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Informal Metabolism

Rethinking The Metabolist Urban Utopias To Address Urban Informality

Type Final Thesis [MSc Architecture and Urban Design] PoliMi

Year 2022

Team Camilla Allan [author]; Gaia Caramellino [supervisor] PoliMi; Simone Le Grange [co-supervisor]

UCT; Thomas Daniell [co-supervisor] Kyoto University

Characterised by notions of adaptive urban growth and human vitality, this thesis argues that the Metabolists’ urban utopias can be regarded as analogous with the organic dynamics of informal urbanism. The rethinking of the Metabolists’ futuristic urban paradigms from the point of view of urban informality in the twenty-first century stimulates alternative ways of understanding the multi-layered complexities of informal settlements. To substantiate this claim I investigate morphological and physiological parallels between the movement’s urban paradigms and informal processes of urbanism, directly informing the development of a research framework to address informal settlements, as a precursor to design activities.

The outcome of this thesis seeks to stimulate a point of inception. The proposed manifesto, accompanied by taxonomies of the operational categories and a conceptual glossary, calls for the rejection of hegemonic approaches to design actions in informal settlements, proposing a responsive planning framework aimed at the collaboration between planners and residents. Link