Informal rooting. An open Atlas

This work is based on the observation that within contemporary metropolises, there is a worldwide rooting process of informal cities that are structured around themselves and persist; they settle in the collective imagery, producing a new social-cultural mutation. This paradigm shift is more frequently triggering processes of “non-replacement”, which can also be observed on the physical pattern of these settlements that begin to mutate and adapt to the logic of stabilisation and reorganisation. The basic idea is to observe these territories, not yet explored, with the accuracy required by scientific literature, through the “eyes of the architect”, overcoming the wall of the unknowable represented by the hyper-complexity, the marginalisation, and the difficulty to access these territories. The aim is to create a specific and new informal “catalogue” that gathers the heritage of actions, forms, and urban spaces created “within the rooting process”, and that can be used to accurately know and interpret the informality.