On building their city, human beings are always looking for appropriation. His settlement on a given space won’t be real until he reaches a level of identification with such place, until he leaves his own footprint and starts developing a relationship with it, by means of housing and use of public space.
If the settlement is not previously planned, but a product of spontaneous use of a given space, there is more room to improvisation and, consequently, original solutions in architecture and urbanism might be expected.
On the outskirts of the city of Lima (Perú), for the last 50 years, the city has been built by the people who came to live in it from their hometowns all over the country. State intervention has been scarce. Therefore, this new peripheries – that originated with cheap houses and now constitutes an important percentage of the city – constitutes a unique example of a city that grows.
Beginning with the aesthetic aspects of such a spontaneous architecture “without architects” it is possible to develop an approach to the relationship between the people and their city, based on both the individual and social aspects. Such relation might give us useful tools to understand the contemporary urban phenomenon on the peripheries, from the people’s point of view.
If the settlement is not previously planned, but a product of spontaneous use of a given space, there is more room to improvisation and, consequently, original solutions in architecture and urbanism might be expected.
On the outskirts of the city of Lima (Perú), for the last 50 years, the city has been built by the people who came to live in it from their hometowns all over the country. State intervention has been scarce. Therefore, this new peripheries – that originated with cheap houses and now constitutes an important percentage of the city – constitutes a unique example of a city that grows.
Beginning with the aesthetic aspects of such a spontaneous architecture “without architects” it is possible to develop an approach to the relationship between the people and their city, based on both the individual and social aspects. Such relation might give us useful tools to understand the contemporary urban phenomenon on the peripheries, from the people’s point of view.
