Progress: Reframing the informal and the role of user and architect through Improvitecture

The proposed model mediates between bottom-up efforts and top-down expertise in an open, replicable and transferable way. Expanding architectural practice, the project introduces the Improvitecture model that revolves about discovering and optimizing the potentials of self-organized processes and patterns. It redefines the informal as improvised and transforms citizens into active agents and the architect into a mediator and choreographer of forces. The initiative implies that architects should, in addition to the traditional profile, design the process and replicable tools that empower people to take ownership. It provides a way for architects to insert themselves both as agents and participants in informal communities, a duality allowing them to operate with, for and against a cause.

People: Social inclusion at all stages of the project

Advocating for social and ethical responsibility, the project engages individuals from different backgrounds throughout its life cycle, from mapping patterns, generating tools and designing interventions to constructing prototypes on site and their operation. The main objectives are to empower citizens to take governance over their built environment and encourage crossover networks between different stakeholders.

In the hope of terminating social disparity, the project capitalizes on the power of mapping and an open source website as tools for political transparency, communicating the voices of the vulnerable and uniting bottom-up and top-down data for an unbiased process. Women’s empowerment is achieved through providing opportunities for micro-economies close to their homes and children.

Using the tactics of the (in)formal for Place, Planet and Prosperity

Improvitecture optimizes existing conditions through urban acupuncture without destroying self-organized socio-cultural and economical networks and patterns. Tools and proposals use the same tactics of the (in) formal like compactness, incompleteness, hyper-functionality, urban layering and resource centrality, to reappropriate and blend with the built environment. Interventions are flexible, hybrid and expandable to comply with future informality and long-term adaptability. Proposals incorporate incomplete spaces for future occupants to fill in according to their needs. The project injects urban farming, micro-economies, solar power generation and grey water systems in passive leftover spaces in urban voids, incomplete structures and rooftops to form a network of optimized patterns.