Informal rooting: an open atlas

This article is based on the consideration that on a worldwide basis contemporary metropolises include within their limits a growing and persisting presence of informal cities. They settle both on the ground and also in the collective imaginary, producing a new social-cultural mutation: a paradigm shift able to trigger a processes of ‘non-replacement’ that can be observed physically. The patterns of these settlements begin to mutate and adapt to the logic of stabilization and reorganization. The basis for the present text is a doctoral thesis that dealt systematically and accurately with the interpretation of the growing phenomenon of informal cities contained in formal metropolis. The doctoral research has been carried on analysing in morphological terms the urban fabric of four favelas in Rio de Janeiro, considered as a favourable context for the observation of informality. After having travelled across these territories for a long time, after having observed them, surveyed the land, mapped them, redrawn them, I finally analysed them spatially, in order to detect and understand their syntax of evolution and the logics of micro-transformation of their urban fabric. The basic idea is to explore these territories from a different point of view, trying to apply the typical accuracy of scientific literature but still through the ‘eyes of the architect’. The first goal is to overcome the unsurmountable screen of hyper-complexity, the marginalization and the difficulty to access these territories. The final aim is to create a specific ‘informal catalogue’ that gathers the asset of actions, forms and urban spaces organised ‘within the rooting process’, and that can be used to accurately know and interpret informality.