Designing with emergence : learning from the contemporary urban vernacular of informal settlements towards regenerative design strategies

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increased promotion of regenerative development. However, concerning informal settlement policy and interventions, regenerative development practices are scarcely mentioned much less applied. The current discourse suggests that intervention approaches that draw from informal vernacular systems and design offer a corrective to marginalizing policy and practice. However, no consensus has been reached on how to study and apply the lessons drawn from the urban vernacular of informal settlements. To determine the role of the emergence inherent in vernacular systems and innovation in the development of regenerative strategies for informal settlements, the social aspects of the Melusi informal settlement were studied through a participatory approach involving design games and workshops. The material aspects were examined through transects walks, interviews, and structured observations by the researcher and BArch Honours students. To further contextualise the design response, the Melusi vernacular was studied using Rapoport (1988) and Boetgger’s (2014) frameworks. This provided principles that informed design decisions at various scales of the architectural intervention. An outcome of this study is a framework for engaging the latent potential for regenerative development of informal settlements inherent in their vernacular design innovation and systems and in the social capital.