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Favela Urbanism: the Vernacular City

  • Writer: Lui
    Lui
  • Oct 22, 2022
  • 5 min read

It is estimated that in Latin America, nearly a third of people live in informal settlements, and, globally, 85% of settlements are built “illegally”. This means that slum dwellers build more than any governmental agency, architecture studio, or contractor. In fact, it is even estimated that by 2030, 2 billion people will be living in slums. The favela is a uniquely Latin American term, but its typology, of informality, land possession, and inexpensive yet efficient construction can be seen all around the world, as new solutions to the problems that arise in dense urbanities. Dissemination of concrete and steel construction technologies have so much standardized the favela that a house of Ceilandia in the federal district of Brazil, may look the same as a house in Delhi, India. As much as architects, engineers, politicians, and urbanists, despise the favela model of growth, trying to erase its existence and relocate its people further and further, its relevance is undeniable, as a legitimate object of architectural study. In many ways, the favela is not a cancerous tumor of the city as it is often vilified, but the city itself. As climate change takes its course, the projection that 2 billion people will be living in favelas may increase even more as a result of natural disasters. Climate refugees will need to relocate to even more precarious conditions and build shelter in any possible form. It will most likely look like a favela.

The origins of my focus of study, the Brazilian favela, can be traced back to the nineteenth century. The word itself, favela, refers to a fava bean plant that was typical of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil. In the early republic of 1897, soldiers were sent to Canudos, Bahia, to suppress a radical attempt of the residents to self-govern in an egalitarian, separatist city. The result was tragic: all residents of Canudos were brutally massacred and the town was left deserted. An image of the prisoners of that war can be seen in figure 1, where people are rounded up and ordered to sit on the ground under the soldier’s watch. As the stationed soldiers returned to Rio de Janeiro, expecting compensation, the soldiers settled in the hills of Rio waiting for their payment. This settlement, eventually earning the name “Morro da Favela”, was composed of houses made of wood, and gained its negative connotation later in the urbanist project of the 1940s and again in the 1980s. These early wooden structures are displayed in figure 2, which shows the early lower density environment. As internal immigrants and city laborers who were often overlooked by the government, the early moradores of the favelas organized themselves in resident associations in which the citizens themselves provided for their own sanitation, medical care, and transport. As the favelas grew bigger and therefore more visible, urban removal projects were undertaken from the 1940s throughout the 1960s, displacing around 140,000 people into peripheral mass housing schemes that further worsened the economic prospect of working class people. It was further believed, in the red fear of the 1960s, that favelas were hotspots for communist ideas. This led to the creation of even more housing projects which loosely resembled the American suburb such as Cidade de Deus, in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Surviving urban removal projects, the resilience of the favela prevailed, in fact, the number of favelas in Rio doubled from 1970 to 1974 (from 162 to 283). In the 1980s, the image of the drug-ridden favela was solidified as Rio became the southern capital of cocaine trade. At this time, the homicide rate was seven times higher than during the military dictatorship in 1979. Nowadays, urban removal and military interventions are still widely used tactics, but for the most part, economic liberalism dictates the destiny of the favela.

The form of the favela is a product of its organic urbanism. According to professor of urbanism, Fernando Luiz Lara, in his article “Amateur Architects in Twentieth Century Brazil”,

“Dwellers were often removed by the police in a matter of days if the land was of interest to private owners or state agencies. People were allowed to stay if the land was deemed not worthy of developing for a number of reasons: legal ownership disputes, absolute lack of infrastructure (abandoned farmland), site incline beyond that which was permitted by city codes (often above thirty percent). The occupied land of the favelas was gradually divided in an organic manner; following the steep pathways in the case of hills or the elevated walkways in the case of swamp areas.”

With a severe lack of space and resources, the only viable option is vertical expansion departing from the concrete slab to form climbing configurations of houses, all supported on one another. Composed of the same structural elements as middle and upper class houses in Brazil, albeit without the cosmetic finishes, the favela houses draw from the knowledge of untrained construction workers who work in the wealthier neighborhoods and bring with them skills to build their own dwellings, and eventually, their own neighborhoods. The main structural element of the favela is the reinforced concrete framework, with exposed ceramic bricks that fill in the walls and a metallic roof, often without a pitch to facilitate construction. The use of the flat roof is a strategy to take advantage of all inhabitable space possible, leaving no empty space either above or below. The flat roof also facilitates possible growth: if any renovations and additions are implemented in the dwellings. Standardization of cheap prefabricated windows and doors guide the design, rather than a plan or any consideration to orientation or ventilation. All construction work is done on site, as layouts are adjusted to the site conditions and materials available. The construction process is detailed in figure 3, with a diagram. In general, favelas congested because its growth pattern does not allow for much room for circulation, and the difficulty of terrains is a challenge to overcome. The choice of industrial materials, intuitive construction methods, collaborative government of citizen associations that provide basic services all characterize the architecture of the favela.

The implications of life in a favela are complex. Suffering from daily military invasions and brutal homicides, the rule of drug trafficking overlords, and the constant discrimination and neglect from the politicians, moradores learned to fend for themselves while still fostering a network of community care. In many ways, the architecture itself displays this duality. While the rooms inside the house offer shelter from the possibility of danger, the terraces created by the flat roof slabs become semi-private spaces where people socialize, dry their clothes, barbecue,watch passersby, relax, or listen to music.

At the end of the day, as much as architects try to banish or to aestheticize, the favela is the model of urbanity in the capitalist condition. Therefore, erasing or relocating will never solve the true problem. It will only punish those who are merely trying to survive it.







Bibliography


Luiz Lara, Fernando. “Amateur Architects in Twentieth-Century Brazil.” In Third Text, edited by

Julia Bryan Wilson and Benjamin Peikut, 143-158. Tand and Francis Online. Accessed


McGuirk, Justin. Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture. London:

Verso Books. 2014.


“Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Past and Present.” Brown University Library. Accessed February 26,

in-rio-de-janeiro -past-and-present/


“Origin of ‘Favela’.” Rio on Watch. Accessed February 26, 2021.


Images


“Early Favela.” Rio on Watch. Accessed February 26, 2021.


De Barros, Flavio. “Prisioneiras do arraial de Canudos com soldados ao fundo”. Published in 1st

edition of Os sertões, by Euclides da Cunha. 1897. Museu da República/Ibram/MinC.


Luiz Lara, Fernando. “Diagram of typical favela structure.” In Third Text, edited by

Julia Bryan Wilson and Benjamin Peikut, 143-158. Tand and Francis Online. Accessed



 
 
 

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