Informal Labor Across Construction Systems | Harvard Graduate School of Design

Since 2015

Institutions:

* Harvard Graduate School of Design

* Universidad Simón Bolívar

Professor / Lecturer:

* Ignacio Cardona

This lecture has been discussed in several academic institutions such as Harvard University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Browm University, Tecnológico de Monterrey, and University of Toronto

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Every construction system combines materials, tools, and labor in a particular socioeconomic environment. This lecture seeks to understand this process in the contemporary global service economy, with special emphasis on the implications of informal economies in producing self-produced environments and spatial inequalities.

First, the lecture provides a taxonomy of types of labor and their implication on architecture and its construction system. Then, the lecture compares the construction of a highly architectural designed piece of architecture (Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House) and a typical house usually built in Latin American self-produced neighborhoods.

The lecture systematizes years of surveys and research in Petare, the denser self-produced neighborhood -often called slum or informal settlement- in Latin America. Besides understanding the differences and similarities in the constructive systems in the unequal contemporary urban world, the lecture demonstrates how informal labor occurs fluidly across different types of architecture.