05 Obviouslt, the informality couldn‘t solve the problem of the housing production by itself. Rainer Hehl says that the formal basis and the infrastructure must to move together with a thought of architecture as culture.
THE SHIFTING OF THE SOCIAL HOUSING APPROACH
Is the Informality a model for the urban future?
Many things have changed since the height of modern architecture. At that time, until the first half of the twentieth century, architects and governments believed that the solution to eradicate the housing shortage was to build mammoths in the peripheries of the big centers, using prefabricated components to materialize buildings in format of blades with few stores and upon pilotis, whose Unité d‘Habitation of Le Corbusier is the greatest symbol of this modern belief in design. But today has been about not designing to solve problems. Nowadays it is much more common to see experts praising the social order and even aesthetic of informal settlements, which in many cases provide their residents with a stronger community and higher standard of living than did many formal social housing projects of the past. Today we have new approaches and new parameters. British environmentalist David King argues that the slums could serve as a model for cities of the future. In fact, King defends the adoption of two of its most desirable characteristics: a form of self-organization of communities, avoiding planning „top-down“, and distances that can be percussed by foot. The Quinta Monroy project, located in Iquique, Chile, designed by Elemental and the case of David Tower, an illegal occupation of an abandoned business tower in the center of Caracas, Venezuela, indicate new directions and a new mindset related to the housing problem, which consider involving locals residents in the process of building their homes and communities, using their time, energy and potential, preventing the planning top-down, in which urban planners think they know more than communities, paying attention to what local people really want, which results in most cases in a real sense of ownership and stronger and collaborative communities.
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This in other words, as Ludwig Engel said, means that the he idea of social housing seems to be able to shift from the empowerment of the state to take land and money to an empowerment of the people to build faster and smaller structures without much more than an informal organizational overhead. Flexible approaches to providing building infrastructure might be today’s form of social housing. The cities’ governments can empower individuals and small interest groups of the urban poor not only to find a more or less acceptable home but to create a process in which home can be re-defined and adapted as the soaring dynamics of the bustling megacities change their appearance fortnight. A number of qualities of the built environment in favelas have caught the attention of international planners, architects and sustainability practitioners in recent years. Favelas are places of: (1) Low-rise, high density development; (2) Pedestrian orientation; (3) High use of bicycles & public transportation; (4) Mixed use (homes above shops); (5) Residence close to workplace; (6) Organic architecture (architecture evolves according to need); (7) New urbanism; (8) Collective action; (9) Intricate solidarity networks; and (10) Vibrant cultural production.