Colonising the city

Colonising the city

Informal reactions and parasitism in the urban environment

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Marco Nicastro

Cover image: Belgian artist Benjamin Verdonck on the nest built on a skyscraper wall as part of his artistic performance The Great Swallow

“Vous savez, c’est la vie qui a raison, l’architecte qui a tort.”

–Le Corbusier

Contents

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Introduction

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Humans as parasites The primitive hut Colonising the city

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Colonising the city through time The middle age The modernist conception of city Theories beyond Modernism The present situation

Colonising the city: immediate needs

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Spontaneous reactions The squatting movement Informal settlements Colonising architectural failures Rooftop communities

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Colonising the city: mediate needs

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Interpreting the informal Inspired by favelas Portable interventions Architectural parasites Collectives

Conclusion

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Introduction

01

Humans as parasites In every human settlement it is possible to find, parallel to the official buildings and spaces, an undercurrent of unofficial and spontaneous interventions. Developing in voids, abandoned areas or in connection to existing structures, these represent the reactions of people to an urban environment the development of which is often definied by forces other than the actual needs of its inhabitants. At other times they could express ways of conceiving life and society differently to the establishment.

This brings about a sort of colonisation of the urban environment by the people, be it either related to the alternative uses of buildings, resources, spaces or situations that are produced by the city. This kind of response pushes the boundaries of the programmed roles of human-made spaces and goods, considering them pure physical entities that could potentially be used for anyone’s specific needs. It is an approach that, in its usually autonomous and unofficial nature, is often considered connected to the concept of parasitising society and its physical products.

Talking about parasites in our society usually carries negative connotations, especially when the society itself is founded on rules of social acceptance based on productivity and work. A parasite is seen as someone who lives by taking advantage of other people’s work, subtracting themselves from their responsibilities towards society. However it is important to consider that the citizens of these societies do not always choose whether or not to be part of a defined system of rights and duties, or what role they might play within it.

Additionally, it could be argued that we as humans have in our nature some sort of tendencies towards parasitic behaviour. Taking advantage of other individuals, which has sometimes evolved into a reciprocal use of others, regulated within society by rules, is something natural (even when not vital) for many living organ-

isms, humans included. Furthermore, how can we not consider ourselves parasitic in at least some sense, when our relationship with nature is so often a one-way system of exploitation? Our use of natural resources, while totally dependent on our environment, is simultaneously destroying it.

However, parasitic behaviour is not always purely destructive: in many cases there can be reciprocal advantages. Even a dog can be seen a sort of parasite, living off its owner’s food and care; but the latter gains many advantages from the relationship, in terms of emotional fulfillment and protection, for example. Reciprocal relationships between organisms are something always present in our lives, and often vital.

Shifting to the world of architecture, here meant as any way people artificially define and create their living environment, we can easily see how, since the first dwellings, humans have been absolutely dependent on exploiting what they found around them for their needs.

The primitive hut Architecture theorists tend to look at the birth of the discipline through a lens that glorifies creativity as something that strikes out of nowhere. Many architects and theorists have proposed romanticised versions of the creation of the primitive hut, whose archetypal shape will eventually inform classical and vernacular architecture.

As the art historian Andres Lepik noticed, “what tends to fall by the wayside in this narrative […] is that other anthropological constant that stems from the earliest humans seeking shelter from the elements in existing natural caves and spaces, which they would then use as dwelling places”1. It seems like the visions proposed by some of the earlier architectural theorists want to disqualify “the notion of appropriating spaces”2 from the playing field of architecture, as this seems too “easy” and lacking those technical, artistic and inventive

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Introduction

features deriving from the architect’s genius: like a god creating the world from the void, the architect creates the roof purely from imagination.

In fact, these indulgent celebrations of human creativity cast a shadow on the idea that architecture evolved out of direct exploitation of what the environment offered, and from a look-and-copy attitude towards natural structures and animal behaviours. In the end a hut can be seen as a man-made cave, and a treehouse as a man-made nest.

Human creativity expresses itself in the ability to look afresh at the world around us, finding alternative ways to use, interpret, copy and adapt it (or elements of it) according to specific needs, rather than in the ability to create from scratch.

Even Le Corbusier’s translation of human intervention as the need to give order to chaotic nature3 could raise some questions when one looks at the chaos of a stratified modern city. Maybe the order comes from individual activity, independent from its human nature, while the mix and clash of everyone’s order results in the chaos. A chaos that can alternatively be called stratification, thus freeing itself from negative connotations.

This stratification is the natural consequence of an evolving environment in which many organisms live and leave the marks of their needs and characteristics. Like plants growing over each other in a forest, becoming layered in their “fight” for space and sunlight, the city autonomously grows adding new layers on top -sometimes literally- of old ones.

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Colonising the city From this point of view, the line dividing the built environment from the natural one begins to be more thin.

Imagine an early human ancestor, looking at the environment to find solutions to their needs. As said, caves offer natural protection, as do the height of trees; leaves could be used to hide oneself and stones could be

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01. Detail of a section of Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong (now destroyed): an example of informal autonomous urban growth.

02. The primitive hut as conceived by the abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier; in this version, its archetypical shape inspired the shape of classical Greek temples.

03. The historic centre of Matera (Italy), called I Sassi (The Stones): houses are carved into the rock of the hills.

used to cut and mash. Wind could be let inside dwellings to freshen the hottest days. Water could be used as a means of transportation; and so on.

In this way, elements can be seen for what they might offer to accommodate needs and not only for what they actually are.

In our modern and hyper-planned society, our eyes are getting more and more unused to looking at things in this way. Elements in the city, especially man-made ones, whether buildings, spaces or furniture, are designed for a purpose and are usually seen and used only for that. Different approaches towards them are often perceived by people as unacceptable, weird or even dangerous, if not prohibited outright by law.

It is a cultural process that brings about acceptance of a defined way of living, without considering or validating alternative options. Examples of these social prejudices are easy to find; talking about the appropriation of spaces in a city, one can immediately recollect the negative reactions of some citizens towards squatted buildings and autonomous communities.

We can go back to ancient Greece to find an example of this in Diogenes’ behaviour. In his search for total liberation from superficial needs, the philosopher had an ante-litteram anarchist approach to the urban environment. He lived and slept in public spaces like temples and agoras, giving orations, eating, sleeping, masturbating and defecating there, which was a dramatic departure from any established social norm and a total breakdown of the boundaries that usually separate attitudes to public and private places.4 Even environments that are supposed to provide greater levels of freedom, such as the private spaces of our houses, usually come to us in a predefined form, of which our chances of customization, and consequently the adaptation to our needs and personalities, are limited and, again, pre-planned in their limits.

In our society there is scarcely any space for “infor-

mal” architecture5, and when it does happen, is often related to marginal situations, sited in areas of illegality and social rejection. Those instances, coming from “below” rather than from official organs, are derived from the needs and desires of individuals or small groups.

Due to limited economic and spatial resources, they usually result in adaptations and annexes to the preexisting urban fabric or, when they do start from scratch -as in the case of many slums- their growth is irregular, driven only by the essential demands and issues that gradually emerge during the process. In the end, as will be analysed, this is the main factor in producing the stratification that characterises human settlements.

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Colonising the city through time

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The middle age Before examining the practice of reuse in some european historical contexts, it is useful to note the areas in which official architecture operates, in contrast to informal ones.

Looking at architecture history in its entirety, housing or the average person1 has been the target of an evolving interest from professionals, either for design or legal aspects.

Therefore until recently the sector has remained within the sphere of the informal and self-construction, even when legislation was present.2 This informal aspect, was -as it is now- always paired with economisation of resources and thus to reuse. In this way, the existing built environment was often seen as a sort of open air mine from which to extract materials to modify according to new needs, either used raw, or as they were found.

The South-European Middle Age is almost stereotypical as an example of this attitude. This was fostered by the period of social and political chaos all over Europe created by the decline and dissolution of the Roman Empire, formally determined as 472 A.D. The lack of a central government was followed by a re-organization of the society and the powers within it that translated into new architectural needs, not least the need for means of physical defense in a more fragmented world.

This meant new resources as well: the monumental architectural corpus of official Roman buildings, having lost their owners and their purposes -either public, private or representative- became a huge reservoir of construction materials.

Well-known is the case of one of the most recognizable Roman architectural symbols, the Colosseum, which provided material for private buildings for centuries until the Pope prohibited the practice. Nor was this the only occurance of scavenging. In contemporary

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Lucca, Italy, the Piazza Scalpellini3, located next to the old amphitheatre (which during the centuries has been converted into a square, with houses built from the terraces), recalls the main activity of the residents of the area.

Reuse of materials from other buildings is not, however, a prerogative of informal architecture, and the difference lies in the motivation. While in this case this is mostly determined by needs (since reusing materials is often the only way to afford building), in official architecture we can find purposes other than convenience for this habit, such as the symbolic use of spolia taken from enemies or subjugated population’s buildings. In many important historical buildings, especially when their role was that of celebrating the authorities’ power, we can find those elements incorporated in the architectural fabric.

However the concept of parasitism becomes more evident in the cases of appropriation or reuse of entire buildings. The medieval city is a great example of this, displaying an extraordinary stratification driven by the need to obtain the most from the existing environment, often without a predefined urban plan or particular regard to existing buildings.

This stratification affected both used or abandoned

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Colonizing the city through time

structures by private individuals on a public junction was followed by an “official” intervention by the city’s ruling family, the Medici, which resulted in Giorgio Vasari being commissioned in 1565 to build a covered passage over their roofs in order to connect the Palazzo Vecchio (the centre of urban power) with the family’s main residence on the other side of the Arno river.

Sometimes the border between public and private is not so defined, as in the case of entire communities occupying abandoned buildings. In the search of protection from external dangers, thick walls of ancient monumental buildings were a ready-to-use solution.

buildings and infrastructure, and its nature was informal as well as “official”. Unfortunately not many examples of this are visible any more as they have become hidden within buildings or removed. A case in point are the shops that gathered against the walls of the Pantheon4.

They were not just parasitising the physical structure, but its function as well, taking advantage of this crossing point at the entrance of the church to attract customers.

This same approach brought about the colonisation of bridges, of which Florence’s Ponte Vecchio is one of the most remarkable. Here the creation of informal trading 03

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01. Etching of Castello dell’Acqua Giulia (Rome) in the XVII Century: houses are built attached to the old building’s walls.

02. Etching from the XVIII Century showing medieval stone cutters extracting marbles from the Colosseum 03. Arles’s amphitheatre in the XVIII Century: the houses on stages and arena are today removed.

04. View of Diocletian’s Palace.

05. Detail of the Palace’s plan: it is posible to see the profiles of former buildings under today’s built areas (in grey).

06. Ponte Vecchio with its double stratification: bridge, shops and the Vasari Corridor on top.

Amphitheatres were colonised, making use of the arches and covered passages, as well as the terraces and the central arena, to host houses, shops and churches, becoming de facto fortified villages.

The gigantic ruin of the abandoned Diocletian’s Palace in modern day Split, Croatia, met the same fate, becoming the refuge in which the inhabitants of the town, after escaping enemy invasion, built their new homes, exploiting the fortified structure.5 The modernist conception of city Research into the most functional form of urban organisation has always occupied authorities, architects and artists, evolving from the orthogonal grid of the Roman castrum to the concepts of ideal city cultivated during the Renaissance. As the centuries went by, many theories were produced and some proposals were actualised.

This process sometimes degenerated into visions of cities excessively planned in every detail, and consequently a -sometimes implicit- planning of its inhabitants’ lives.

Jumping directly to the main movements of the early th 20 Century, which definitely formed most of modern cities’ shapes, we can see how study and analysis of humans behaviours, society and ergonomics brought about the presumption of being able to encase all of them into some determined rules, that could ideally be the starting point for a human-centred architecture and a more functional world.

Some of these proposals are directly affected by the new rhythm and habits of life in the industrial society and a Tayloristic view of life and society, aimed to reach maximum productivity.

In fact most of theoretical movement tend to produce architectural models whose strong features don’t allow for customisation by its users.

This approach is often related to the Modernist proposals for the development of the cities of the future as well as to new concepts of living units, influenced by

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Colonizing the city through time

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and at the same time influencing new lifestyles. These functionalist visions, while on one hand greeted as revolutionary, on the other faced a growing opposition and were criticised as dehumanizing, by voices that eventually found their climax in the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe complex in St. Louis during the 1970s (considered by many as the failure of Modernism) and in some way in the progressive customisation of Quartiers Modernes Frugès in Pessac, France. This residential neighbourhood, designed

by Le Corbusier as a prototype of modern concepts and aesthetics, following strict modernist guidelines, was destined to be inhabited by the workers of the factory of Henry Frugès, who commissioned the project. Year after year, the inhabitants began to customise elements of the buildings that were not responding to their needs: continuous windows were subdivided into normal windows, open terraces became closed annexes to units, open spaces on the ground floor privatised to become garages.

However, either one could see in the Pessac example a demonstration of the failure of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter concept, or positive features which favour customisation and stratification thanks to the flexibility and neutrality of spaces. Either way it remains an extraordinary example of the diversity of individual needs of inhabitants of a building and their creativity in adapting it.

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Theories beyond Modernism The period of reconstruction following the Second World War increased further the debate around Modernist themes developed during the 20s and 30s; while on one side those were followed and deepened, incisive voices against them started to be more consistent.

Movements proposing alternative approaches, often utopian visions, took part in a debate that was not confined to the boundaries of architecture and urbanism, sprawling into artistic, social, psychological and philosophical fields.

A growing interest in examples of unofficial architec-

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07. Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine: an example of Modernist urban planning.

08. The Pruitt-Igoe complex before its demolition: its scale and rigid planning seems completely out of place.

09. Pessac, Quartiers Frugès: one of the houses designed by Le Corbusier, in a typical modernist style.

10. - 14. Examples of customization by the inhabitants, including the redefinition of spaces and openings and the addition of more traditional elements.

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Colonizing the city through time

ture oriented points of view towards a shift in people’s role in architecture, bringing them from simple end-users to active subject, recognising the value of their interventions as equal to those of conventional architecture.

One of the main themes was the critique of capitalistic society, reflections of which are found within the rationalist urban planning defined in 1933’s Athens Charter. A more participative approach towards people, with a rise in interest of everyday life and informal architecture and activities, was a common basis that eventually informed new theories. Starting from the 50s, Team 106 distanced themselves from Rationalism and its dogma, embracing a more pragmatic approach to every project.

Among the founders, Giancarlo de Carlo was a strong supporter of the need for participation in the design process, and the political and social features of his ideas are exemplified in the project for workers’ housing in Terni, where he not only requested consultations with its future residents, but imposed the condition that these were paid activities by their employers, who could not be present during them.7 While options for participation were devised by Team 10 through intensive research in order to give more choice to future inhabitants, Situationist International members believed that people’s involvement was best achieved through renouncing control of their intervention.

The group, active from 1957 to 1972, was founded with the union of Guy Debord, main figure of Lettrist International, and Asger Jorn, founder of Imaginist Bauhaus, a derivative of the artist’s group COBRA; all these groups were active in the critique of modern society and characterised by anarchist tendencies.

SI ideas were strongly utopian and abstract8, while taking a stance against the academic world. Their final aim was to be “the last avant-garde”9, creating a new society characterised by an experimental way of life, in which people, like actors on a theatre stage, continu-

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15. The construction of Brasilia in 1956, following Modernist urban theories.

16. The Villaggio Eni (Terni) by De Carlo, designed in consultation with its future residents.

17. A plan of North New Babylon from 1959.

18. Aerial view of New Babylon (1964).

19. - 20. Photomontage and model of the suspended structure of New Babylon.

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ously drift through “situations” created by themselves and facilitated by the environment. This concept was expressed without proposing actual architectural or urban solutions, in line with thire refusal of individual and academic projects in favour of the creative power of collectivity.

This is potentially one of the reasons for the exit from the group by Constant10, whose long search for an architectural shape for the Situationists’ concepts brought him to the creation of New Babylon. As an inprogress work with a rather abstract identity, whose first maquettes were presented in 1959, his proposal fits into

the experimental design research of the time, primarily based on the concept of megastructures, comprising among others the Japanese Metabolism, Archigram, Cedric Price’s proposals and Yona Friedman’s urbanisme spatiale. New Babylon, though, differentiates itself as being the most utopian, in its ideas as well as in its unresolved form. It basically consisted of a dynamic labyrinth constantly changing its spaces, under the influence of inhabitants’ actions, in which they endlessly wander creating situations and interacting in a rather playful manner with others and with the architecture itself; the society of this so called homo ludens is freed

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Colonizing the city through time

independently build their houses, open to be modified and improved years after11.

A more technical and realistic approach, even for expressing utopian concepts, informed the proposals of the British architects of Archigram as well, whose Instant City, for example, proposed the colonisation of a city by a zeppelin that, through various media, infuses the inhabitants with the stimulus to act and appropriate the city. As in the Situationist International’s ideas, the architects do not produce physical buildings, they rather inspire people to act.

Even though they gave an important contribution

from economic needs, since it is set in a future in which machines will carry out all the work needed, allowing people to focus on creative tasks.

The actual shape was that of a big structure suspended on pillars, sprawling over old cities. This concept is quite similar to Friedman’s proposal for Spatial City. Here, a megastructure built over the city acts as an open tridimensional grid, allowing users to freely create within it their living spaces according to their needs.

This was the application on a larger scale of his earlier concept of mobile architecture, relating to the mobility not of buildings but of people themselves, whose endless changing needs must be accommodated by the architecture. Unlike New Babylon, Friedman’s city did not propose an experimental way of living, rather it focused on experimental ways to favour people’s needs. Furthermore it was closer related to reality, as the author wanted to propose actual feasible proposals.

While the scale of megastructures could belong in the realm of utopian ideas, Friedman’s 1980 proposal for a housing in Belapur, India, asked for by the Indian government but not realised, could have been a realisation of his principles. The building proposed presented as an empty tridimensional skeleton in which future inhabitants, provided with technical knowledges, could

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21. Drawing of Spatial City.

22. Photomontage of a Spatial City developed over Paris.

23. Diagram by Friedman illustrating the principle of its project of a Self-help Housing scheme for Belapur (1980).

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Colonizing the city through time

statement of this.

La Memé, as it is also called, is a big complex merging various functions; Kroll, chosen by the students themselves14, engaged them to actively participate in the design process, and not only before the construction: the students’ housing consisted of open lofts, in which the students could build and arrange internal partitions and division of spaces, creating new functions -private and communal- according to their needs and will. While the megastructure’s principle of an open structure hosting autonomous units is reached (though obviously on a smaller scale), the strict geometry associated to it is denied for a more free overall shape. This is reflected also in the materials and finishes used, which are not ruled by a rational order. Not only the residents were given freedom to create the building: the builders were also encouraged to express themselves by completing parts of it to their own taste.

This approach, positively welcomed by the users,

to the development of new approaches, none of these proposals was eventually built -and often they were not even supposed to be, acting more as provocative critique of the established way of thinking. Paradoxically, one of the architects of the period that almost achieved separation of the structural support from the internal arrangement, left to the buildings’ users, was adverse to the megastructure concepts.

Lucien Kroll, a Belgian architect born in 1927, throughout his career developed his interest in the role of architecture in a city that must not be manufactured, but rather “let it build itself ”12. His architectural process consisted of the involvement of users and builders, as well as “incompletion […] as a condition of evolving life”13; therefore his design and construction processes refuse a strict timing agenda in favour of a long evolution of the architecture, influenced by all those involved. His best known work, the Medical Faculty of the Catholic University of Louvain, sited in Brussels, is a 24

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24. Diagram showing the phases of Instant City realisation.

25. Archigram’s utopian concept were anyway designed in every aspect, as if they were feasible: here, the planned itinerary for the Instant City tour of East Anglia.

26. La Memé, external view of the students’ lofts building.

27. Inside, the spaces and their functions are varied according to its users’ needs.

was however often disapproved of by the authorities.

The case of the garden is exemplar.15 It was designed to grow wild and to be created with the aid of residents (who were also encouraged to bring and plant their own vegetation) and nature was supposed to develop freely with time according to its own “rules”; even paths were not traced, as they would have been created by the movement of people. However, the authorities didn’t accept the idea and decided in the end to clear it out, creating a conventional garden instead.

The present situation As seen by looking at examples from the past, appropriation of the built environment can manifest in many different ways and with many different purposes, too.

The parameters are of course extremely liquid, but bearing that in mind the following outlines some of the main categories.

The leitmotiv that links most of the interventions is the fact that they react to the artificial world in a sort of primeval way, going beyond the explicit meaning and role of buildings and their parts. Architectural historian Iain Borden drew an analysis of this approach towards the city, looking at street skateboarders and their use of urban spaces, commenting that “beyond […] being functionals, each corresponding to a particular activity or ideological purpose, they are also conceived of primarily as objects in space, as dispositions of three-dimensional forms […] in a universal, abstract space.”16 In this way they take over the city, making it their playground: benches, stairs handrails, etc. now have different values, as new roles are discovered for them.

This reconnection to the urban environment, even with their own rules in juxtaposition to the established ones, is not only driven by the need to find new spots to practice skateboarding17, but it is part of its subculture’s philosophy, which is inclined towards an anti-establishment attitude.

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Colonizing the city through time

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28. La Memé: a wall with non uniform masonry, autonomously realised by the masons.

29. Students working in the creation of the communal gardens.

30. The air.-conditioning ducts in the dining room, arranged in this way by their engineers, create a sort of sculpture.

31. Internal walls can be placed and removed freely bythe flats occupants.

32. A skater in London’s Southbank Centre. Facing a plan for eviction, the skaters organised a petition to save the urban skatepark they created by appropriating of the space. In 2014, they eventually won the dispute.

33. View of Washington Street Skatepark in San Diego. It is built by the skaters themselves, after they occupy a wasted space under a highway and organise to obtain the legal right to use it.

The skateboarding example, similarily to the already cited Diogenes’ actions, suggests to us that the re-appropriation of space is something that can’t be limited to purely architectural issues, intended as a concrete creation of buildings in relation to other buildings. Starting from this alternative perspective, this could manifest in behaviours, actions or attitudes towards a use of urban objects that moves away from their original essence.

While remaining conscious of this, the following analysis will focus however on examples that relate more to the typical concerns of architecture, in particular on dwelling issues.

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Colonising the city: immediate needs

Spontaneous reactions Most informal interventions in the urban environment are driven by direct needs.

They take their cue from individuals or communities who need to find the best answer to a particular need.

This is, in basic terms, the need of a dwelling, but it can also be -or evolve into- more articulated needs, like places for gathering, creating communities, expressing oneself, etc. The common point is that usually the authors are also the users of the intervention, and in some cases they’re not trying to make a statement (although often this same statement is implicit in it) as their primary purpose.

We can probably say that they are the most genuine, since their nature reflects having the most pragmatic approach, often with limited thinking behind them: the outcome is a direct reaction to problems and needs that appear one after the other, and is then gradually evolving with them. Previsions for future needs are limited and answers to them are not designed.

However, the very improvised and transitory nature of this approach puts it in the sphere of an always inprogress situation. As we have seen, it is the same path followed by Friedman, Constant and Kroll proposals for buildings constantly evolving with their users’ needs.

In term of architectural characteristics, the results are usually elementary buildings, when they are not just simple interventions to customise already built structures.

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This is one of the many stories that can be taken as an example of the characteristics of the squatting movement during one of its moments of greatest importance in Western Europe. The main particularities of the phenomenon are all present: the situation of the building sector, the demonstrative aim of the occupiers, the relations with public and authorities.

When talking about squatting movements, it is impossible not take into consideration legality issues and recognition for these informal approaches to the city. Despite the importance of the issue that they are driven in a first instance by a direct and immediate need 02

The squatting movement On the 20th of January 1974, a small group of people walked out the Centre Point, a brutalist 35-storey tower in Central London; outside, a cheering crowd of some 3000 Londoners was waiting for them, in order to celebrate their achievement. They were autonomously ending a carefully planned 2-day occupation of the wellknown building, vacant since its completion in 1963.1

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Colonising the city: immediate needs

of spaces for living, the demonstrative component is inseparable from the movement’s nature. Unlike the phenomenon of skippering, in which the occupation of spaces for living is conducted in an underhand manner, squatting aims to declare a bold statement against the system with its actions, proclaiming its presence.

Looking back at history, squatting instances, in terms of occupation and appropriation of spaces left free by others, can be found since the eatly human civilizations, as we already saw. The political and social component that often characterized the movement is not new either. Even at first it was more related to a

rural society and environment, the struggle between everyone’s right to freely use space and the idea of private property that opposed thinkers, workers, land owners and the authorities in the 16th Century is more or less the same as that can found in the post Second World War years.

Considering the extent and variety of the phenomenon, as well as the many examples and implications in its development, a more complete reading is available in other sources specific to the topic. A general description of it will be useful to outline several points on the interaction between people and the built environment.

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01. Centre Point during the 1974 occupation: this is revealed by slogan on its windows.

02. The façade of De Slang, or The Snake House, in Amsterdam: squatters occupied the house in 1983, establishing dwellings and artists workshops. They were finally evicted in 2015, despite their attempts to legalise their situation.

03. - 04. Images form the occupation of a house in Piccadilly in 1969 05. - 06. Squatted houses usually make use of written slogans to promote their ideology.

07. Tacheles, a former department store and Nazi prison in Berlin, was occupied by squatters in 1990 and transformed in a cultural centre. The squatters were evicted in 2012.

As said, one of the main issues of the movement is the critique to the system, guilty of increasing social inequality and restricting personal freedom. This aim is more explicit when the phenomenon takes place in a developed country, even though it can be implicitly found in almost any squatting situation.

Especially in the modern capitalistic world, buildings are often left purposely vacant by building companies, resulting in decreasing the value of some areas in order to make a profitable investment with their purchase s and developments; when this waste of space meets an increasing need for housing, as happened in the postwar period or in the Seventies, the ground for squatting actions becomes extremely fertile. The same actions are often taken in opposition to wider development plans, expressing people’s rejection of the authorities’ decisions and exposing the distance between what is actually needed and what is proposed -or imposed- by authorities and building groups.

From this perspective, it is not strange that often squatters’ actions are positively greeted by citizens and within political, justice and media worlds, often even suggested and encouraged as a solution to homelessness.

For example, the squatting the took place in Bonnington Square in London was fostered by the Turkish shopkeeper working in the only shop left open in the abandoned block, who opened their doors to squatters encouraging their settlement.

On the other hand, strong opposition and demonisation, emphasizing negative aspects and sometime creating false myths, were conducted by entities bonded with power holders; the backing or not of the movement was definitely across-the-board within society, sometimes escalating ito struggles between official entities, like in 1974 the refusal from fire brigades -supporters of the squatters- to supply ladders to the local police in order to burst into the occupied building at N° 220 Camden High Street in London.2

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Colonising the city: immediate needs

As with the case of Centre Point, sometimes squatters’ actions are purely demonstrative; in the 90s, for example, a community of squatters took control of many buildings and public areas in Claremont Road, Leytonstone, to protest against the construction of a motorway in the same site. Since the fate of the area was already defined, the protest’s aim was to oppose the wider scheme behind it by showing a different approach to space, with the creation of artistic structures and the use of public and private spaces in a non-conventional, festive and inclusive way.3 When squatting actions aim to actually appropri-

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08. - 09. Images from Claremont Road squatting.

10. Bonnington Square Garden as it is today.

11. - 13. Scenes of daily life in Frestonia: a circus act, attracting children from nearby streets; a show of the Minister of Foreign Affairs David Rappaport, who later became an actor; the Apocalypse Hostel, whose façade and interiors changed almost weekly.

spaces, they additionally created a new local government (with, among the others, a two-years-old child as a Minister) and their “own postage stamps, visas and passports�6. Frestonia, as the micro state was called, in the end obtained from authorities a changing in the plan of demolition from which the occupation started, while its community continued to exist until today, even though the spirit of the self-proclaimed nation is gradually disappeared.

A similar situation can be found in one of the most important examples of squatting communities in Europe, Freetown Christiania, sited in central Copenhagen.

ate unused spaces, this is usually done quite explicitly: entrances to the squatted building are locked and -depending on the duration of the occupation- works are undertaken in order to make it a proper place to live, varying from structural interventions to customization of spaces. Often, this results in the enlivenment and physical improvement of spaces and buildings that otherwise would fall into a derelict state.4 An important aspect of the movement is that its critique is not only towards the capitalist system, but also to the established social and spatial models. New forms of living are proposed, often identified with a more communal connotation, while collective spaces are often present. A system of sharing knowledge and objects is at the base of the communities produced, while individual creativity and personal solutions are encouraged.

While legislation towards squatting phenomena vary from country to country5, the anarchic spirit of them has often created situations of conflict with local governments. Squatters occupying blocks in Freston Road, Notting Hill, in 1977 declared independence from England, trying to create an autonomous state in opposition and critique of the British Government. In a climate of freedom, artistic events and self-expression, in addition to from housing for residents and communal

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14. Squatters enter in the abandoned military area that will become Christiania, 1971.

15. Christiania in the 70s.

16. Former military barracks are reused as new spaces for activities like concerts, markets, exhibitions, etc.

17. The entrance of the area, seen from the inside.

18. - 21. Examples of self-built houses in Christiania.

tivities born from them8 or strong sense of community between residents.

While the phenomenon, at least in Western Europe, has not anymore the dimensions it had in the Seventies, it is still an important weapon for people to try to create their own space into the build environment and organised social system of today’s society.

Self declared independent in 1971, the 1000-members community occupying the 85 acres area, formerly occupied by a military site, has gradually obtained a recognition from the Danish Government, being in the end regarded as a social experiment with some sort of own laws. Despite the obvious contrasts with authorities, the community (like as in most of other cases of squatting) has usually proved to have an open, positive and proactive approach towards respecting the city and citizens and avoiding problems, while only reclaiming the right to live in a different way. They create their own plan in 1991 with the aim to regulate and promote an environmental friendly society7, they strongly banned hard drugs and violence, they opened to public and creating a wild nature oasis in the city centre: as a result today Christiania is considered one of the touristic attraction of the city.

Apart from these specific cases of search for independence, other results are often obtained by squatting activities: sometimes just publicity and awareness of social problems in the population, some other times they ended up in the creation of reforms and the obtaining of regular housing for the residents (or the regularisation of the occupied buildings). The inheritance of some of the most successful cases is still present today, in ac-

Informal settlements Strongly connected to the concept of squatting is the creation of slums, informal settlements that sprawl in many of the most populous cities in the world, beside the regular urban development. While the connection is not direct, it is a fact that most of the slums start from the not authorised occupation of lands and buildings, as the only way to adapt to an urban environment for people that are marginalized by the modern society.

The classic definition of slums refers to them as to be “characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure�9. It is worth to note that, unlike the squatting phenomenon, the struggle for legality is not an essential feature to describe it. Most of the slums, when even not actually legal, are in some way tolerated by authorities, as a problem often too big and

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complex to be faced. As a term used to include a wide range of situations, it also refer to proper legal ones, like in the case of housing regularly destined to the poor part of the population.

The cause behind the development of these settlement is always the real need of a housing; despite present also in First World nations, the phenomenon has the biggest spread in developing country.

The new megalopolis in those countries has to face unprecedented rates of growth of the urban population, due to migration from rural areas, refugees and high birth rates; the official housing offer is not enough to

face it, in term of speed and dimension, and citizens have no other way than self organise in order to try to meet their basic needs.

Slums can be find anywhere in the world, with different names and features. In Turkey they are called Gecekondu, literally “built overnight�, from the use to build houses in the time of a night in order to bypass the law through a legal loophole10; Brazilian favelas (particularly Rocinha, outside Rio de Janeiro), probably the mostknown slums insomuch as becoming a sort of touristic attraction, have in some cases developed a level of organisation that resemble that of a normal city; Mexico

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22. View of Rocinha.

23. Houses in Rocinha developed from being simple wooden huts to proper stable buildings.

24. The steps of the development in height of this house are clearly visible.

City’s Ciudad Perdida, comprising many slums merged together, is one of the biggest in the world and its inhabitants have gained access to basic services11; Lima’s Pueblo jóvenes surround the city in three radiating conos; Calcutta has a spread of thousands of smaller slums -called thika bustees- mixing with the official city in the urban fabric; in Dhaka poverty is so diffused that most of the city could be considered as a slum, interrupted by small areas of the official city12; the list could be infinite, with over 200.000 slums in the whole world.13 Sometimes the slums develop from the border of the cities, expanding them; other times, they are located in cities’ historical centres or once fashionable areas, following the moving of the richest citizens towards peripheries. Most of these have populations that abundantly exceed 1 million of residents, and their growth is always getting faster. Today one third of world’s urban population lives in slums, percentage that is probably destined to grow.14 As suggested by these datas, the phenomenon is extremely wide and varied. Being a collateral product of urban development, it is often showing components of parasitism towards the city to which a certain slum is connected. As already mentioned, this comprise the occupation -or squatting- of existing buildings, often with a redefinition of its features (extensions, change of uses, rearrangement of spaces, etc): an interesting example of this, if only for its uniqueness, is the City of the Dead, or Qarafa, in Cairo.

Here, in an area occupied by two Mamluk cemeteries dating back from 7th Century, more than a million people live between the tombs and mausoleums and created here a rather organised settlement of houses, courtyards, shops, public spaces. The colonization started from 17th Century and developed since them following events that brought to a continuous search of new lands to settle in. The presence of regular housing inside the cemetery, built for family tombs’ keepers, was gradually

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paired by the squatting of free spaces and even tombs themselves; today the area could look like a normal slum neighbourhood, if not for the presence of monumental mausoleums and the creative use of their features, like “cenotaphs and grave markers […] used as desks, headboards, tables, and shelves”15.

Slums’ parasitic approaches towards cities comprise as well another kind of reuse, that of materials discarded by the official society and reused as construction elements, in a similar way as that of the medieval examples analysed earlier. On the US-Mexico border, for example, slum residents of the city of Tijuana take advantage of wastes from nearby San Diego, importing unused prefab bungalows, but also scrap objects like old tyres and doors, that are adapted and used in creative ways.16 In this way, the reuse of resources considered worthless by the official system eventually show their intrinsic val-

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25. A building made of discarded metal sheets in Mumbai slums.

26. Dhaka: informal dwellings are built on stilts to defend themselves from floods 27. Top view of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai.

28. Diagram showing the onstruction phases of a house in a Rio de Janeiro favela, from a research of the architect Solène Veysseyre 29. A tomb adapted as a house in Qarafa, Cairo.

30. - 32. Scenes of everyday life inside the Qarafa slum.

remained empty due to calculus or to a malfunction of their administration, but it’s even more explicit when the structure was supposed to be a symbol of the economic power. It is meaningful in this sense the fate that occurred to Grande Hotel da Beira in Mozambique.

Opened in 1954 as a luxurious hotel in the attempt to attract tourism in the former Portuguese colony, the gargantuan modernist structure saw the end of its activity less than ten years later due to the failure of that vision. After years of post-colonial wars’ destructions, refugees since 1991 began to colonize the empty building, probably transforming it in the “biggest squatter community of the world”19.

The former hotel counts today roughly 6000 inhabitants from different ages and occupations, that make use of all its spaces: markets are held in the halls and corridors, the olympic pool is used for washing clothes,

ue and the possibilities of a different approach to them; as it often happens, Tijuana unofficial settlement acts as a sort of “purifier” of the capitalistic modern society.

Even if in this case -despite born from needs- the use/reuse of wastes can assume in some way an interesting value, acting as a recycling tool and showing people’s creativity, it is worth to note that it often translates in dramatic and dangerous situations, as for example in the Zabbaleen area of Cairo17 or in the Chinese town of Guiyu18, in which people literally live in open air dumps and wastes’ collection and use is the main living source.

Colonising architectural failures One of the messages coming from the squatting movement is the failure of the socio-economic system that generate the decline of a potentially usable building.

This is relevant in the occupation of housing estates 29

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dwellings are obtained from walk-in fridges as well as elevators.20 Despite having some sort of internal rules shared by the community, the life there is rough, with a lack of basic infrastructure and a real architectural adaptation of the building; for the most of its inhabitants the ambition is to return to their previous homes from which they had to escape.

We can note that this squatting situation, that could be de facto assimilated to a slum, can be seen in a different way from European movements in 70s and 80s, as it is not carrying any political statement, but it is just the

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33. A house’s wall made out of salvaged garage doors in Tijuana.

34. View of the Grande Hotel complex in Beira.

35. Reclaimed materials are used in simple ways to fulfil elementary needs; however, few efforts are made to improve the condition of the building.

36. The former hall of the hotel is now used as a sort of marketplace, with sellers placing here their stalls.

37. View of the pool, here used as a storage area. In the complex there is barely an organisation of the spaces between the community members.

result of an urgent and essential need. This is the same consideration that can be made about one of the most known examples of squatted buildings of the current years, the Torre David in Caracas21, brought to the international attention during the 2012 Venice Biennale.

The fact that the host building is a never completed financial centre assign it even more eloquence to its implicit critique of society; but the inhabitants, unlike the Beira case, succeeded in making steps towards an implementation of their living conditions, so that David Chipperfield referred to it as a “sort of extraordinary testament of failure and success, in a way of a failure of the original building, of failure of society to deliver it, and on the other hand the success of humanity to somehow […] make sense of this and to occupy it [...]”22.

The occupation of this 45-storey tower and its surrounding complex, whose works interrupted in 1994 due to the death of its developer23 and the banking crisis that caused the collapse of his financial group, began in 2007, when on the 17th of September a group of squatters from the city barrios, gathered through word of mouth, began a massive occupation of the building. As the their number grew exponentially day after day, the community began to develop its own rules and organization, while the architectural responses became more complex.

Today “the world’s tallest slum”, as it is sometimes called, is a well organized and closed community, with a hierarchy of control and basic infrastructures and services offered to their inhabitants, who in exchange pay a monthly rent24 to the internal association that manage them.

The building, uncompleted and then successively despoiled of materials and elements that could be sold, presented itself as a concrete skeleton, in which every occupier built its space according to its own needs, creating partitions or using the already existing ones.

The materials used are the same that are typically used

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in the barrios around the city, mainly bricks, concrete, salvaged material. The outcome though tends to move away from slum aesthetics, showing the inhabitants inclination towards a middle-class taste. Interventions are gradually made in the communal areas as well, in order to increase the security and guarantee services and circulation.

The complex is made up of two towers, a multi-storey parking, a wide atrium and a building hosting the vertical circulation, connecting all the others. Not only dwellings take place into the buildings: shops, a gym, a basketball court and a church are present, as well as

a mototaxi service to bring people to the upper floors using the ramps in the parking building. In fact, the complex works like a city inside the city.

The community of Torre David demonstrate how in the end the purpose of its inhabitants is to have a normal life, and they’re trying to pursue it despite the difficulties. Life in the squatted building is not a statement against a system, but the only way for them to satisfy their basic needs.

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38. View of the Torre David. In the lower part it is possible to see the differences of dwellings’ external walls.

39. The entrance area of the tower, decorated by the residents.

40. View of the multistorey parking building.

41. - 44. Internal views of some houses: people try to create their ideal environment inside them; some of them created commercial activities as well.

45. Tower’s residents worked to improve the safety inside the building: on the left examples of parapets made out of salvaged materials.

46. Holes are cut into the concrete walls to create passages linking the buildings.

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Rooftop communities In the overcrowded city of Hong Kong, in one of the world’s most densely populated country, the lack of space brought to the creation of informal settlements on top of other buildings.

In the former English colony flux of immigrants, in particular from mainland China, is always been relevant26.

Their manpower contributed to the creation of the modern metropolis that Hong Kong is today, but there always have been an issue with the need of accommodation for them. The limited building area, further limited by laws, forced a vertical city expansion and high rental prices, that brought to the birth of alternative ways of dwelling with an incredible density.27 From the middle of the 20th Century, informal settlements started to appear on rooftops of typical low-rise shop houses as well as modern residential towers, evolving with the time until becoming “[...] a maze of corridors, narrow passageways between huts built of sheet metal, wood, brick and plastics, [… with] steps and ladders leading up to a second level of huts.”28 Like in most of the slums, it’s impossible to categorize these houses into defined styles and typologies, as the same informal nature brought their architecture to reflect their owners’ tastes and possibilities. While some

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47. Layered dwellings on the rooftop of a building in Hong Kong.

48. Before and after of a rooftop colonisation.

49. Rooftop dwellings can assume different forms and dimensions.

50. View of the terrace of a relatively well-kept rooftop house.

51. Unused stairwells adapted as parts of the houses.

52. - 53. Two examples of houses interiors: those can be quite different, according to the possibilities, needs and aspirations of the residents.

of the residents’ desire is to live in proper flats in new residential buildings, living on rooftops is often preferred to the small flats of the poorest areas: it’s worthwhile that sometimes their rents are proportionally even higher. Rooftop’s houses can indeed offer a better air circulation and sunlight, apart from the advantage of being able to have open-air terraces that could work as laundry, gardens, children’s playgrounds. But certainly the downsides of limited space, overheating, instability of the situation and social segregation, among the others, are way more relevant.

At the end of the day, as in other examples analysed,

humans’ capacity to adapt overcomes everything, and these communities are often lively and embracing; as Dr. Ernest Chui points out, “even though rooftop housing poses considerable challenges to these people, many of them still make their lives through the creative use of the limited space”29.

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Interpreting the informal As the examples cited in the precedent chapter all derive from a direct response to the environment from people in order to satisfy their needs, it is then possible to define another category, based on indirect needs.

This simplifying expression is not exhaustive for describing the phenomenon, as it has clearly no real border and definitions. What is intended, though, is to highlight the fact that in the following cases the responses don’t come directly and/or factually from the users, but through the mediation of other subjects, often professional architects or artists.

This could bring to a more complex reading of the proposals, carrying other features apart from the direct reaction to a particular situation. The design process at their base assures that they are more oriented towards a future, even if not distant, but at least allowing them to be more durable and secure; they often even present as repeatable prototypes that could adapt to different situations.

The examples proposed are anyway always linked to the real, having a proper function and being usually theoretically feasible. They respond to actual needs, sometimes produced in a specific circumstance, sometimes developed as a universal answer to typical prob-

lems.

The fact of being the work of professionals inserts them into a media stage that could bring them more visibility, thus allowing the author to include some sort of message to underline the problem he’s trying to face with it. The message could be more or less explicit: sometimes it just appears by itself autonomously from creator’s intentions.

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Inspired by favelas It’s interesting to look at the way architects and artists find inspiration for their reactions to the urban environment. Sometimes those responses came directly from looking at people adapting and giving their answers to it: those attitudes are analysed, in order to find recipes for a better life in the city, both by intervening on them or taking them as an example.

Finnish architect Marco Casagrande’s work and theories are certainly deriving from this attitude. Arising from Manuel de Solà-Morales urbanist concept of “urban acupuncture”, indicating the change of the urban environment by the means of small-scale and localised interventions rather than big planned operations, Casagrande set up a research program on this topic, called Ruin Academy, based on the city of Taipei.

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The aim of his team’s research is to construct what he calls the Third Generation Taipei; the First Generation corresponded to the first establishment of the city, characterized by a healthy relationship between humans and the environment. People based their survival on nature, by by using its resources but respecting and adapting to it. It can be represented in particular by the link with the rivers Tamsui and Xindian, on which Taipei is built on, and once sources of food, trade and work.

Then industrialization came and with it the Second Generation city: nature is no longer a resource, but rather a sort of enemy to protect civilization from. The rivers

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01. Photomontage of a prototype of Michael Rakowitz’s ParaSITE. 02. View of Treasure Hill in Taipei, an artists village and community born as an illegal settlement, that eventually inspired Marco Casagrande’s ideas.

03. A community garden in Taipei, example of spontaneous activities by citizens 04. Photomontage of ParaCity.

05. Drawing of ParaCity: it is possible to see instances of vernacular architecture in the buildings installed into the structure.

06. Internal view of the Ruin Academy building.

forgotten and dysfunctional areas, ruined buildings, cracks in the outer layer of the urban organism. Nature, intended in its wider meaning (both human and not), roots in these and reacts to the environment.

These are the starting point for the reach of the Third Generation city, based on the rediscovery and re-application of traditional knowledge and a vital and respectful relation with nature, mediated by technological progress, in order to minimize the impact of human’s society and improve living conditions1. The increasing widespread of those instances translate into the creation of a sort of “another city on top of the official Taipei”2, living upon it, and gradually bringing to a change in its organization and perception. Those theories are of course applicable to every urban settlement in the world, though Taipei is an interesting and peculiar case to focus on, as the informal approach has always been strongly present in its citizens.

The definitive creation of a Third Generation city involved, in Ruin Academy’s intentions, the creation of ParaCity, their proposal for an infrastructure that could foster the informal settlement.

The concept is quite similar in its shape to Friedman’s Spatial City idea. An open structure of CLT sticks, forming a 6x6 m tridimensional grid, is built on top of the city. Inside it, citizens could self-build their own dwellings and gardens, exploiting traditional knowledges. The open character of the scheme allows nature and human interventions to enter and spread by their own, without a planned topdown organization. In this way, a universal solution could adapt to different situations, thus maintaing their local spirit thanks to the final outcome of the solution created by inhabitants.

In the case of Taipei, the structure has to start outside the flood wall3 and, following its expansion, get over it and connects to the punctual informal entities that autonomously sprout in the city.

The parasitic character of the proposal is not only

became just hostile subjects, used mainly as a dump for garbage and sewage, kept outside the city with a 6-metres wall built to contain the frequent floods; all the essential needs to this present version of the city are all found and produced inside the industrialized, man-made realm.

Nevertheless, into the tissue of the modern city still reside some islands of First Generation’s attitudes and know-how, that manifest themselves in alternative approaches to the city: occupation of buildings, informal additions to them, illegal gardening, etc. Those instances appear wherever there are holes in the system: 06

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installed autonomous self-built timber structures, acting as teachers and scholars residences, as well as communal and teaching spaces and a sauna; the permeability of the hosting building is enhanced not just by leaving it open but also opening holes in concrete walls and slabs, in order to let raining inside and enable vegetation to grow throughout it.

related to the spatial realm; ParaCity’s vital support is linked to its host city’s waste; energy is produced through disposal of waste materials, water treatment’s plants purify the polluted river and produce clean water.

In this way, the new organism acts as a good parasite, not seizing its host’s resources but rather disposing of its scraps, resulting in an improvement of the original city environment.

While ParaCity concept seems too utopian to be realized, the same physical venue housing Ruin Academy is an interesting example of urban acupuncture: a ruined building in central Taipei in which Casagrande’s firm

Portable interventions Some of the solutions to face the urban environment have the common feature to be designed as non fixed entities. This can be real advantage in the case of illegal 09

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07. - 08. Inside Ruin Academy: timber structures are built inside the ruined building, while vegetation grows into it.

09. Section of the project for Ruin Academy.

10. Rebar’s Park(ing) project in a San Francisco street.

11. Michael Rakowitz’s (P)LOT. 12. A version of Rakowitz’s ParaSITE.

interventions, as it allows a quick removal and repositioning. In these cases it is more evident than in others how the colonization of urban space is not just looking at the physical voids, but at the temporal ones as well. Some buildings and spaces are only used for their planned functions during certain periods, while stands as useless presences in the rest of time.

The time factor is peculiar, for example, for the interventions that focus on re appropriation of the spaces destined to cars, like parking slots. For a certain amount of time, defined by laws and parking meter, those could become urban gardens in REBAR’s Park(ing) Project4 or intimate hangouts in Michael Rakowitz’s (P)LOT: Proposition I.5 In these instances the critique to the car society is quite clear, even if implicit, focusing on the planned dehumanization of the biggest part of modern cities’ spaces in order to make space to the bulky presence of 20th Century main transportation mean. A matter of time is involved also in every other temporary installation, which presence could change according to the varying best moments and places.

Nomadism is in fact another living habit that humans had followed since ever. In its usual definition, it is often associated to particular populations or tribes, matching their activities and traditions: the need of moving derive from following trade routes, breeding livestocks, going after change of seasons and climatic conditions. In the urban environment, the same attitude can be a response to the illegal nature of an intervention, as well as the need to change place according to the best conditions that one can find from time to time; the nomadic character of a project is sometime also a mean to give more visibility to it.

One of the most peculiar example of a parasitic structure started off, as its author Michael Rakowitz stated, exactly from the study of Bedouins’ tents and the “contrast of a nomadic lifestyle by tradition versus

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13. Rakowwitz inside a ParaSITE tent with the homeless person who inhabits it.

14. Detail of the inflatable structure linking to a HVAC exhaust system.

15. Different versions of the structures are made in collaboration with their future users, according to their needs and tastes.

16. Chanéac’s photomontage of his cellules parasites on the walls of modern residential buildings.

ent similar situations (even though many of the examples presented, as experimental prototypes, are built for a specific context and rarely capitalise on this ability).

The French architect Jean-Louis Chanéac in the 70s developed a proposal for parasitic glass fibre bubbles that could eventually be hung on the external wall of a building in order to create additional space, accessible by the windows, to the linked flat. This was a direct consequence of his ideas, expressed in his manifeste de l’architecture insurrectionnelle, in which he stated his will in giving to modern estates’ residents the technical means to “réaliser clandestinement des «cellules parasites»”9, in order to expand their houses according to their needs.

When in 1970 Marcel Lachat, a Geneva resident, was needed more room for his soon to be born child, after the difficulties in finding a new house due to housing crisis he decided to install one of Chanéac’s parasitic cells outside his flat in a modernist complex. His act raised the attention of the medias and, as the structure was declared illegal, he was then successful in obtaining a new place from the government; in the end, even if in a different way to the one suggested by Chanéac, the residents -in this case- obtained the new space they needed to accommodate their new living needs.

by necessity”6.This research brought the artist, at that time a Master Student at MIT, to develop his idea for a tent for homeless people, tautologically called paraSITE. The observation of homeless’ habit to sleep on HVAC exhaust grids, exploiting the heat coming from them, make the author thinking for another way to use it, since compact exhaust system boxes were gradually substituting horizontal grids. He developed a tent made out of scrap materials (like garbage bags) that, once connected to these systems, could inflate with warm air, creating a heated space inside. It could be set up and removed in few minutes, as well as being lightweight and easily transportable, so that it can be adapted to the best location its user find.

The proposal was then studied with homeless people themselves, in order to produce final outcomes, customized for every different user, that could answer to their actual needs and desires. For example, Rakowitz in this process discovered that privacy was not an issue for them: they felt already invisible to the eyes of other citizens, but would like to be seen7 in order to raise awareness of their situation. Rakowitz’s oeuvre, with the big media resonance it had, finally allowing it to be exposed at New York City’s MoMA8, certainly helped in that direction.

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Architectural parasites While Rakowitz’s project is conceptually a perfect example of a structure exploiting others’ resources to exist, the concept of parasitism in architecture is formally well expressed by other rather small interventions as well. By growing out of others buildings, keeping an autonomous aspect alien to their hosts’ ones, they usually rely on their structural features and take advantage of free spaces -internal or external, horizontal or vertical. A feature they share is their dependancy on the host building, while at the same time this is not linked to a specific one but they’re supposedly adaptable to differ-

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A very similar concept to Chanéac’s one was proposed in 2004 by German practice a.k.a. ingenieure, whose hanging Rucksack House aims to increase the space of the flat to which is externally connected. Realised as a temporary exhibition installation, it bears some technologic improvements from its predecessor but inevitably lacks some of its revolutionary charge.

A more social role is played by some of the works of another French architect, Stéphane Malka; A-Kamp47, built in Marseille in 2013, is a scaffolding structure that, fixed to a blind wall, distributes vertically 23 tents that can be used as shelters for homeless people. Developing the same structural concept, Bow-House (2014) gets more tridimensional in its volume, and, using waste materials instead of the tents, creates a number of rooms, open to the street, that can be used as an extension of the public space; a further development brought to the proposal of P9 Ghetto Mobile, in which a similar structure, here elevated over the public street of a bridge, gets bigger and more complex, and its customizability by the users reminds of Constant’s New Babylon concept.

These are only some examples of the many that in the last years appeared, as in a sort of new fashion. Following the trend, many exhibitions are made, collecting examples and proposing new concepts. One of these,

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17. The cellule parasite installed on Lachat’s house in Geneva, 1970.

18. Rucksack House 19. View of A-KAMP47 attached to a wall in Marseille.

20. Section of A-KAMP47.

21. Parasite Las Palmas on the top of an elevator shaft of a Rotterdam building, during the exhibition “Parasite” in 2001 22. Sections of the structure, made of prefabricated wood panels.

Parasite Las Palmas by Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten (a bright green painted small house, made of prefabricated elements, quickly mountable and sited on top of an elevator shaft) created ad hoc for an exhibition in Rotterdam, has became almost an icon for the typology thanks to its strong visual presence and highly functional features.

However, in most of the cases these concepts remain only prototypes shown in exhibitions, while their rather

institutionalized nature makes them look weaker from what concerns a challenge to the system and a research for real solutions to social and economic questions.

Collectives In addition to the cited examples, there is an evergrowing number of practices and collectives that focus on the creation of new spaces and functions inside the cities, by “conquering” unused spaces, using waste mate-

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rials or proposing non-traditional approaches, relying on a participative method and usually bypassing the official and institutional actors.

Sometimes the work of these realities is directed to the basic need of living, while more often their playing field is that of the community life, aiming to create public spaces, spaces for activities, events. The nature of the proposals is varied, as well as the presence or not of a critic purpose. It is true though that in most cases we assist at a genuine response to the urban environment and its lacks or failures, without the push or mediation from economical and political forces that mainly characterise official architecture.

Some of them have a more informative role, like the Berlin-based collective Raumtaktik, mostly involved in organising events; more oriented towards proper architectural products are the activities of Parisian EXYZT or Roman Orizzontale, while N55 collective, from Copenhagen, has an artistic background and creates objects for alternatives ways of living, equipped with manuals for their use.

While their projects are usually oriented towards the community, which often collaborate in their creation, the theme of bypassing the official system means that sometimes legal issues about their realization are an important theme.

This is one of the main areas of Spanish architect Santiago Cirugeda’s work, whose practice Recetas Urbanas is oriented towards a re-appropriation of urban spaces and activities, in a context of estrangement by the authorities, worsen after the 2008 economic crisis.

Their projects, either personal or for people asking their help, usually rely on a research on legislation and bureaucracy and exploit legal loopholes. As happens also for the other cited collectives, there is no boundaries between design and construction, as it is all self-built; even the construction materials are often salvaged or supplied for free, while its website offers guidelines for

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23. Urban installation by EXYZT on a fountain in Warsaw.

24. Orizzontale: temporary installation of terraces to watch wroks inside a construction site.

25. Movable green areas on bikes, made by N55 in collaboration with Rebar.

26. One of the first interventions of Cirugeda: he hired a skip and used it for creating an improvised playground for children; the intervention, totally legal, aimed to raise awareness of the lack of such spaces in his city.

27. Occupation of an unused area in Sevilla in which has been created La Carpa, a centre. for theatre, live music and workshops.

28. - 29. Examples of other urban interventions made by Cirugeda’s practice.

similar actions of re-appropriation of spaces and selfbuilt architecture.

The successful model of Recetas Urbanas is not alone in Spain, where a network of practices operating in similar manners as a powerful tool for maintaing alive an architecture by the people and for the people, that focuses on their actual needs and tries to play an active role against economic and social problems.

26

27 29

28

53

54

Conclusion

chapters; in the case of smaller interventions, the spectrum of legal and social responses can be equally varied.

Usually, we find that those directly made by citizens are more likely to be found in situations of contrast with authorities and other individuals. On the other hand, the mediation by professionals or third parties usually translates into a more conscious approach, where laws can potentially be studied and bypassed through loopholes (as seen for Cirugeda’s practice), or the intervention can be perfectly legal and approved (as for example in the case of purely demonstrative interventions).

The examples presented here are just a concise and incomplete overview of the world of informal attitudes towards the city. As seen, citizens’ direct intervention in creating their spaces is something that has always gone along with urbanisation. It is only in the modern era that has become an anomaly, in a society strongly regulated by rules and the concept of private property. This means that an important feature of these interventions is their relationship with social and judicial responses within their communities.

The legality and acceptance of phenomena such as squats and slums has been discussed in the previous 02

01

55

Conclusion

The rise in interest about these issues does not belong only to the architectural field. Many artists have looked at different ways to approach urban spaces, resulting in different purposes and outcomes. Some of their interventions are primarily formal, others try to expose real concerns; the urban environment then becomes both a medium and canvas to use for selfexpression.1 We can see then that in these cases professionals, either are architects or artists, create their oeuvres by looking and deeply analysing people’s creations, taking inspiration for their (maybe unrelated) works or trying to propose solutions, when not just trying to inform their public. Whether those instances are useful and if they are welcomed by the people who inspired them is something that varies in every situation. At times it can certainly appear as if professionals are exploiting them for their own purposes, while in other cases the intentions are genuine and really do bring about changes.

Science fiction, as expressed in film, novels, comics, etc. takes inspiration from reactions of people to the city, using them as starting points from which to develop alternate urban scenarios. Maybe they can give us some suggestions about what the future of our cities could look like. While some theses, supported by data, sustain that slums and informal settlements will have always bigger importance2, the interest in re-appropriation of spaces could grow as the current economic system continues to widen the gap between social classes.

Making previsions about the cities of tomorrow is clearly a complex topic and it is not the purpose of this research, which focuses rather on investigating people’s inventiveness and adaptability, while celebrating the positive aspects of their ingenious reactions.

However, the hope for the future is that there will be more recognition and space for this; a space given by will, rather than by needs.

03

04 05

56

01. Artist Tadashi Kawamata’s works consist of parasitic structures made of scrap materials that are hanged outside buildings.

02. Amphiteheatre installation by Köbberling and Kaltwasser; the artists duo creates buildings using discarded materials.

03. Rakowitz’s ParaSITE is made to respect the maximum dimensions defined by laws for temporary structures.

04. French artist Etienne Boulanger, for the project Plug In, spent 2 years in Berlin creating dwellings into urban voids and living in them.

05. Urban spaces become new can-

06 08

07

57

vas to express oneself, as it is the case of street artist.

06. Atelier Van Lieshout, for the art project Favela House, worked with Sao Paulo’s favela dwellers, giving thm a façade around which they could build their house with discarded materials.

07. Drawing of an imaginary parasitic intervention on buildings by the architect Lebbeus Wood.

08. The practice Urban Think-Tank exhibition about Torre David at the Venice Biennale, 2012

Notes

Introduction 1. Lepik, A. “Introduction: An Urban Experiment With Three Thousand Participants”, in Brillembourg, A. Torre David. 2012, p. 34

architecture”. in Borden et al 2002 17. Street skateboarding, identified as the specific freestyle discipline that uses public spaces as background and structures for tricks, developed in the 80s and 90s, following the raise of popularity of skateboarding; before, the sport was mainly practiced in dedicated structures like skateparks and pools. (Source: “Street Skateboarding” on Wikipedia)

2. Ibid. p. 34 3. Le Corbusier 1924 4. Diogene Laerzio. Vite dei Filosofi. Vulgarised by Lechi, L. 1842. Cited by Lepik op. cit. pp. 34-35

Colonising the city: immediate needs 1. Wates and Wolmar 1980, p. 35

5. It is referred to informal architecture as the one who is self-built, usually bypassing authorities’ approvals and regulations

2. Ibid. p. 34 3. McCreery, S., “The Claremont Road Situation”, in Borden et al op. cit.

Colonising the city through time 1. Looking back at history, until relatively recent times housing for the masses were not among the usual commissions and interests of professional architects, whose work was mostly addressed to public buildings or private commissions from wealthy clients

4. The Dutch word krakers and the German instandbesetzen specifically refer, in those countries, to squatters that renovate damaged buildings for a long term occupation

2. For the sake of keeping the argument compact, the focus of the analysis is mainly on the european situation

5. In England squatting is today a crime, while in the 70s was still not considered illegal and someway protected by laws. (Sources: gov.uk website; Wates and Wolmar op. cit.)

3. Italian word for “stone cutters”

6. Sword 2014

4. Romeo 2014

7. Christiania’s Green Plan (1991). Published in Christiania website (http://www.christiania.org/info/the-greenplan-1991/)

5. Perez de Arce 1978 6. Team 10 core members were Jaap Bakema, Georges Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson and Shadrach Wood. (Source: Team 10 website)

8. The Bonnington Square squatting community, for example, is today still represented by the presence of the volunteer-run community garden and café (Source: Bonnington Square Garden Café website)

7. Spatial Agency website 8. Also because none of the main actors had a formal training as architect or urban planner, even though that was the “playing field” for their theories

9. Davis 2007, pp. 22-23 10. Neuwirth 2005 11. “List of slums” on Wikipedia

9. Sadler 1999

12. Davis op. cit., pp.26-27

10. Real name Constant Nieuwenhuys

13. Ibid., p.26

11. Labesque 1999

14. Ibid., p. 23

12. Extract from Kroll,L. “Composants. Faut-il industrialiser l’architecture?” Brussels, s.d., in Pehnt, W. “Return of the Sioux”.

In Kroll 1988, p. 9]

15. Extract from Nedoroscik, J. “The city of the dead: a history of Cairo’s cemetery communities”. Westport, 1997, in ibid., p. 33

13. Pehnt op. cit., p. 9

16. Cruz 2013

14. The involvement of the student from the authorities can not be detached by the social context of the period, since the first acts of the design and creation of the buildings date back to the agitated situation of 1968 in Western Europe

17. Baan 2013 18. Guiyu is reported as the largest e-waste site of the world.

E-wastes are discarded electronic components, that are then processed in order to extract valuable metals from them.

These processes are made at home, without any sort of protection, resulting in extremely toxic pollution. To worsen the situation, it is reported a large amount of child labourers

15. In collaboration with Louis Le Roy, a Dutch ecologist and landscape-gardener sharing the same ideas as Kroll, with which consequently partnered for many projects 16. Borden, I. “Skateboarding and the critique of

58

4. This 2005 project from collaborative group REBAR, specialized in cross-disciplinary interventions in urban areas, consists of leasing parking spots in San Francisco areas that lacks green spaces and installing small temporary parks providing “nature, seating and shade” (Source: Rebar website)

involved in this commerce and exposed to lethal poisoning.

Sites like Guiyu are present in many developing countries, producing great profit for companies, at the cost of illnesses and deaths for people forced to live in them as well as damages to the environment (Source: Walsh 2009) 19. Murphy 2013

5. Car-shaped tents provide an enclosed intimate space on the street side (Source: Michael Rakowitz website)

20. Lança 2010 21. Lepik op. cit., p. 31

6. Rich 2007

22. Chipperfield 2012

7. Michael Rakowitz website

23. The investor David Brillembourg passed away in 1993; from his name came the current nickname of the tower, otherwise officially known as the Tower A of the Centro Financiero Confinanzas

8. MoMA website 9. Chanéac, J. «manifeste de l’architecture insurrectionnelle», in Laboratoire Urbanisme Insurrectionnel website

24. Each inhabitant pays 15$/month for the supply of electricity and water, cleaning services, security control and other communal services

Conclusion 1. Because of the wideness and differences of this topic it is not treated here, though there is certainly a link between art and architectural creations, and sometimes even the border between them is definitely undefinied

25. Holes are open through reinforced concrete walls in order to connect areas; balustrades made from recycled materials protects areas opened to the void; new partitions are built in the entrance hall and in 2012 a new church was under construction

2. Neuwirth op. cit.

26. Originally a fishing village, Hong Kong was given to England as a colony in 1842. It became part of China again in 1997, although with a high level of autonomy: all of this allowed the city to rely on a different economic system and eventually became wealthier. The high rate of immigration is a direct consequence 27. Among those, the most known examples are the cage homes -wire cages containing roughly a bed, squeezed up to 20 in a room, with elementary common services- and Kowloon Walled City, a layered urban block demolished in 1994, that was like a city inside the city: its stratification of buildings in a reached at his peak a record density of 3,250,000 people per square mile (Sources: Gayle 2012; Rackard 2013) 28. Canham and Wu 2009, p. 6 29. Dr. Chui, E. “Rooftop Housing in Hong Kong: An Introduction”, in ibid. p. 250 Colonising the city: mediate needs 1. Social aspects are as well considered in these theories, as 2G society tends to harness and dehumanize people lives 2. Casagrande, M. “Third Generation City”, in Casagrande laboratory 2014 3. Being raised from the ground, the structure is safe from floods, by letting them exist rather than trying to forcedly exclude them

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adwC1s 11. - 13. Sleep, T. Frestonia, 1996-2014. Available at: http:// tonysleep.co.uk/frestonia

28. - 31. Author’s own image. Boudon, P. Lived-in architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac revisited. London: Lund Humphries, 1972

14. Author unknown. Storming Christiania, 1971. Available at: https://arbetsbok.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/stadsdelari-forandring-sociala-rorelser-och-kulturarv-i-haga-ochchristiania/

29. © Meyr, K. Available at: http://www.artslondonnews. com/2014/02/26/gallery-long-live-south-bank/ 30. Author Unknown, Washington Street Skatepark (San Diego). Available at: http://wheresmyhippo.com/blog/ washington-street-skatepark/

15. Nordisk Pressphoto. Christiania, 1970s. Available at: http:// www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article12963222.ab 16. Author unknown. Available at: http://www.baldur.info/ blog/copenhagen-philharmonic-christiania-hammers-toypianos-and-penguins/

Colonising the city: immediate needs 1. 30th December 1973: Protesting squatters occupy the Centrepoint building.

Photograph: Stroud/Getty Images. Available at: http://www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/26/work-begins-luxuryflat-conversion-london-centre-point

17. Eddie Codel, Christiania, Flickr, 2007. Available at: https:// www.flickr.com/photos/ekai/390773754/ 18. Nowak, C. Freistaat Christiania, s.d. Available at: http:// www.weltreisejournal.de/2011/03/06/danemark-ein-freistaatwird-zahm/img_0147_dxo_raw-dk-kopenhagen-freistaatchristiania-2/

2. Author unknown. Available at: http://www. thecreativemovement.com/blog/a-sanke-in-the-dam/

19. UFO, Dave Gorman, Flickr, 2009. Available at: https:// www.flickr.com/photos/dgbalancesrocks/3179714030/in/ photostream/

3. - 4. Commune of Hippie Squatters at 144 Piccadilly, London, September 1969. Credits: Spencer, T., LIFE, 1974.

Available at: http://www.vintag.es/2015/02/commune-ofhippie-squatters-at-144.html

20. Author unknown, s.d. Available at: http://www. dolcevitaonline.net/let-cristiania-live-bevar-christiania/ christiania-235/

5. Author unknown. Talacre Road, 1974. Available at: http:// www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2013/07/24/wednesday-picturesquats-creativity-and-destruction-in-1970s-west-kentishtown/

21. Author unknown, 2010. Available at: http://brumdatabrum. blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/eine-woche-christiania.html 22. Photograph: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images. s.d.

Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/football/ blog/2014/jun/23/favela-residents-world-cup-home-staysfans

6. Leytonstone pre the M11 (A12) Tim@SW2008, Flickr, 2002.

Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25347284@N04/ sets/72157624147713868# 7. REUTERS/THOMAS PETER, 2010. Available at: http:// uk.reuters.com/article/2010/08/20/us-berlin-postcardidUSTRE67J1EV20100820

23. -24. Image Courtesy of Al Jazeera. Available at: http:// www.archdaily.com/550840/al-jazeera-s-rebel-architectureepisode-6-the-pedreiro-and-the-master-planner/

8. Wiard, A., 1994. Avialble at: http://www.artefactmagazine. com/2014/11/25/rewind-tom-hunter/

25. Warren Allot, Mumbai slum, 2015. Available at: http://www. warrenallott.co.uk/index.php#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p= 2&a=0&at=0

9. Leytonstone pre the M11 (A12) Tim@SW2008, Flickr, 2002.

Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25347284@N04/ sets/72157624147713868#

26. Slums on stilts in Dhaka. Credits: AFP. Available at: http:// www.dhakatribune.com/safety/2013/aug/29/experts-legalwater-connection-city-slums

10. Mark Howells-Mead, Bonnington Square Garden, Vauxhall, 2014. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ mhowells/13736202924/in/photolist-mVPCyU-2EypV7vT2sF-NmC8m-gL7Yc-7vWQtA-7vWQ9A-8v5Y6X-8v8beTovGbdC-aEJHm5-aqPfb2-8cdpmZ-pJaHR-oDquA-oDquFof3LFW-oh31jd-6Eq9ZN-k75NGe-dbAzCK-5gykWb-cvCutAk75PAZ-9DVWcF-86bquu-9DYNwW-cvCtMh-fik8Cq-fik8xCfik8Aj-dkACD2-dkAERX-dkAEhT-6XwTRP-7u93JG-dkAECd86bdAG-7u93Qq-7u93WE-oDquw-6qgy23-aRcqWMadwCpC-adwBDG-adwCNL-adwCah-adtNQH-adtNop-

27. A view of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, Maharashtra, on July 31, 2012.

Credit: Divyakant Solanki/European Pressphoto Agency, 2012. Available at http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/ hospital-confronts-childbirth-deaths-in-mumbai-slum/ 28. Photomontage of a house in Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro , after a study on buildings in the favelas by the French architect Solène Veysseyre. Credits: Image ©

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04. - 05. Casagrande Laboratory / CURE. Available at: http:// casagrandetext.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/paracity.html

Solène Veysseyre, 2014. Available at: http://www.archdaily. com/531253/case-study-the-unspoken-rules-of-favelaconstruction/

06. Credits: AdDa Zei. Available at: http://www.archdaily. com/552367/taitung-ruin-academy-marco-casagrande/

29. Credits: Rgoogin, English language Wikipedia, 2007.

Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_the_Dead_ (Cairo)

07. Author unknown. Available at: http://www.blok.rs/2013/ marco_casagrande_en.html

30. Credits: Tamara Abdul Hadi, s.d. Available at: http://www. businessinsider.co.id/massive-cairo-cemetery-slum-2014-11/#.

VScxmZPF8Yc

08. Credits: AdDa Zei. Available at: http://www.archdaily. com/552367/taitung-ruin-academy-marco-casagrande/ 09. Casagrande, M. Ruin Academy cross-section. Available at: http://www.archdaily.com/345935/ruin-academy-marcocasagrande

31. Credits: Khalil Hamra / AP, 2012. Available at: http:// photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/26/11900518thousands-of-egyptians-live-among-graves-in-city-of-thedead

10. Rebar Group. Available at: http://rebargroup.org/parking/ 11. - 12. Michael Rakowitz. Available at: http://michaelrakowitz. com/

32. Photograph by Mohamed Abd El-Ghany, Reuters, s.d.

Available at: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/ egypt/cairo-city-of-the-dead/

13. Author unknown. Available at: https://emilypennresearch. wordpress.com/2012/01/16/parasite-michael-rakowitz-siteplace-context-monday-16th-january-2012/

33. Photograph: Justin McGuirk. Available at: http://www. theguardian.com/cities/2014/jul/01/tijuana-political-equatorradical-cities-extract-justin-mcguirk

14. Michael Rakowitz. Available at: http://michaelrakowitz. com/

34. - 36. Credits: Ferry Verheij. Available at: http://www. ferryverheij.nl 37. Credits: Luca Forno, 2013. Available at: http://www. lucaforno.net/

15. Author unknown. Available at: https://emilypennresearch. wordpress.com/2012/01/16/parasite-michael-rakowitz-siteplace-context-monday-16th-january-2012/

38. - 44. Author’s own image. Brillembourg, A. Torre David.

Zürich: Lars Müller, 2012

16. Chanéac, J.L., 1968. Available at: http://www.frac-centre.fr/ projets-64.html?authID=37&ensembleID=724&oeuvreID=447

45. Alejandro Cegarra. Available at: http://www.i-mag. info/news-alejandro-cegarra-2014-leica-oskar-barnacknewcomer-award/

17. Author unknown. Available at: http://popupcity.net/thepirate-bubble-parasite-architecture-from-the-seventies/ 18. Claus Bach. Available at: http://www.detail-online.com/ inspiration/rucksack-house-103640.html

46. Author’s own image. Brillembourg, A. Torre David. Zürich: Lars Müller, 2012

19. Laurent Garbit. Available at: http://www.archdaily. com/461696/a-kamp47-stephane-malka/

47. - 53. Author’s own image. Canham, S. and Wu, R. Portraits from Above: Hong Kong’s Informal Rooftop Communities.

Hong Kong: Peperoni Books, 2009

20. Malka, S., 2013. Available at: http://www.stephanemalka. com 21. Ann Bousema, 2001. Available at: http://www. kortekniestuhlmacher.nl/?q=node/9

Colonising the city: mediate needs 01. Michael Rakowitz, Concept sketch for paraSITE 7, 1997, drawing and collage on paper, 13 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches, 34.3 x 24.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery. Available at: http://www.ibraaz.org/embed/ pictures/109/640x500/

22. Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architekten, 2001. Available at: http://www.kortekniestuhlmacher.nl/?q=node/9 23. EXYZT, UFO, Unexpected Fountain Occupation installation, Warsaw, July-August 2011. Photo by Emmanuel Gabily. Available at: http://www.domusweb.it/en/ architecture/2012/10/18/conservation-recycling-and-culturalregeneration.html

02. Author unknown. Available at: http://www.beams.co.jp/ pickup/detail/2119?lang=en

24. Orizzontale, 2010.

03. 101 community garden in-between Taipei 101 and World Trade Center. Photo: Isis Kang. Available at: http:// blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-community-gardens-oftaipei/2010/12/04

25. XYZ Cargo. Author unknown. Available at: http://www. offene-werkstaetten.org/werkstatt/xyz-cargo-n55-till-wolfer 26. Cirugeda, S. / Recetas Urbanas. Available at: http://www.

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recetasurbanas.net 27. Woody James/Rebel Architecture, s.d. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/aug/18/santiagocirugeda-guerrilla-architect-spain-seville-financial-crisis 28. - 29. Cirugeda, S. / Recetas Urbanas. Available at: http:// www.recetasurbanas.net

Conclusion 01. Tree huts at place Vendôme-Tadashi Kawamata. Available at: http://www.banc-moussu.com/2013/10/hors-les-mursfiac-2013-paris.html 02. Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser, for Wysing Arts Centre, 2008. Available at: http://www.wysingartscentre. org/archive/residencies/folke_koebberling_and_martin_ kaltwasser_amphis/2008 03. Michael Rakowitz. Available at: http://rise.mahindra.com/ parasite/ 04. Etienne Boulanger, 2001-2003. Available at: http:// thefunambulist.net/2010/12/23/unwall-plug-in-berlin-byetienne-boulanger/ 05. © BLU. Available at: http://mel.vadeker.net/arts/street_ art/blu_street_art.html 06. Atelier van Lieshout, 2001. Available at: http://www. ateliervanlieshout.com/works/favelahouse.htm 07. Lebbeus Woods, s.d. Available at : https://lebbeuswoods. wordpress.com/2010/05/28/walls-of-change/ 08. © Nico Saieh, 2012. Available at: http://www.archdaily. com/269481/venice-biennale-2012-torre-david-granhorizonte-urban-think-tank-justin-mcguirk-iwan-baan/

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