COLLISION OF THE INFORMAL AND FORMAL ARCHICTECTURES
HTS TERM II TUTOR: POL ESTEVE
INES TAZI
To begin, we could look at a rather well known example of what was originally meant to be the establishment of a combination between vernacular architecture and academic modern architecture in the th In contemporary cities and through their formation, the dominance of the rational and controlled urban developments of the modern architecture often leads to ignore the vernacular approach. Yet in most of these cities it is always more or else present. It can have preceded the new academic system in an architectural timeline, still has often been its source of inspiration. The two were not so distinct in the traditional past as the motivations of building were the same: a straightforwardly utilitarian design. But it can also emerge afterwards, as a consequence of limited access to the formal city centers, as a manifestation of social exclusion. The growth of informal settlements is here generated by and in the dominantly formal urban environment, as it is the case of shantytowns. Typically, the tension between the two modes is their lack of dialogue, the spatial boundary between the formal and the informal city, and the contemporary attitudes to deny this vernacular approach. But there are moments when both collide in unexpected ways, establishing new paradigms in the urban growth; in many cases, they are the examples of the act of making or reclaiming one’s own in the contemporary city. Sometimes, they are the opportunity of that lacking dialogue. After all, as stated in the ETH Zurich Informalize! Essays on the Political Economy of Urban Form, the informal and formal systems are increasingly connected and interdependent1. In that sense, one would question whether this form informal architecture can act an undeniable tool for the re-appropriation of the contemporary city. What can be the value of the collision of these contradictory approaches to architecture in an urban space? They are numerous examples of such phenomenon happening in the past or in nowadays cities, and because they all have in common a process of settling that is not controlled nor planned over time, they all differ in the way they respond to the modern discourse.
20 century colonial times. It starts with the influx of rural migrants in Casablanca, in the context of the French protectorate in Morocco, which began in 1912. Due to industrialization and the lack of government intentions to improve the living conditions in the countryside, a considerable number of incoming Moroccan families settled in spontaneous manners in the city. The dwellings were growing and spreading as the population of rural immigrants was increasingly rising by the early 1950’s. The growth of Shantytowns – or Bidonvilles, instantly brought in the problematic of overcrowding and poor sanitation. Because they were not included in the colonial city itself, the self-builders were claiming and establishing their ground in the city space. Here the informal expansion was developing parallel to the formal colonial city but while Casablanca became an experimental laboratory for steady architecture and planned urban development, the growth of slums was driven by the motivations of vernacular architecture. Essentially, they were meant to shelter. Nevertheless, within the spontaneous layout of the dwellings, a social community was born and engaged in unique spatial dynamics. As
1 ETH Zurich, Werk 11, Informalize! Essays on the Political Economy of the Urban Form, Volume 1, Ruby Press, Germany, 2012. Introduction by Rainer Hehl, Page 11
1.
Types of habitations in Casablanca, 1960
they were expanding their territory, the self-dwellers were incorporating rural architectural traditions to the urban life of Casablanca, developing self-taught techniques and recycling leftover materials to articulate their needs despite their precarious situation. However, this appropriation was still distanced, ideologically and spatially, from the urban fabric, as they seemed to belong to two separate territories. The informal expansion and its tension with the formal colonial city was a major attractor for modernist urban planners aspiring to establish a hierarchy into the messy scheme they thought needed their intervention. So began the prospect and implementation of social mass housing projects to suppress the problematic of the Bidonvilles. Because of the specific context in history, the modernist discourse on urban planning is considered “bound to colonialism and imperialism”2 and thus, it can be speculated that the rehabilitation projects, through their will of representing a new, modern and industrialized way of living, were also a tool for cultural assimilation and to plan a mobilized society unable to be part of the colonial city. This perspective can lead us to question whether a population that functions in its unique way can be appropriated by the city and how. Now if we look at the case Michel Ecochard’s project for the Carrière Centrale, a zone concentrating the Bidonvilles, we are facing a particular point of view towards modernist involvement dealing with spontaneous dwellings. In the early 1950’s, as director of the Service de l’Urbanisme, Ecochard led la Cité Horizontale, a project of social housing meant to rehabilitate the inhabitants of the Bidonvilles. Instead of forcing an overly strict Western urban design and “turning a blind eye to the realities on the ground”3, Ecochard had a different approach of working. He led a thorough survey – or Enquête - in which he was critically and quantitatively analyzing the local conditions, identifying and engaging with the condition problems of the dwellings as well as their social qualities and rural patterns. Therefore, he introduced his concept of the 8x8 meters grid - La Trame, each field of this versatile grid corresponding to a low-rise patio dwelling. One of the most promising aspects of the Trame was Ecochard’s aim to create a notion of neighborhood. The public space being predefined by the interstitial spaces between the patio dwellings, it was composed of shared amenities proper to the population’s habits to encourage a collective atmosphere among neighbors. Other housing complexes such as La Cité Verticale, Sidi Othman were also developed by modernist architects sharing Ecochard consideration for the complexity of the informal urban mode. It can be argued that the planners completely failed to integrate the vernacular systems of the Bidonvilles because many did take into account these systems. But what they might have failed to foresee is that their design couldn’t restore the sense of community formed in the Bidonvilles or reshape this population. In the context of Post-colonialism, the urban planners of the French authority left the colonial housing projects in the hands of their inhabitants. Over time, they have drastically changed the buildings, sometimes to the extent of rendering them unrecognizable 4 . Ecochard
2. Developments of the Carrière Centrale, Casablanca
3. Street of the Carrière Centrale neighborhood, 1952
Von Osten, Marion, “Architecture Without Architects – Another Anarchist Approach”, E-flux, 2009. <www.e-flux.com/journal/architecture-without architectsanother-anarchist-approach/>. 3 ETH Zurich, Werk 11, Informalize! Essays on the Political Economy of the Urban Form, Volume 1, Ruby Press, Germany, 2012, “Accomodating the Afropolis: Michel Echochard’s Alternative Approach to the Modern City” by Tom Avermaete, Page 19. 2
might have intentionally designed his grid to accommodate anticipated formal alterations, but these changes ultimately testify of the self-dwellers outstanding attitude to adapt the spaces they inhabit to their needs. For instance, the courtyard houses of the Cité Horizontale seem to have served as foundations for extruded terrace housing on higher few levels. The changes on the Cité Verticale are also quite radical: improvised terraces have been built on the flat roofs; most of the balconies have been closed off to be used by the inhabitants as additional rooms. The public space has also been developed accordingly to the habits of this self-led community: on the entrance level, new doors and little front gardens have been introduced. Some inhabitants have even developed manufacture spaces to produce hand-made products to sell around the quarter. One of the reasons explaining this surprising self-sufficiency is that these people originally learned about building practices, architecture and interiors in the Medina; “its concept: a growing house, built according to the needs and developments of a family or a community” explains urban theorist Horia Serhane 5 . The expansion of informal settlements has formed over the formerly planned urban fabric as the inhabitants have appropriated the buildings and settled their ground in the contemporary city, therefore appropriated the colonial modern legacy to their advantage. The way they explain it is as follows: “We are all engineers, we are all architects. If we have a basic structure or land, we just start to build”6. Which brings us to the more recent case of Torre David. Designed by Venezuelan architect Enrique Gomez, this 45- story office tower in Caracas was left unfinished in 1993 after the death of its developer, David Brillembourg and following the collapse of Venezuelan economy in 1994. Empty for many years, this so-called “concrete shell” is now occupied by 750 families. Most of these people have come from the slums of Caracas, a massive surface of informal dwellings spontaneously built on top of each other, leaving behind the precariousness of these settlements to seek for a new life in a decent home. Evidently, this situation hasn’t gone unnoticed amongst the rest of the world but whilst some condemn this “invasion or trespassing of squatters” others recognize undeniable values to this unexpected turn of events. In truth, the reason why Torre David is such an interesting example of unanticipated yet prodigious outcome of the encounter of academic and vernacular architectures is that the people that have taken over the tower were never intended to set foot in it7. And so they built the only way they could: up. Floor by floor, they’ve built between the columns on what until then remained a series of vacant open floor spaces. Making use of recycled leftover or cheap building materials, they constructed
4. Cité Verticale, 2011
5. Caracas slums, Venezuela
4 & 5 Von Osten, Marion, “Architecture Without Architects – Another Anarchist Approach”, E-flux, 2009. <www.e-flux.com/journal/architecture-without architectsanother-anarchist-approch/>.
Von Osten, Marion, “Architecture Without Architects – Another Anarchist Approach”, E-flux, 2009. <www.e-flux.com/journal/architecture-without architectsanother-anarchist-approach/>. 6
7 Fry, Adam, “Torre David: Vertical slum?”, Pulsamerica, October 25, 2012 <www.pulsamerica.co.uk/2012/10/25/torre-david-vertical-slum/>
their own walls in and when didn’t have the opportunity, started off by hanging bed sheets to define the boundaries of their own private space. As time passed, many families gradually made their home more steady, some laying tiles on the newly founded walls, some even decorating their interior space. It is fascinating to witness how the occupants - some of them starting with less than the basic necessary resources, whether material or monetary - have taken control over this originally formal typology. They’ve used the spaces in very clever ways, partitioning them accordingly to their everyday needs and took complete control over this somewhat rudimental building process. They managed to find their own tools to incorporate the basic necessities - such as electricity and toiletry - to a building cruelly lacking infrastructures. As a matter of fact, it has been referred to as an extruded Domino House because, much like Le Corbusier’s intention for the structure, the leftover of Torre David merely consisted of staircases linking a series of concrete slabs were the inhabitants should put their own walls in. The result testifies of this population capacity of proving to be self-sufficient “in the face of government ineptitude”8 and, on an other level, their abiding will to make the space they deserve in the urban environment. Although at first they may not have paid attention to planned secondary values, as many are used to mainly focus on straightforwardly utilitarian construction, the occupants progressively made of their home more that just the temporary shelter. As a matter of fact, more than a renewed physical organization for the Torre David, the increasingly settled occupants have created a unique social organization as the whole process of occupation progressed to an incorporation of a public life within the tower. Along with the attempt to define the private habitation spaces, the inhabitants of Torre David used remaining capacities to open little shops on every floor or even little factories to develop their economic situation. They have established a church, a local barber, then again through a spirit of collaboration. They also made use of the outer surfaces of the building such as the informal gym looking over the city on the 27th floor, as described by architectural photographer Iwan Baan9. The ground floor has been designated as the main public place, while the vertical circulation has been figured out despite the lack of provided infrastructures such as lifts: the parking garage connected to the tower was worked out as an elevator; a taxi driver travels up and down everyday to the fifteenth floor to leave the occupants to walk up less stairs to their home, explains Baan. The case of Torre David not only shows an outstanding capacity to adapt to circumstances but most of all a ability to form a strong sense of community. And this micro-community has made a city for itself in the tower, a strong example of reappropriation of a contemporary urban landscape that originally negated their right to settle in. Now, considering this interaction between the inhabitants of the Torre David and the urban space of Caracas and presuming that the tower actually strongly represents the notion of urban living, even if it has emerged in the city in such an unexpected way, the wider community is left to question whether this sort of improvised
6. Defining private spaces within the open plan of Torre David
7. Succession of concrete slabs and staircases
8. The barber of Torre David
9. Ground floor established as a public place
Fry, Adam, “Torre David: Vertical slum?”, Pulsamerica, October 25, 2012 <www.pulsamerica.co.uk/2012/10/25/torre-david-vertical-slum/> 8
Baan, Iwan, “On architecture without architects”, Dezeen magazine, September 6, 2012. Video <www.dezeen.com/2012/09/06/iwan-baan-on-torre-david/> 9
urbanity is to explore further. Curator Justin McGuirk recognize the potential in the case and acclaims the achievements of the inhabitants of Torre David, explaining how it has first been occupied, then reorganized then reenergized10. He also refers to the Tower as a “hybrid” as being informal but also modernist. Believing that it could be an example of the potential new typologies in megacities11, this brings out the argument of incorporating this kind of informal urbanism in future developments. Why don’t we involve the self-dweller as part of the architectural process? Shouldn’t we let a population decide for itself? On the matter, the team Reyner Banham, Paul Barker, Peter Hall, Cedric Prize has questioned in their proposition of Non-Plan: An experiment in Freedom in 1969: “What would happen if there were no plan?” and suggested “a precise and carefully observed experiment in non-planning”12. Completed in 1958 in Rio de Janeiro, The Perfeito Mendes de Moraes – or Pedregulho - was designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy as part of the Brazilian modernist movement. What was meant to remain an affordable residential complex has since then undergone a process of informalization, in function and form. An quite explicit example is the swimming pool of the complex, originally “used for recreational purposes had instead been re-appropriated as a laundry facility”13. Has the state failed to anticipate such consequences when exposing part of the inhabitants, which formerly lived in informal wooden dwellings – or Barracas, to such radical changes? Leaving aside the succeeding plans of privatization, the evolution of Pedregulho raised the following questions: Are the institutions in charge of developing social housing unable to accommodate the natural process of appropriation of space? Taking into account the informalization process of Pedregulho and other past social housing complexes, what kind of architectural approach is being developed for a more sustainable social housing typology? And finally, going back to the precedent case, how to include different backgrounds, levels of expertise, architects but also self-dwellers in a collaborative urban development process? In the prospect of integrating a population in the decision and making process of the urban project, Elemental Housing projects might be able to claim to fulfill such expectations. Developed in Chile and in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, whose government commissioned seventy homes in a middle-class neighborhood of Santa Catarina, this public housing project seems to combine both the urban academic and vernacular modes of architecture. The principle is to built a continuous building, which is in fact a succession of three-story high dwellings connected by a shared roof. But most importantly, each dwelling is only partially built as the project is designed to let the inhabitants build the other half according to their needs. Technically, the pre-built half is the
& 11 McGuirk, Justin, “Why should the poor live in slums if there are empty offices in the city”, Dezeen Magazine, 2013, Video <vimeo.com/48614739> 10
Hugues, Jonathan, Non-Plan: Essay on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, Architectural Press, London, 2000. Page 13. 13 ETH Zurich, MAS Urban Design, Building Brazil! The Proactive Urban Renewal of Informal Settlements, Ruby Press, Germany, 2011. “To Informalization and Back Again, Learning from Pedregulgo” by Marija Blagojevic, Page 14. 12
10. Patchwork façade of the Vertical Slum
11. Façade of Pedregulho used as a laundry rack
12. Cross section, front façade elevation of Elemental housing
most difficult to construct and the one that necessitates state-provided resources. The concept is then an opportunity for individuals to contribute in shaping their own living environment and to settle within the structure, which works as a basic foundation of resources, each dwelling expanding with different scenarios according to the families’ needs and growth over time. This strategic collaboration would reveal the value of a dialogue made possible between two architectural approaches. It is an opportunity to empower the self-builder and learn from the value of the natural process of appropriation of urban space that follows informalization and eventually creates unique anthropological and social dynamics as informal urbanism has proven to often generate a strong sense of community. To go back to the study case of Casablanca and the urban developments of colonial times, a last glance at the Cité Verticale of Candilis and Woods and, in particular, the “row of abstract structures”14 laid out in front of the buildings in 1952, should provide a new perspective on the project. It has been speculated that these seemingly functionless forms were in fact a former experiment by the architects to simply put in place ground structures, as starting points to suggest an anticipated future vernacular expansion of the emerging post-colonial society. This paradigm shift evidently did happen in an interesting perspective of social re-appropriation of the city. In conclusion, the investigation of the study cases has shown that past rehabilitation programs of a population, whose right to belong to the contemporary city has been negated, have often failed to pursue their original purpose of reshaping it. Despite, in some cases, the efforts to really do so, dealing with people that have proven to be surprisingly self-sufficient and empowered by their strong sense of community has led the institutions in charge of the strictly planned housing project to witness unexpected outcomes of the negotiation process to forced housing typologies. In the event of a collision between formal and informal architecture, the process of informalization of the urban fabric can instead be approached as a form of re-appropriation of the city, a reappropriation that emerges from the unique social dynamics integrated by the self-dwellers. The values of these new interactions between planned and improvised urbanisms have raised many questions in the wider community and led some to believe in the importance of a dialogue between the two architectural approaches. In an idea of collaboration between the planners and the self-builders is the possibility for the latter to participate in the process of shaping their living space is implied. Behind the amateurism and spontaneous behavior of the self-builders lies an impressive efficiency in mobilizing and organizing themselves around their functional and social needs and therefore, they should be in the center of the decision process concerning the making of one’s space in the urban environment.
13. Elemental social housing in Chile
14. Construction of Elemental Monterrey in Mexico
15. Interior of a dwelling of the Elemental building, Chile
14 Von Osten, Marion, “Architecture Without Architects – Another Anarchist Approach”, E-flux, 2009. <www.e-flux.com/journal/architecture-without architectsanother-anarchist-approach/>.