Abstract

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Symmetry: Culture and Science
Volume 32, Number 3, pages 391-404 (2021)
https://doi.org/10.26830/symmetry_2021_3_391

FILLING THE GAP: NON-OBVIOUS SYMMETRIES BINDING SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE AND CO-DESIGN

Deborah C. Lefosse^*

^* Departement of Archtecture and Design, Sapienza University of Rome, 359 Via Flaminia, Rome 00196, Italy.
E-mail: deborah.lefosse@uniroma1.it

Abstract: Architecture and urban design draw upon symmetry to combine statics and aesthetics as well as equality and inequality. Symmetry has affected plans, structures and façades in every time. Nowadays, our increasing need for social exchange made façades a vehicle of individual messages and collective memories, enabling us to better read the city as an anthropogenic phenomenon. Particularly, they are crucial instruments in bottom-up actions of social architecture since non-expert users favour symmetric patterns to control the building practice. Therefore, is there a nexus among architecture, co-design, and symmetry? This brief paper aims to bridge this gap by investigating the mutual relation between spatial and societal structure. It focuses on not-so-obvious symmetries as strategic tools in setting up spaces to live. Through the Elemental Project by Alejandro Aravena, the studio explores social architecture as a co-design process and a practical solution to be shared against the global affordable housing challenge. Even heterogeneous façades may show how symmetry guides constructive thinking in poor living conditions. While the architect is limited in ability to establish a basic frame that has endless possibilities, society makes spatial self-determinations through filling out this frame with a sense of self and identity.

Keywords: façades, symmetry, social architecture, incremental housing, participatory design.

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