Patricia Parinejad, Refavela. Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Courtesy: Patricia Parinejad. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

Refavela
Favelas, named after the Brazilian creeping plant ‘favela’, have existed in Brazil since the 19th century. Wretched areas of closely packed dwellings sprung up in cities and on the outskirts of cities and continued to spread rampantly, growing completely out of control. Today, a billion people across the world live in slums.
By 2030 this number will have doubled.
My current project explores the remarkable reality of informal settlements and the interlacing structures of the spontaneous architecture of Rio’s favelas. The tapestry of buildings in such unexpected patterns and the creative energy exuding from the wildly interwoven structures is fascinating. Reminiscent of a honeycomb or a natural organism, they seem to crawl up the hills and etch their way into the surrounding jungle. An undulating and constantly growing labyrinth inexorably overflowing into the Mata Atlântica; an intricate maze built from trash and waste, the living environment for hundreds of thousands of people in search of a descent living space in which chaos and order seem to coexist. Some communities are being cleared as part of an urban clean-up campaign. And thus part of the country’s valuable architectural history is being destroyed.
I spent months documenting countless structures, different surfaces, the materials that had been used, and their components and elements such as scaffoldings, walls, doors, windows, stairs, roofs, and so on. The result is a massive compendium that is at least as unusual and surprising as the structures I photographed.
It is striking how much this architecture is a reflection of Brazil itself, and particularly so of Rio, a city full of surprising discoveries and delights. Compared with conventional images of parts of buildings, I found an abundance of unique solutions, shimmering colours, diverse shapes, and unusual ways of using materials. This spontaneously created architecture has a thousand different faces. It always reveals something new, and this inventiveness is typical for Rio’s dynamic identity. Each dwelling has its own look and unique singularity.
Portraits of individual residents emphasize the human aspect of this entirely distinct way of living and show sensitive and passionate faces full of character that grew up in these rough but vibrant living conditions.
Beauty is often where it is least expected.
In this documentary I have tried to recover and preserve the poetic identity of this appealing architecture and return some dignity to a flayed reality.
The dynamics of informal settlements show that creativity is among the key elements needed to create a decent living environment. Slum architecture could offer future solutions and become a role model for urban design and development, especially with the backdrop of the current refugee crisis where more and more dwellings are needed.
The present informal architectural catalogue is also a tribute to the variance of craftsmanship, artistic vivacity, and architectural potency of the neglected and, to some extent, despised favela architecture.
And perhaps one day we will realize that the feared slums do in fact contain the urban DNA of the future.