I had the opportunity to meet you when I was a child, when my understanding of the city was
limited to just a few blocks around my house. Our neighborhood was my whole universe. I was able to identify the bakery of Don Pedro in the corner and the miscellaneous shop behind my house. I knew almost everyone in my street and everyone knew that I was Doña Rosa’s daughter. I miss those years, when the streets were my playground and an extension of everyone’s living room. After my family and I moved out of our beloved neighborhood, I lived in different areas of the city. All of them are very similar. There are buildings instead of houses, cars are parked in parking lots, kids play in the park or the playground, and everything looks homogenous.
It’s hard to believe that my childhood neighborhood and my current neighborhood coexist in the same city. They stand in opposition to each other, and don’t really communicate. As I grew older and I was able to comprehend the full extension of the city, I realized that the periphery is full of neighborhoods like that of my childhood and that it keeps growing. Farmers from the countryside and migrants from abroad move to big cities and occupy affordable neighborhoods like ours.
Some years ago, I decided to study architecture. In school, I learned about the different styles of architecture: classical, greek, gothic and modern. I also learned to design habitable spaces based on the user’s needs or expectations. There are myriad shapes, textures, materials, colors, etc. that can be used to create esthetically-balanced spaces. After being involved in architecture as a student and as a professional, I keep wondering where the architecture and urbanism of my childhood neighborhood fit into the broader architectural discourse. I almost wish I could have brought my classmates to meet you, so you could explain to us the logic behind the architecture in our neighborhood.
Academic institutions and regulating agencies have set up a code, defined by function, organization, typology and phasing, which classifies the architecture of our neighborhood as informal settlement, progressive housing or rough construction. Although these codes are crucial to understand Latin American cities, these codes reduce and simplify the real scope and essence of our “popular” neighborhoods. What is the role of these houses that seem to be forever under construction? Is there any architectural or esthetic value in the colorful facades, geometric shapes, ornamental windows, door bars or hanging plants? Would you agree that neighborhoods like ours are a unique construction coming from the artistic conglomeration of our neighbor’s skills?
These informal settlements may not be a remarkable work of creativity or inventiveness, but they are an undeniable reflection of our social, economic and political reality. A big portion of the population has found a home in this type of neighborhood, which is an alternative to the formal market that they cannot afford due to their economic situation. I still don’t understand why “popular” neighborhoods are understood as disorganized, incomplete and picturesque constructions. By walking in our streets, you and I know that facades are a tool for communicating the neighborhood’s expression of “popular” interests.
Popular is heterogenous, changing, progressive which differs from the standardized, repetitive and static social housing projects. Those planned projects, built by public or private contractors, have anonymous clients. The constructions are carried out with the goal of being sold quickly and efficiently. What they don’t know is that our ever-changing houses narrate our daily lives. The program and spacing have no end, as they are a result of economic and social efforts that families work for throughout the years. At the beginning of the construction families accommodated the primary services and spaces. Later they add complementary spaces which represent new family needs or dreams.
Popular architecture is a unique language that is not a trend, a style or a typology. It has broken every code or standard mandated by architectural codes and theories by materializing multiple expressions that don’t fit into the formal urbanism. The informal and formal urban growth in Latin-American cities should be one comprehensive “barrio”, which welcomes diversity and that flavorful and colorful “sabor” that represents us. Don’t you think?
