The (In)Formal city | Ludovica Sodomaco

The (In)Formal City is the result of a study that wants to combine an innovative style of housing with an urban and social reality well-established in South America, the favelas. The concept is born from the idea of combining the urban shapes of the project area’s surroundings with the sense of overlapping given by the informal city, a poor area characterized by illegal houses, given by the multitude of shacks piled on one another. In addition the search for an urban public space played an important role, which becomes concrete in an inside square, instead of on the outside of the building itself, in order to create a connection between homes and urban life. From the outside the ground floor appears as a monolithic block that functions as a base for the entire building and hosts several facilities. Three gates, one on each site’s surrounding street, allow the entrance to the core of the building, that becomes a datum point of the district. From a social point of view, the favelas can be defined as a relationship network closely connected, where individuals can identify themselves as part of a group. The acces-deck housing typology perfectly maintains these connections; furthermore the base hosts on top of it a sort of courtyard open only to residents who, through the common spaces on each floor, offers meeting points for every kind of social exchange. The different typologies of housing units, typical of social housing, are organized between smaller flats, for students of the nearby university, and larger ones for families, from the first floor to the last one. The use of bricks as the main material once again brings back to the project’s connection to the favelas.