Informalism

Hugo Moline 2006 Recipient - Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship

Recent Graduate  Category.

The practices of architecture, planning and design, through the formal production of space, have forever been used to reinforce the interests of the economically and politically powerful. As the work of architects literally makes concrete the desires of those with the means to buy, build and hire, we are simultaneously building out all those who do not. We measure out space, detailing precisely what goes where, who gets what, uncritically making physical the social and economic divisions of the society in which we build. So for all the developments in aesthetics and technology, we move the city nowhere, we change nothing, stuck in a game of endlessly rearranging the furniture, making noise but changing nothing.

But from Bangkok to Caracas, from Tijuana to Brooklyn, innovative, alternative practices are emerging. Architects who have chosen instead to smash up the furniture and invite local people to help make something better from the pieces. These practices have rejected the old mercenary paradigm, of reinforcing the spatial will of the few who can pay, and by doing so have regained their own independence and the power to change the way our cities are produced.

Crucially these practices seek out collaborations with the people who actually use the places they design. They join with community organisations, activist groups and people in the street to pursue interests outside of the existing power structure. They use architecture as a vehicle to explore and expose entrenched socio-spatial injustice and to create concrete alternatives. They continue to learn and innovate, becoming ever more rigorous, open and effective. These practices are as diverse as the highly specific geo-political contexts in which they work.CASE Studio of Thailand, Estudio Teddy Cruz and GERMEN of the San Diego/Tijuana Border region, the Center for Urban Pedagogy and Hester Street Collaborative in New York, and the Permanent Workshop for Participatory Design in Caracas represent just a few of the diverse approaches to reinventing the way we make our cities.

Informalism began as the online presence of an international research project, 'working with the informal, learning from the informal', which explored the way architects and other urban practioners are engaging with the informal city, the city as built by people themselves. The project was jointly funded by the NSW Architects Registration Board through the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship and the University of Melbourne Asialink Centre through the Dunlop Asia Fellowship.