achieve all of that. And a great
example of this in action is Nashville, Tennessee through the work of
the Nashville Civic Design Center. The NCDC began as a studio
outreach program through funding and professors of the University of
Tennessee, College of Architecture and Design. It began as a forum on
design in the city, and lead to writing The
Plan of Nashville
which was a long and intensive process bringing together members of
the public, designers, developers, city planners and officials, as
well as many others. It has since become a very important and useful
tool to the city of Nashville. It is exactly the platform of debate
that brings together educators, professionals, role-player and the
public.
In
conclusion I believe that yes, lessons learned from Informal
Architecture can and are being applied to formal situations. It is
obvious that informal settlements are excellent opportunities to
learn how to improve formal environments as well as plan for the
future. Informal settlements are the results of poor planning in
formal cities and in being so should not be treated as some
irrelevant cancer, but another unique element or layer to a larger,
more complex problem.
Bibliography
Abowd,
Paul and Jenny Lee. “Detroit's Grassroots Economies” 17 Mar 2011.
In
These Times.
Accessed 25 Jan 2014.
<http://inthesetimes.com/article/7089/detroits_grassroots_economies>
Bezgachina,
Katerina and Demostenes Moraes. “Brazil's slum housing needs local
solutions and long- term renovation” 3 Jan 2013 The
Guardian.
Accessed 25 Jan 2014. <http://www.theguardian. com/
housing-network/2013/jan/03/brazil-slum-housing-local-solutions>
Chakravorti,
Bhasker and Gaurav Tiwari. “Tomorrow's City Living Ideas from
Today's Slums” 7 Apr 2013. Boston
+ Acumen.
Accessed 25 Jan 2014.
<http://boston.plusacumen.org/blog/tomorrows -city-living-ideas-from-todays-slums/>
Fletcher,
Micheal A. “Grand plans by presidents, both Democrats and
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8
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“Providing
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Ruch,
John. “Pop-up shop near Atlanta Streetcar stop?” 23 Jan 2014.
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Accessed 25 Jan 2014.
<http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2014/01/23/pop-up-shop-near- atlanta-streetcar-stop>
SOUP:
A Montly Dinner Funding Micro-Grants for Creative Projects in
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Accessed 25 Jan 2014 <detroitsoup.com>
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