Ricerc@Sapienza

Creativity, understood as a process of creation through the use of imagination and original ideas, has always been the engine of architecture in both formal and informal communities. Based on contextual observations and people’s needs, this creativity is often fueled and challenged to produce innovative architectural and urban solutions.
The informal community, in particular, with its inadequate regulation and weak law enforcement, in addition to hosting a poor population, is a place where creativity is expressed differently. The absence of the architect has lead people to rely on self-construction, where the final dweller of the house is also the designer, and often the builder, taking part in participatory activities both in the household and in the precarious public spaces (Hernández, Kellet, & Allen, 2010).
The lack of economic resources leads to the construction of structures that cannot be completely finished, but that instead grow over time, depending on the people’s means and needs. As Mehrotra (2010) argues, the informal or kinetic city is based not on architectural landmarks, finished and stable, but in an ever-changing urban fabric made of processes, emergences, and events, rather than on fixed regulations and objectives. Creativity in these places is, thus, a response to everyday needs in precarious environments, still in direct relationship with its end users.
With the collapse of most global economies, many architects have turned to informal communities both to help people find their own social identity and to find solutions to the various problems. This recent trend is yet challenging the limits of architectural creativity.
Based on case studies in the periphery of Lima, Peru, different types of creative architectural solutions for public spaces are examined, where everyday life is one of the main concerns. The aim is to identify successful ways for the appropriation of a precarious environment where architecture plays an important role in bringing people together. Being aware of the negative impact of slums, and the difficulties of their integration into formal cities (UN-Habitat, 2010), developing the skill of seeing and learning from informal areas can broaden our discipline’s reach, re-establishing our service role.
A reflection on the organization and development of informal public spaces, fluctuating between creativity and reality, can offer a variety of design tools to propose a new type of reading and solutions for the informal city.