Humanized Urban Morphologies

Generative Solutions: Adaptation and Flexibilization in Housing as a Qualified Social Response.

Housing for all is back on the international agenda. The economic crisis forces researchers and architects to rethink the concept of living and adopt more flexible housing design strategies as an alternative to typologies that impose rules of coexistence and do not reflect the social dynamics of a community. The introduction of rules-based housing design strategies allows a reflection on the potential of digital tools to develop spatial and formal parameters based on analysis of flexible housing models to low-income populations.

This research is focused on the development of a generative computer-aided planning support system for cities and housing to low-income populations, using a descriptive method as the Shape Grammars. The goal is to develop a system that could reveal the cultural, social and spatial dynamics involved in the genesis of informal settlements and use it to generate contemporary humanized urban morphologies. The shape grammar implementation could generate automatically designs according to different types of users: urban planners, architect and local end users.

Ana Catarina Gomes Costa