A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
The Culture of the Informal City. Innovation From Within
In Latin America, with migration flows from the countryside to the city and the uncontrolled expansion of the urbs, the rural-urban dichotomy has been overcome many years ago. The dominant hypothesis is that of the „penetration -physical and cultural- of the urban world into the rural world“. However, many of the characteristics of rural construction are maintained in cities, but with less concern for the quality of the environment and more attention to incomegenerating economic activities. An example of this is the „new“ periphery of some cities known also as the informal city. One of the most important features of the informal city is the practice of self-construction of housing. In fact, many of the people that arrived in the big cities find themselves forced to build their own houses, where they can, in the absence of a formal solution by the State, without the skills and time to plan, and the economic, material and human resources to build properly. The aim of the research is to identify the technological potential, the collective capacity and the creative and participatory force that „informal“ architecture and its „popular“ culture offer, when combined with the technical and scientific knowledge of the professional architect who wants to contribute to the eco-compatible requalification of Latin American informal housing.The research is part of the constructivist cultural framework, defined in this study as a „guided bottom-up approach“. It is a transfer of social technologies through the integration of two methodologies: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Human-Centered Design (HCD). Social technologies, understood as „the sum of total knowledge in which scientific and traditional knowledge interact, complement and enrich each other“ have as actors a case study community in Colombia and a professional architect. Through the „guided bottom-up approach“, it is assumed that the architect will be able to see the practice of „informal“ city selfconstruction no longer as a problem but as a model of Grassroot innovation, an opportunity for innovation and creativity based on other ways of understanding architecture, landscape and territory.
The Culture of the Informal City. Innovation From Within
In Latin America, with migration flows from the countryside to the city and the uncontrolled expansion of the urbs, the rural-urban dichotomy has been overcome many years ago. The dominant hypothesis is that of the „penetration -physical and cultural- of the urban world into the rural world“. However, many of the characteristics of rural construction are maintained in cities, but with less concern for the quality of the environment and more attention to incomegenerating economic activities. An example of this is the „new“ periphery of some cities known also as the informal city. One of the most important features of the informal city is the practice of self-construction of housing. In fact, many of the people that arrived in the big cities find themselves forced to build their own houses, where they can, in the absence of a formal solution by the State, without the skills and time to plan, and the economic, material and human resources to build properly. The aim of the research is to identify the technological potential, the collective capacity and the creative and participatory force that „informal“ architecture and its „popular“ culture offer, when combined with the technical and scientific knowledge of the professional architect who wants to contribute to the eco-compatible requalification of Latin American informal housing.The research is part of the constructivist cultural framework, defined in this study as a „guided bottom-up approach“. It is a transfer of social technologies through the integration of two methodologies: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Human-Centered Design (HCD). Social technologies, understood as „the sum of total knowledge in which scientific and traditional knowledge interact, complement and enrich each other“ have as actors a case study community in Colombia and a professional architect. Through the „guided bottom-up approach“, it is assumed that the architect will be able to see the practice of „informal“ city selfconstruction no longer as a problem but as a model of Grassroot innovation, an opportunity for innovation and creativity based on other ways of understanding architecture, landscape and territory.
The Culture of the Informal City. Innovation From Within
Munoz Veloza, Monica Alexandra (author)
2020-01-01
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720
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