Informal - Informal architecture of South and Central America

Abstract: This thesis aims to address the topic of informal vernacular architecture in a focal group of chosen villages in South and Central America. With the goal to represent their informal architecture and its connection to identity, culture, and sustainability. What I’m referring to as informal architecture in this thesis, is something referred to by many names in the contemporary vocabularies. Many of them has been used through a derogatory undertone. Therefore, the prime setting that I want to underline is that this investigation is not to depreciate the informal architecture, in any kind of way. This is an investigation that aims to go deeper through what I hold in high regards – an informal language of architecture that generates another type of value than other languages of architecture do.  It’s an investigation through the tectonic system that defines the private, and the generated voids that holds space for the collected public life of the communities. How the culture, the life, the holistic beliefs, and the condition of the site is reflected on the tectonic structure and architectural expression.  My goal with this work is to not only give my analysis but also to generate an analysis with the viewer through expressing the different villages in a comparative language. Why? Because I want to share a fraction of the knowledge that the people of these villages gave to me.