Formalizing the Informal

Drawing upon notes from Teddy Cruz’s lecture on Radicalizing the Local: Post-Bubble Urban Strategies at the Berlarge Institute:

Based on the premise of an unprecedented socio-cultural shift in demographics, produced by the urbanization explosion and economic crises across the world, the new conditions question traditional methods of artistic and architectural intervention in the city. Various geo-economic and political conflicts point out the tensions between the formal and the informal. The formal acts at the scale of the metropolitan in the form of top-down totalizing institutions, whereas the informal works at the scale of the neighborhoods as bottom-up social agencies. Thus, ownership and politics can be understood as the two active generators that contribute to the current fragmented socio-cultural and urban landscapes. As Teddy Cruz points out, an economically and socially-driven architectural approach may mediate such fragmentation. In order to achieve this, the design problematizes the conflict between the institutions and the local. It romanticizes the grass root while seek potentials of the institutional system.

The conflict of the Shanghai Bund is one of a constructed image. Architectural relics from the Treaty-Port era’s ‘Shanghai renaissance style’ ornamentations, as well as the LED-embellished futuristic skyline built in the 1990’s boarders the waterfront. They are both modeled after the broadest definition of international civic space at the time of construction. These top-down imposed images and spaces not only conflicts with local use, but also prevents the fostering of a local identity. The proposed intervention mediates the conflict by placing the formal and the informal at close proximity. The current temporary use and informal ownership that characterizes the site is integrated into the scheme. Sponge-like spatial lattice propagates along main circulation arteries and provides individual pockets for temporary use. It formalizes the informal.