The research approaches “informality” as physical action in the city-space, challenging the dualism which opposes it to the formal solutions. Often the discourse around informality remains stuck on a legal base.
In fact, the word informality lacks a universally accepted definition. As informality is context-based definition, it should be considered as a helpful classification variable in time and space.
For this reason, crossing the borders of formality means entering an undefined word of parallel design practices, not regulated by the same development logics. If, for a formal process, property establishment is the founding act for the following construction steps, ‘in-formal’ practices move from construction or spatial act.
The deconstruction of its definition allows to investigate ‘informality’ as a diffused practice also in Italian territories. If informality is often catalogued as a Global South practice, pictured, in the general imagery, with big city slums and poor informal settlement, the awareness of the terminology in-definition legitimates the study of similar phenomenon also in the Global North.
The normalization of informality allows for its study as a design practice, as a strategy whose normalizations is not negotiated ‘a priory’, before the construction act, but it is derived from a ‘continuous experience exchange’. In this terms, formality and informality are not dialectic opposites, but coexisting as complementary practices of spatial action.