HOW CAN AN ARCHITECT ADDRESS THE SITUATION IF
INFORMALITY IS A PROBLEM OR AN OPPORTUNITY ?
Borhan Uddin
Architecture of
Informality
Dessau Institute of
Architecture
Winter Semester
2013-2014
Informality a word refers
to a situation or act that’s not formal. Is it really possible to have
everything in formal ways? The fact is, every now and then we are going through
some form of informalities within our daily life and activity. May be
informality is the way by which people who can’t effort to live a formal life
can survive. Informalities in our act and daily life become inevitable, when we
are far way from getting what’s called formal. And if it’s about architecture,
it’s the same notion that can be seen. Yes architecture is a part of our daily
life. We live in architecture; it’s a place for shelter, a place for our source
of income, a place to exhibit our pride. Architecture itself does the
exposition of our daily life. Thus informalities in our acts and daily life are
reflected in to architecture, bringing the term of ‘Architecture of
Informalities’. "..l’informe
is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to
bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each things have its form.
What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed
everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be
happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other
goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is a mathematical frock
coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is
only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or
spit." - Georges Bataille. Informality in society and urban areas are the fact that
can not be ignored. Can the architect just ignore or escape these issues
informalities within the society and architecture? If architects could invest
their skill and knowledge within the informal settlements, May be it could
bring a change in to these neglected settlements. May be one small step from
the formal professionals could change the whole scenario. Their initiative
could improve the living condition of people who are living in informal
conditions. Architecture as a profession
should be for humanity; there should not be any line of boundary in the name of
‘formal’ or ‘informal’.
According to a
2006 UN Habitat report,
at the global level, 30 percent of all urban dwellers lived in slums in 2005, a
proportion that has not changed significantly since the beginning of last
decade. Of these slum dwellers, 60 percent, or 581 million, are living in Asia;
20 percent, or 199 million, in Sub-Saharan Africa; and 14 percent, or 134
million, in Latin America . Now what is the
force that’s driving people to come into the urban areas, and live in informal
settlements? Well may be answer is urban growth indeed. As the population is
increasing rapidly, cities are expanding their territory rapidly too. Cities
are planned in much greater scale, providing jobs and modern services that are
need. This urban growth of territory, economy, and living condition is asking
for more people to come in. More and more people are gathering into the cities,
for a better life, for job, for survival. Yes these days’ urban areas, cities
require more and more people for the cities survival. But at the same time the
cities along with their policies can not provide all the basic needs to the new
immigrants, and living areas are increasing day by day. According to UN HABITAT
(UN-HABITAT, 2006a) the number of people living in slums, favellas or shanty
towns worldwide will grow from approx. 1.0 Billion in 2005 to 1.2 Billion in
2010 and 1.5 Billion in 2020. Now how do we define architecture of
informalities, or informal settlements? UN (UNSTAT, 2005) define informal
settlements as:
1. areas where
groups of housing units have been constructed on land that the occupants have
no legal claim to, or occupy illegally,
2. Unplanned
settlements and areas where housing is not in compliance with current planning.
In Dhaka ,
most of the informal settlements are built on vacant public lands, where they
are actually out of any basic need, especially drinking water, proper sanitation,
electricity. These people are working class of the booming garment industries,
an industry that play the major role in country’s economy. According to latest data the contribution of
this industry to the country’s GDP is 17.86 percent. It shows how important role is played by the
people living in the informal settlements. But through out the time from its
independence, all the government has always been avoided to implement any major
initiative or plan to improve the condition. In fact most of the cases in the
name of city improvement these informal settlements are the first target of
eviction with out any guideline for the dislocated people. This sort of
attitude has always been common in all over the world. Informal settlements
have always been seen as a negative image of the city and society. Instead of embodying the counter-image of modernity as many
have claimed in the past, informal settlements are now increasingly presented
among urban designers and planners everywhere as an improbable future model of
the modern metropolis. In short, informality is increasingly mystified as an
ideal image of anti-authoritarianism, and a flexible, aesthetically desirable
and perhaps unavoidable form of urbanization. As a result dealing with informality
is like facing a challenge by improving the living condition.
Most of the informal
settlements are grown on the basis of co operation among the people who are
looking for shelter. These settlements are made on their own skill, using
traditional methods and locally found material. Most of these materials are
cheap and at times are collected from demolished buildings and houses. Thus
creates an opportunity of reuse and recycle. At the same time exhibits the
presence of vernacular architecture within the city. Although in these areas
there are crisis of drinking water, and proper sanitation. The lack of drinking
water has impact on their health. Dismal sanitation is the other big challenge
in this area, one which especially affects the women and children. In fact, in
within the informal settlements of Dhaka more
than 70 per cent of the slum dwellers, who do not have proper toilets, are at
risk of health issues. Most of the toilets in these informal areas available
are open, and pollutes the environment. And all this issues raises the question
of improvement of these areas, in order to tackle the ongoing health issue of
the dwellers and environmental impact.
Most of the cases the
environmental danger is created because of their lack of awareness and
education, along with lack of proper management of waste disposal. As the
there’s no government activity to collect the waste from these areas, the waste
generated are actually dumped on near by areas, mostly into the water body and
streets. Based on this issue of social image and responsibility architects can
play a major role. But sadly there have not been enough initiatives from
architects. The international housing expert Geoffrey Payne makes this fact
clear: “As a qualified architect, it pains me to have to acknowledge that at
present and in some key respects, the architectural profession tends to be the
fly in the ointment (during these efforts)” (Payne, 13). Organizations like
Architecture for Humanity, for example, seek to prove that “for every ‘celebrity architect’ there are hundreds of designers around
the world, working under the ideal that it is not just how we build but what we
build that truly matters (31).” The proliferation of these kinds of
organizations has proved architects’ increasing concern and ability to work in
disaster mitigation and community development all around the world. They
embrace the “inherently social” qualities of architectural design and
increasingly team up with different actors and the users themselves (Wilson
If any initiative is
needed, the first priority has to be creating awareness. The settlers have
common understanding about their problem, need. So before any intervention has
to take place, we must know what, are the changes they are looking for. For
architects the role has to be inspiring and participatory. An architect’s
participation by addressing the facts to the local people could raise the
participation from the dwellers. By exchanging their views on common ground of
facts and problems they can change the scenario. If the local people are more
aware of the environmental impacts of their lifestyle, and the necessary things
that can be done by them to improve their living condition, they can improve it
by some simple adjustment within their areas. Any kind of open discussion or
workshop arranged by an architect addressed to the local people can bring new
ideas to solve the problem. They can have rainwater harvesting technique to
address the fresh drinking water crisis. An architect can play a major role on
this by providing the technical knowledge and even making a prototype how to
implement this technique within their exiting dwelling. The amount of waste
that they are producing can also be collected by them to solve their energy
crisis. The problem of sanitation can be addressed to them, to have better
situation. In most of the cases they find it expensive or rather unnecessary to
make proper latrine. To encourage them for having better sanitation, simple and
cost effective methods of installing or making latrine can be shown. By which
the sanitation problem can also be solved by themselves. The only thing needed
to accomplish such solution is small initiative from professionals like,
architects, urban planner, social worker and government.
A few
examples of architects working in these contexts suggest a more appropriate
role for, the architect working on slum or informal settlement improvement
projects. Hassan Fathy was one of the earliest architects who understood and
accounted for self-help building techniques, sought sustainable, user-driven
architecture. These ideals were most famously applied in his project at New
Gourna, Egypt
The architects’ design consisted of a loose
shell of concrete housing blocks, each house containing unoccupied space on
either side where expansion and upgrading could occur as the users saw fit
(Architecture for Humanity, 164-167).
In India
Arjun Appadurai a member of Mumbai’s National Slum Dweller’s Federation
describes,
“shows that well-organized slum dwellers
themselves are reconfiguring professional relationships by using the knowledge of the poor to leverage
real, lasting change. It is a community-based, bottom-up approach that relies
on global networking and slow, learning-by-doing practices “(45-46).
In Dhaka
the capital city of Bangladesh Dhaka . Where he started living with the local people, and
tried to inspire them in order to bring change. He wanted to create awareness
among the children, and created a platform, (according to him ‘platform of hope’)
next to the slum. Local people participated on their own willingness. The small
platform (platform of hope) was constructed by the local people, which then
became a playground for the children, and also a place for public gathering
area for discussing their problem. Soon this
small initiative started to change the behaviour of the local people; they
became more aware of environment, pollution, clean water, and sanitation. This
role played a major role to transform the whole area. The small platform has
been able to change the scenario. They started having garden within the
settlement. Though the Platform of Hope stands in stark contrast to
the constant threat of eviction with which the Korail residents live, without
security of tenure, on land that is becoming more valuable in the densest city
in the world. Yet local residents have the skills and willingness to change
their unhealthy surroundings. With knowledge shared on the platform, nearby
dwellings are slowly transforming, with better lighting and ventilation. The
platform and garden have generated hope for a cleaner and greener place. It has been
architecture for change, architecture for hope and inspiration. From these
examples it is very clear, how an architect play his important on the important
social issue of informal settlements. In
their essay “An Architecture of Change,” Gamez and Rogers wrote:
“What is needed is an architecture of change –
an architecture that moves the field beyond the design of buildings and toward
the design of new processes of engagement with the political forces that shape
theories, practices, academies, policies, and communities (19).”
So there
is a need of change in architect’s participation in recent days. In its updated
and most current incarnation, slum improvement practices have focused around participatory
slum upgrading, a process that mobilizes resources around key issues faces
slum dwellers: infrastructure and basic resource improvement, land tenure
security, and housing reinvestment. Participatory
policy is currently considered best practice among development agencies like
Architecture for Humanity and UN habitat. Essentially, participatory approach
for the up gradation of informal settlements seeks to effect broader-scale
change in cities of the developing world, rather than preoccupy itself with
pre-identified sites-and-services projects that are limited in scope. Pugh describes the approach as “wholesale-scale” development, as
opposed to the previous “retail-scale” development (409). Slum upgrading does involve a comprehensive effort to
incrementally provide improved basic services (piped water, electricity, paved
roads and sidewalks, sewage, etc.) to neighbourhoods, but the issue of land
tenure security is also of central importance to this policy. Specially in places like Dhaka, where
the government has a little amount of resource in order to provide necessary
location to build up a new improved settlement or housing for the poor people,
participatory approach can make the solution more easier. Rather than
relocating them into a new place, or demolishing the existing settlements where
these people are living, the existing location can be reshaped, re blocked, and
improved by providing necessary basic needs. This step can be economically more
efficient too. Charles Stokes, an observer of slum patterns in the developing
world, saw the development of these places as fundamentally social, and not
merely physical. Instead of pursuing expensive and harmful slum clearance
efforts, as Modern planning sought to accomplish, he insisted that we should
build a “theory of slums” in order to understand and gradually improve
conditions in these places (194). Again the participatory policy should be more
fluid and flexible, according to different settlements and people’s desire. In
some places people may require a lot of up gradation, where as in some places
people may require small adjustment for improving their living condition.
Recently there has been a project in china, where people who were living in an
informal settlement, were looking for a community place, a library. So the architect
came up with an idea of making a community space where a library was provided. The
community space also provided the scope to have handicraft production. As a
result it has improved their economical condition. The whole project was
eventually constructed by the local people, where they were given some workshop
on building construction. The project had the principle of participatory
approach. They were also give some prototype, by which they could, also make
changes in their existing house, or even, could improve by their own. Turner argued that policy-makers
should think of housing as a human activity – a verb – that satisfies certain
human needs and desires. In his comprehensive book Housing by People, he argued
that we should not pursue centralized, heteronymous housing solutions, but
rather, we should pursue self-determined, autonomous solutions (13).
So it is
our role as an architect from our ethical point of view, to contribute within
the overall city scale, and realizing the facts of all social issues. It is
evident that in most of the countries, where we are observing the rapid growth
of informal settlements, there’s no scope for us to treat this as a problem,
rather should be taken as an advantage. And to deal with this advantage for
social improvement we have to change our mind set. We need to have the understanding about the
existing discourse, situation and peoples demand, rather than imposing our own
idea at once. According to Geoffrey
Payne:
“The
common claim by architects that they are the leaders of the built environment
professions encourage them to see themselves as more influential in creating
and managing the built environment. This in turn encourages an arrogance which,
for instance, led to a senior World Bank staff member once refusing on
principle to employ architects on international development projects involving
housing and local development…The ‘I know best’ syndrome seems to sit
particularly comfortably on the heads of architects and does their professional
reputation no favours.” (Payne, 13-14)
Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun. “Deep Democracy: Urban
Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics.” Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 21-47.
Architecture for Humanity, ed. Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian
Crises. New York , NY
Fisher, Tom. “Public-Interest Architecture: A Needed
and Inevitable Change.” Expanding
Architecture: Design as Activism. New
York
Fukunishi
ed., Dynamics of the Garment Industry in
Low-Income Countries: Experience of
Asia and Africa
(Interim Report).
Chousakenkyu Houkokusho, IDE-JETRO, 2012.
Georges Bataille, Visions
of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927—1939, ed. and trans. Allan Stoekl. Minneapolis : University
of Minnesota
Gamez, Jose L.S., and Susan Rogers. “An Architecture of
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as Activism. New York
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of the solution or the problem? The role of professionals in facilitating or
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countries.” Are Architects and Planners
Obstacles to Slum Upgrading? Papers from a seminar in Barcelona
Pugh, Cedric. “The Theory and Practice of Housing
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Stokes, Charles J. “A Theory of Slums.” Land Economics. 38.3 (1962): 187-197.
Turner, John F.C,
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Marion
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Wilson, Barbara B. “The Architectural Bat-Signal:
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