A historiography of slums in anglo-saxon architectural discourse

Resumen

Contemporary architectural and urban design culture from the Global North exhibits optimistic - if not promissory - examples of research and design projects addressing and solving problems at slums. This is most important because slums hold a heavy meaning with equivalent efforts for other disciplines, most notably after recent steps made in international development agencies and programs ¿ like United Nations¿ Millennium Development Goals. By the incorporation of the design-solution narrative into architectural discourse design, itself is carried as a methodology suitable to propose solutions in ways paralleled to other disciplines, which methods are assessable, and which outcomes are targeted. This dissertation is an inquirí of the epistemological status that slums have in architectural discourse, and it is done to question the fitting between design aspirations and tools. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that, by using physical planning and visual techniques to represent problems and solutions at slums, architecture culture bypasses the social aspects of problems at slums, and serves in favor of the Theory of Modernization, in a simple opposition of pre-modern versus modern, efficient society. The consequences of this shift are that architectural actions use narratives of inclusion and redistribution, while acting only in the provision of objects and the temporary solutions to housing and physical infrastructure poverty. The complexity of this inquiry lies in the fact that this process does not belong to individual projects themselves but rather, to a disciplinary culture that is embedded into an implicit architectural discourse, even if it is a relatively peripheral one. The way to approach architectural discourse in this case has been made by showing the evolution of what has been considered architecture in the past and in the present. A way to tackle this large-scale issue is by looking at the production of architecture culture in magazines and journals. In a first stage I map Anglo-Saxon design culture addressing slums spatially and epistemological, and identify that there is a knowledge bias in addressing slums in the types of publications and regional coverage. To address this cultural, disciplinary aspect, I have layouted the internal inconsistencies of design discourse at informal settlements, and mapping the gaps existing between slums¿ growth, and the proper interests of Anglo-Saxon design culture. And to understand this epistemological status of design I trace a history of design culture. During the dissertation I identify, this way, three historical instances that make up for that history, namely the development of slum clearance programs and urban renovation programs in the US and the UK until the 1950s; the elevation of the problems of human settlements in the CIAM conferences and which, finally translated into the 1976 UN Habitat I conference from the United Nations; and the sparks divided into two main divisions in the late 20th century, one devoted to a physical understanding and another one understanding a planning understanding of slums.