Mega-slums are dynamic laboratories for urban pattern making. Instead of surveying about stable urban symbols represented by formal orders and regular geometries, this study explores the semantic meaning of informal urbanism associated with chaos or randomness and often ignored by critique and conventions. Slums are forms of ‘instant urbanity’ that underscore alternative ways of self-organisation, which include bottom-up strategies, autonomous urban dynamics and spatial activation by remaking. Are slum patterns representing a lack of symbolism or, on contrary, rich, complex, and fluid urban idioms? Urban informality without planning offers immense opportunities to investigate resilient urban forms and languages as complex systems throughout self-ruled structures. Slums are not only the result of urban economic asymmetries and social marginalisation but the elementary construction of survival urbanism, a randomised, agile and transformative pattern system. Slum making is a form of subsistence urbanity that constructs transitory, elusive or spontaneous geometries. They differ in sizes, magnitudes and geometries regarding cultural, climatic and topographic conditions. Slums are unstable systems in continuous transformation. This essay questions the stigmatisation of informalised urban patterns as ‘other’ unclassified codes by analysing a selection of twenty mega-slums in the Americas, Africa and Asia regarding semantics, urban and geometrical meanings. Their urban tissues contain various symbols that activate the every-day production of spaces. They can be visible or invisible; passive or active; and formal or informal. A taxonomic tree of slums was developed to compare and map slum regions to describe similarities and differences among the selected case studies. From this analysis, a profound discourse appeared between informal settlements: tissue-patterns at macro level and cell-patterns in micro urbanisation. Does the macro pattern inform the micro, or vice versa?

V raziskavi s primerjalnimi metodami poučevanja in projektiranja kritično preučujemo načela nizkotehnološke izdelave in visokega dizajna, ki so od leta 2004 predmet mednarodnih delavnic v Španiji, Sloveniji, Čilu in Združenem kraljestvu pod vodstvom avtorja tega prispevka. Raziskava se osredotoča na sisteme poučevanja in učenja o okoljsko primernih zasnovah izdelkov, ki se izvajajo v nekaterih projektivnih birojih in manjših delavnicah. Od leta 2008 pripravljam intenzivne tritedenske projektivne delavnice kot del dodiplomskega študija v sklopu t. i. vertikalnega projektiranja, ki poteka na valižanski šoli za arhitekturo (Welsh School of Architecture (WSA)) v Cardiffu. Izbrani primeri pokažejo, da sodelujoči študentje in tutorji lahko hitro razvijejo pomembne okoljske in konstrukcijske veščine, kot so prostorska vsestranskost, zavedanje o okolju in življenjskem krogu ter doseganje znanja preko prakse, s pomočjo inovativnih maket in prototipov. Vsaka naloga je vključevala intenzivne delavnice, ki so se osredotočale na zasnovo in izdelavo osnovnih okvirov, pri tem pa smo uporabljali opuščena in brezplačna gradiva.

This chapter reflects on the implementation of pop-up architecture and sensory gardens made with waste reuse in brownfields. The selected experiments, MOBILELAND© (2014-2016) and DOT TO DOT© (2017 onwards), investigate waste reuse as pop-up sensory reactivation of gap sites in Glasgow. Experiments explore constructive sensibilities embedded in material sensory by interlinking tangible place-making, sensory gardens, eco-design, and self-build solutions in public spaces. The cases underline design as sensory medium to effectively co-develop innovative environmental changes, societal challenges, and co-creation, including experiential outdoor learning and public engagement, throughout the reuse of waste applied in remaking by testing/piloting the C2C theoretical framework. Trials apply the principles of temporariness, portability, and sensory of waste as social value and material culture in cities. These live projects explore constructional and somatic sensibilities and critically investigate the cultural embodiment of material sensory by remaking.

This essay analyses Buster Keaton’s masterpieces: One Week (1920); The Haunted House (1921) and The Electric House (1922). His filmic work reveals the montage of mass housing prefabrication in the Modern Age in the United States: repetition and mechanisation of the building production; generic layouts; and modular like–catalogue constructions. Rather than following a sequential building process, these cases are executed as mere accidents or flaws. Buster Keaton’s films however show ironically a non–standardized architecture. This study analyses and compares Keaton’s film production with Catalog Modern House, a prefab dwelling manufactured and shipped by Sears,Roebuck and Co in the 20th century.