Article

1. Introduction

Today, informality is a fundamental and unavoidable component of many cities of the Global South and largely determines their growth and development. The unstoppable flows of migration from the countryside to the cities and the absence of a “formal” housing solution by governments have led to an uncontrolled expansion of urbs and the construction of various “informal” settlements. One of the essential features of these spontaneous settlements is the practice of self-construction of dwellings. This characteristic is usually already present in the cultural background of those who are forced to migrate to cities from the countryside, being an important part of rural communities’ identity and tradition.

In this context, however, self-construction is no longer conducted as a traditional practice but as a matter of emergency. Most people who arrived in the big cities found themselves forced to build their own houses, where they could, without having the skills and time to plan construction and sometimes without the economic conditions, materials and human resources to build appropriately. Together with the globalisation and standardisation of construction techniques and materials, these emergency conditions led to the typological and technological homologation of self-constructive processes that, in rural contexts, responded to the needs of the inhabitants as they adapted to the local environment. Characteristics such as the climate zone, local material resources, ancestral knowledge and traditional architecture have become negligible in the “informal” city, giving way to what can be defined as “an involution of popular architecture” (González, 2006). In this scenario, what should the architect’s taskbe? Is our profession still relevant in a context where the inhabitants themselves are building their houses? How can the role of the architect in the “informal” settlements be redefined?

The research hypothesis is that it is possible to reinterpret the elements of traditional architecture for the eco-compatible (Grosso, 2004) redevelopment of “informal” housing through the association between the widespread knowledge of the community and the technical-scientific expertise of the professional architect. It is thought that the combination of two qualitative methodologies (PAR and HCD) could become the basis for the development of appropriate, low-tech, innovative technologies. Based on the participation of the community itself -not as the object of study but as subject and co-researcher- solutions can be found not only in terms of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency but also according to the way people live their housing and the city. Through this, the architect could be able to see the practice of “informal” city self-construction no longer as a problem but as a model for grassroots innovation (Smith, Fressoli & Thomas, 2014) an opportunity for creativity and development based on different ways of conceiving architecture, landscape and the territory.
This paper presents only the work of the first year of my PhD research. The work with the community began with several site visits that, unfortunately, due to the global health emergency of COVID-19, could not be continued in the second year of research. It is expected that in the third year, the fieldwork will restart. 

1.1. The culture of the city

Culture is a central theme in architecture. We must remember that every city has a cultural identity and that this is partly manifested in its architecture – traditional and not. It is therefore crucial that architects understand it and interpret it to act appropriately in the contemporary city. The ontological and etymological dimension of the word “culture” makes us realise that it is linked to the community closely, the transformations of human beings, and their actions carried out every day. Culture, therefore, is a public issue and “even if it is not physical, it is not a hidden entity” (Geertz, 2003). It manifests itself through collective behaviours, physical spaces, rituals, symbols, and community traditions.

Unfortunately, in the “informal” city, the knowledge and activities that are -or were- part of the inhabitants’ culture -such as traditional building techniques, use of local and natural materials for construction, etc.- are ignored and progressively hegemonized. This is evident, for example, in the use of materials such as concrete or aluminium which, although not suitable for all climatic contexts, are perceived as the rule to be followed according to an imaginary of progress imposed by the predominant model of the “formal” city, where culture is often exploited with economic objectives. This man-nature relationship’s complexity has been well analysed in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda (United Nations, 2015) signed in 2015 by all the United Nations member countries. They define the key issues that need to be addressed to talk about environmental, social, and economic sustainability—real sustainability based on culture.

1.2. “Formal” and “informal” city

With the increase of the global population and the excessive growth of many cities, especially in emerging countries, more attention has been paid to “formal” urban construction -designed and built by professionals- as a factor of economic development rather than a way of building cities. The consequences of this are the increasingly fragmented structures of large cities based not so much on spatial or architectural criteria as on monetary precepts.

In Latin America, for instance, this reality is highlighted mainly in two urban problems. On the one hand, since the end of the last century, the gated community has become the predominant urban expansion model and the privileged housing typology of the middle and upper classes. On the other hand, the lower levels have suffered from a scarce and inadequate “formal” offer of housing as this does not represent a dynamic real estate product. Public housing built by the government or public/private bodies in large and medium-sized cities in Latin American countries is often insufficient. It does not adapt to the needs and ways of life of the population.

Consequently, self-construction becomes the leading solution for people with low incomes to have their own home. However, this “informal” practice is seen as a problematic response to the quantitative deficit. Its general absence of environmental sustainability and proper architectural or structural projects often fail to meet housing needs, generating an equally qualitative severe housing deficit.

However, the informality that has caused so many headaches to urban planners and architects does not lack form; it has an organic form. According to Alessandro Tessari (Mauro, 2018), “informality has a levelling system that contemplates the introduction of chaos into order: it is an adaptive attitude that accepts the impossibility of foresight, the surprise and randomness as inevitable elements of life”. This organic order could end up being a more resilient feature than the rigid and controlled order that the “formal” city wants to impose on us.

2. PAR and HCD for social technologies transfer

In many Latin American countries, technical education is subordinate to university education. For instance, a person who learns to transform matter with his/her hands is undervalued both socially and economically and remains at the base of the social pyramid. This idea of “enlightened absolutism” -everything for the people, nothing by the people- does not let us see that without the base, the pyramid falls. Therefore, this paper wants to highlight the importance of social technologies transfer, understood as “the sum of comprehensive knowledge in which scientific and traditional learning interact, complement, and enrich each other” (Granados Dueñas & Nieto Castillo, 2017). The Latin American concept of social technologies has as its fundamental antecedent the movement of proper technologies born in India at the beginning of the 20th century. Other similar concepts were developed in European contexts, such as alternative, adequate, and intermediate technologies.
Based on methodological pluralism, and considering that architecture is a social practice, this paper aims to contribute to the academic debate on the eco-compatible requalification of “informal” settlements through the integration of two methodologies: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Human-Centred Design (HCD) (Katoppo & Sudradjat, 2015). It is thought that through these two methodologies, the architect will have the tools to work more effectively in “informal” contexts where the inhabitants, depending on their origin and background, have several ways of understanding architecture and their homes.

According to an approach combining PAR and HCD tactics, an “informal” neighbourhood in Colombia was chosen as case study. By collaborating with the community, the aim is to combine the inhabitants’ widespread knowledge -experiences, education, background, etc.- and the architect’s professional skills to generate a symbiosis capable of providing a guided bottom-up response to upgrade their homes. It is essential to understand that PAR and HCD do not mean to arrive at the idea of teaching, but instead of learning together with the community, trying to govern the intuitive solution with precise tools shared between professionals and inhabitants.

In the PAR, the inhabitants become active co-researchers because they identify needs, problems, data collection and processes of reflection and action (Colmenares, 2012). This step from subject-object to subject-subject dualism makes the PAR a more effective method to transform social realities.

The collective recovery of history, memory and knowledge is one of the main tactics of PAR. Ander-Egg (2003) points out that PAR “enables the recovery of historical memory/awareness of people’s experiences, by detecting ‘traces’ and searching for their roots, to highlight and re-evaluate the protagonist of what the people themselves have done to improve their situation” (p. 5). Collective recovery contributes to the fact that people, through “knowing”, begin to participate in “doing”, becoming themselves the main methodological resource. In this case, it is thought that through the use of this tactic in “informal” settlements, vernacular know-how could be encouraged to become a living part of present and future building practices once again.

The data obtained through the collective recovery of history must be analysed and interpreted. Analysing it means “studying the aspects, phenomena, facts and elements related to the problem investigated. Through interpretation, meaning is given to the data” (Ander-Egg, 2003, p.20). One procedure used in this study is data triangulation. For instance, in a survey, if a person told me how was the house where he/she lived as a child, and referred to the construction techniques, the materials used, or the comfort of the interior spaces, I would do a bibliographic analysis of the architecture of the area where the house was located to better understand the information. This triangulation made it possible to highlight traditional technologies that could be used in a future requalification.

The HCD, on the other hand, considers that the people who face problems every day are the same people who have the key to their response. This method is based on three key aspects, which are inspiration, conception, and implementation, to arrive at desirable, feasible and achievable answers. It is a balanced process, crucial to design effective, innovative, and sustainable solutions (IDEO team, 2015).
For HCD, creativity is an important characteristic for developing good projects. However, this approach does not see creativity as a skill reserved only for artists, but rather as a way of seeing the world. Another basic characteristic in HCD is empathy and the idea that “the people for whom we design are our roadmap to innovative solutions” (IDEO, 2015, p. 22). Based on these two statements, HCD opens itself up to serendipity and chance through a street-level perspective of the community and the built environment, because “one rarely arrives at new and innovative solutions if one always knows precisely where one is going” (IDEO, 2015, p. 13).

3. Results

As known, this paper presents the first year’s work of my PhD in which the theoretical framework, the method and the structure of the research were developed. In the first two visits to the neighbourhood of El Pozón, it was possible to put into practice some of the tactics of the two methodological strategies presented above. The first results highlighted the importance of the form in which questions are asked, since this can implicitly lead to one answer or another. Through informal interviews, which were conducted in the same environment in which people live their daily lives, I collected information on changes in the forms of living of ten families in the Isla de León sector.

The main outcome of the research is the “house in time”, an inventory of dwellings in which the temporal, physical and geographical changes in the forms of living of the interviewed households are analysed: the house of memory (where and how they lived before), the current house (where and how they live now) and the house of the imagination (where and how they would like to live). Figure 1 shows the ten dwellings that are being considered and analysed in this study. The inventory analyses housing as a non-static state and aims to highlight which technological, architectural and micro-urban features and elements have been lost in the various historical transitions of the inhabitants, which remain and which could be enhanced instead.

According to Lucas (2016) “technological research into materials or the latest forms of sustainable construction (…) must respond to the history, society and culture of which it is (part of)” (p. 189). With the construction of the “house in time” through the application of PAR and HCD tactics, it is hoped that the field of architectural technology will have a new reference for intervening in “informal” neighbourhoods based on “cultural values of building materials and building technologies” (Lucas, 2016, p. 189). It is expected to continue working on the case study and have more practical results in the near future.