A Pattern Language of Self Construction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7480/abe.2019.8.3935Abstract
Labor in favelas was not acknowledged by architects and planners because of the interpretation of the definition of the informal settlement and the slum. Also, by architectural practice and parochial theories, which affect the production of planners and architects. The definition of slums as spaces lacking sanitation and infrastructural components is deeply rooted in both theoretical and institutional definitions of the informal settlement. Nevertheless, the spaces of slums and informal settlements are much more complex and include social-economic aspects of everyday life of its inhabitants. Interpretative tools and intellectual frames are needed to open new perspectives and epistemologies in the field of architecture that are capable to address the needs of únderpriviledged people. This is the ethos of the methodology designed to study informal settlements in the present study.
The finding that work is a fundamental element shaping space dynamics of informal settlement is based on an ethnographic research. To investigate how the social actions of the inhabitants shape them, methodological tools of anthropology (such as ethnography, interviews, oral history) rooted in De Certeau (and participatory research) were combined to the methodology of the Pattern Language (and with methodological tools of architecture such as drawing) to highlight the importance of social practices as shapers of space in in contexts in which the socio-spatial dynamics are not familiar to architects and planners, such as informal settlements.
This methodology is underpinned by architectural imagination and intellectual reflection. It is the architectural imagination that allow architects and planners to create instruments to understand and represent space and new interpretative frames to study space. As for example, the perspective, which was invented when architects such as Bruneleschi experimented to draw over a mirror in a Plaza, in order to represent proportion, focal points and drain lines in the Renaissance Period.
References
AlSayyad, N.; Roy, A. (2003). Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. London: Lexinton Books.
Alexander, C. et al., (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns Buildings, Constructions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, C. (1999). The Origins of the Pattern Theory: The Future of the Theory, and the Generation of a Living World. IEE Software Journal, 16 (5), 71-82.
Arabindoo, P. (2011). Beyond the return of the “slum”. City,5, (6), 631–635.
Arabindoo, P. (2011). Rhetoric of the ‘slum. City 15, (6), 636–46. doi:10.1080/13604813.2011.609002.
Cavalcanti, A. R. C. (2017). Work, Slums and Informal Settlements Traditions: Architecture in the Favela do Telegrafo. Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, XXVIII(2), 71-81.
Cavalcanti, A.R. C. (2016). How Does Work Shape Informal Cities ? The Critical Design of Cities and Housing in Brazilian Slums. The Plan Journal, 1, (2) (2016),49–64. Doi:10.15274/tpj.2016.01.02.04.
Cavalcanti, A. R C. (2009). Dos Calejados Pés, os Passos dos Filhos de Mãe Lagoa: A Invenção do Espaço a Partir dos Ritos de Sururu (Graduation Thesis). Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Maceió, Brazil).
Cavalcanti, A. R. C. (2015). Hence, We Will Improvise: A Claim for Methods and Approaches through the Perspective of Dwellers. Online Article posted in 31 of January, 2015 in Favelissues. Retrieved from:https://favelissues.com/2015/01/31/hence-we-will- improvise-a-claim-for- methods-and-approachesthrough-
the-perspectives-of-dwellers/.Acessed on January 31, 2015. Chatterjee, P. (2012). After Subaltern Studies. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVII(35), 44–49.
Gilbert, A. (2007). The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter? International Journal of of Urban and Regional Research, 31 (4), 697-713. Doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00754.
Simone, A. (2004). People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture, 16(3), 407–429. Doi:10.1215/08992363-16-3-407
Robinson, J., & Roy, A. (2016). Debate on Global Urbanisms and the Nature of Urban Theory. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(1), 181-186.
Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: Towards an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning
Association,1 (2), Spring 2005, 147-158.
