In my earlier two posts on informality [I, II], I was trying to say that informality is a late-20th century discourse on the “natural” course of development that draws significant boundaries between “in-process” and “finished” stages of modern progress. Architects, inheriting this discourse without much question, are often interested in addressing informality either as a temporary ailment of global cities that can and should be fixed (thus helping cities “leapfrog” into the finished plethora of modernity)–or–as an information-rich source for learning. This second approach runs the danger of naturalizing the slums as if doing them a favor (‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’).
Not to imply that it is innocent but one of the recent outcries about the movie Slumdog Millionaire had to do with the fact that this fictional narrative doesn’t take a bow to either course, causing much consternation and scandal. It supposedly shifted attention from India’s economic progress, thought to be a final endpoint to modernity’s difficulties. And yet it was also chastised for not poeticizing the life of the citizens of Dahravi. Go figure.
But forget what Slumdog does for a minute. What is architecture to do? By asking this question I flip around the question I asked at the start Part I: What does informality ‘do’ for architects? Both of these questions are related to each other, but to answer the first, let’s start with the second. Continue reading
