by Ng Chen Yin 1001540026
Through the idea of “Non-Plan”, Cedric Price suggested the un-suggestible – total dissolution of the planning system. The idea itself suggests and encourages the unevenness of development and exploitation of peculiarities. Price saw the city not as a stable nor cohesive structure, but instead as in unstable series of systems, which are continuously transforming, reorganizing and rearranging itself, by natural or man expansion and retraction. The idea circulates around the general public, the public is the one who could determine and shape their surroundings.
The influential idea of Non-Plan is very much associated with self-organizing community, it calls for control to be handed back to the citizens to allow self-organized processes to occur. One example of a self-organizing community are the favelas. Housing crisis forces the poor to erect shanty towns out of the urban areas. Despite they managed to build their very own house, they even participated in the installation of services such as water, sewage and electricity. Although this shows that the notion of control-free development actually works, the implementation is still being questioned as it went against the established order.
In my opinion, bringing the community into the process of architecture is a good idea in terms of giving the society an opportunity to establish new order related to the valid social and economic life-span. Through enabling uneven development, naturally the activities and forms will occur in places and at best suited times. The inhabitants are building according to their needs, as they are the ones who know what are the problems they facing, while the ‘professionals’ who were designing communities spaces should think before they set rules on how people should live, because everyone had their own preferences and ideas.
To better resolve problems that come with it such as exploitation, we can explore ways of involving people in the design of their environment by the practice of social housing. 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Ar. Alejandro Aravena established a project named Elemental, a controversial where half a house builds a whole community. This project developed an idea surrounding the concept that people can build for themselves. While Elemental provided the residents with just enough to meet the legal requirements for low-income housing, the residents are allowed to expand the rest. The vision of the project is more or less the same with the notion of Non-Plan: enabling the particularization of habitat to occur in places naturally, resulting the residents will end up with a much more pleasant house than what they could have built completely on their own or received from ordinary state funding.
Of course, any experiment of this sort will have a tendency to endure. Globally, the fastest growing cities right now are not skyscraper cities, they are self-made cities in one form or another, by the world’s biggest design team. In this 21st century where technology are getting more and more advanced, the access to open sources make everyone a designer and builder. Maybe the idea of Non-Plan is relevant now than ever?
References:
https://www.archdaily.com/797779/half-a-house-builds-a-whole-community-elementals-controversial-social-housing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlt6kaNjoeI&t=662s
https://architecturesofspatialjustice.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/w08_barker_thinking_the_unthinkable.pdf