Allotment
Portion of rented or occupied land for community agriculture.
In Transition communities , squatting is often associated with land cultivation, occupying unused and expectant plots.
Appropriate Technology (AT)
AT is an ideological movement whose objective is autarchy through redundancy and DIY.
It was initially outlined by Ernst Schumacher in Small is Beautiful (1973) as intermediate technology. Its application occurs both in countries underdeveloped by market issues and in developed countries due to identity issues. Today, AT is often implemented using Open Source principles.
Autarchy
From the Greek autarkeia, where it meant self-sufficiency.
Autonomy
From the greek auto+nomus where it meant self law.
Immanuel Kant gave it the contemporary approach in its moral philosophy through the addition of rationality. Recently, it changed its meaning to distance traveled (by a car with a certain amount of fuel) or to duration (of a mobile phone battery).
Barracas
Typology of construction currently more widespread in global terms.
Its terminological diversity is referred in a UN-Habitat report: shanty town, favela, rookery, gecekondu, skid row, barrio, ghetto, bidonville, taudis, bandas de miseria, barrio marginal, morro, loteamento, musseque, tugurio, solares, mudun safi, karyan, medina achouaia, brarek, ishash, galoos, tanake, baladi, hrushebi, chalis, katras, zopadpattis, bustee, estero, looban, dagatan, umjondolo, watta, udukku, chereka bete.
Bidonville
French term to refer to the neighborhoods of barracas . The use of bidon in the construction of this term indicates the metallic materiality of these neighborhoods.
Biosphere
This planet should not be called Earth but Water.
There is not a single point on planet Earth where there is a lack of water, at least up to a few hundred meters deep and more than forty kilometers in altitude. This thin layer is called Biosphere and everything in it works on the basis of water (this condition is unique in the known universe).
Bricolage
Construction process with what is available.
In La pensée sauvage, the dialectic of Claude Lévi-Strauss puts itself between the bricoleur and the engineer. For him, magic precedes scientific reasoning but they are both autonomous forms of understanding of the real. The difference in procedure between the engineer and the bricoleur lies in the fact that the latter is simultaneously an engineer. For all intents and purposes, they are both magicians.
Casco
Building process used in squatting . It consists of removing as much of the interior components of the building and to maintain the structure and exterior walls, in order to later intervene the space. The intervention is then mixed with the implied dynamic maintenance of the space.
Contemporary vernacular materials
Those materials who are cheaper, easier to use and and of local origin in the contemporary environment. Plates, formwork, cardboards, exposed brick. They shape the materiality of the neighbourhoods of barracas, favelas, musseques, bidonvilles, slums and shantytowns, but their opportunities in architecture and society are vast.
Corpus loci
The spirit of the place being known through the body, instead of being known through the spirit (genius loci).
Degrowth
This term does not imply a regression in growth but a change in its objectives. The root of this posture is of ethical nature. We refer the concepts of two of their mentors:
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." _ Kenneth Boulding.
Serge Latouche coined the acronym "8 Rs" in his Petit traité de la décroissance sereine (2007) which refer to Revaloriser, Reconceptualiser, Restructurer, Redistribuer, Relocaliser, Réduire, Réutiliser, Recycler.
Demodiversity
Boaventura de Sousa Santos refers to demodiversity by opposing it to the hegemony of capitalist democracy which, according to Francis Fukuyama, would mean the end of History. The State in which the demodiversity situation takes place is denominated a hetero-political State .
Direct architecture
Physical involvement of the architect in the construction of the building.
Discursive autonomy
Speech separated from its author; it can be performed by hiding the signature or by the narrative plan adopted.
Examples can be found in Thomas Moore's Utopia, in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, or in Leon Battista Alberti's drawing under the painting Città Ideale by Piero della Francesca.
Discursive autonomy is, above all, a matter of survival.
Do it yourself (DIY)
The motivations behind this approach may originate in the market (more economic production, lack of availability of what is wanted) or by identity issues (ability to work materials, autarchy, uniqueness).
Ecology
Oikos, which in Greek meant "house with the included inhabitants", is at the root of the word Ecology. Thus Ecology is the science that studies our home as a whole.
Ecovillage
Community in a rural area with ecological principles.
Gaia
Gaia was a primordial Greek God who personified the planet Earth. It was recovered to modern ecology by James Lovelock in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979).
Hacker
The one who knows how to enter. Implicitly, the one who knows how to prevent others from entering.
Heteropolitical State
The State which includes within its geographical area other intra-States (endotopias).
These intra-States may or may not have territorial continuity. Their links with geographic areas that are within the same or other heteropolitical States are made in the domain of ideas and are communicated by the (increasingly virtual) media. The intra-States resort to the redundancy produced by the uteri-States, in particular their territory (mainly their interior areas, be they rural or urban), their infrastructures (roads, schools, health services) and their knowledge. They may also partially resort to the food and energy industry circuit, but these are two of the main points where they seek to assert their autarchy .
Within their geographical limits, they maintain the territory (respecting water cycles and biodiversity in rural areas; preserving the buildings in urban areas). They never claim the reason of keeping the economy moving to build new structures or infrastructures; this is done only by strict and confirmed necessity. As boundary paradigms they can define their own monetary systems and habits. Habits may be implicit in the group or they may even be defined in own Constitutions (as in the case of Transition Towns) .
Normally, the choice of leaderships and common matters is not made by universal suffrage nor by suffrage tout court, but by debating ideas until consensus or separation. These processes can only be implemented in communities where the number of individuals allows the hearing of the voice while looking in the eyes.
They may include pedagogical structures (usually with Montessorian roots), health systems (usually with the inclusion of various non-conventional medicine practices) or scientific research centers (usually linked to sociology, agriculture or energy production). They never have forces of order. Social solidarity and its affective dimension are the connecting bounds of all these elements.
These phenomena are included in the legacy of the ever-existing forms of self-organization, but which now have an Historical inscription .
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Inscription
Here, inscription is understood in its literal and original sense of writing (from the Latin in+scriptio).
José Gil's understanding of this term is extended to public action, in the sense that the individual inscribes and subscribes when he reacts and manifests himself, even if this is not done by writing.
The Internet, rather than enabling global communication, provided the platforms for parallel inscriptions.
Manifesto
From the Latin manifestum, where it meant palpable, clear, simple, evident, manifest.
Meta-materials
First group of the contemporary vernacular materials .
Those materials that are used in the building of the architectural work but, after it is accomplished, abandon it. They include scaffoldings, formwork, debris containers, portable toilets and the entire construction site.
Musseque
In Kimbundu it meant "red sand". Later, it happened to refer to a group of huts made of wood, mud and straw in the Angola countryside. Recently it includes the suburban districts of Luanda and its construction resorts to contemporary vernacular materials .
Open Source
The Open Source approach, despite being born of open source software, was quickly translated by society as a source of solutions; in general electronics (from digital content to robotics), health and science (from pharmaceuticals to solar panel components), this way of sharing knowledge was adopted, without which the benefits would lie in the hands of a few large companies. The Social Sciences and all theoretical research do it through blogs. But so does Art when it comes to appropriation.
Participative architecture
Involvement of the population in the planning, construction and subsequent management of the building.
Periurbanity
On the outskirts of urbanity. However, it does not refer to a strictly geographical space since, unlike suburbanity, it is defined by internal, virtual and cultural relations. Particularly the virtual relations, deterritorialize these spaces.
Permaculture
Holistic operating system. From gardens to shelters, from global economic systems to breathing exercises, it is constantly open to new information.
Permaculture was born associated with the rural and in opposition to the city, although it can be applied in the gardens of the urban allotments and in the morals of conduct of any individual.
Perpetuum mobile
Fascination of inventors since antiquity, it is the equipment that materializes the autarchy . It refers to a system to which, after an initial force is applied, it never ceases to move. However ingenious, these machines always stoped because of friction. Later, even with sophisticated friction-elimination systems, they always had to face one of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
They are not considered scientific experiments because they can not be tested: it would take an eternity.
petit tour
Review of the great narrative in Architecture through the reformulation of the visit. In place of the nineteenth century Grand Tour, we find today more appropriate this positioning that marks the scale of the small, the everyday and the common.
Instead of the Colosseum and of the Parthenon it would lend a visit to ecovillages and squats .
Redundancy
A conscious product of the capitalist machine, which expresses itself in knowledge, infrastructures, artifacts and territory.
Rhizome
Originally, rhizome is a term of botany and refers to the stem of certain plants.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari appropriated this term for the scope of philosophy in 1980, starting from Mille Plateaux, as an analogy for their epistemology.
The rhizome is characterized by heterogeneity, connectivity and non-hierarchy. It is an open system, in the sense that it does not seek a state but a process. It is not ecumenical in the sense that it does not represent a whole but a point of view.
Serendipity
In 1754, Horace Wallpole coined the term serendipity in the translation of The Three Princes of Serendip. This Persian tale dealt with the misadventures of three Princes "who were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". It is not a mere chance because it implies wit.
Science is replete with examples of this process; the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Flemming is a paradigmatic case.
Serendip was the island that later was called Ceylon and now is known by Sri Lanka.
Squat
Building or piece of land being subject to temporary occupation.
Terrain vague
Concept developed in 1995 by Ignasi de Solà-Morales.
Expectant place. Form of absence in the contemporary city that awakens the will to appropriation.
Transition
Generating phenomenon of communities eminently associated with the city, although it almost always requires a piece of land to be implemented. Their posture is autonomous and autarchic . Their moral autonomy comes from an ecological awareness. As moralists they have codes of conduct. Upstream, the 7 Principles (moral code) and the 12 Ingredients (steps of a methodology). In addition to these codes, each group has their own Constitution.
Upcycling
Creative reuse of an object, decontextualizing its origin and recontextualizing its purpose.
Urban metabolism
This is a process and not a state.
In Karl Marx it referred to social flows. In Patrick Geddes it mentioned productive flows. In japanese Metabolist architects it literally referred to the city as a living body.
In energy terms, it refers to the management of the I/O of a city in wich it is considered, on the one hand, the efficiency of equipment and systems and, on the other, the processes and habits of consumption.
Utopia
From the Greek u+topos where it means non-place.
This term was coined by Thomas More in his homonym book of 1516. By his original reference to an ideal community it continued to be adopted with that meaning.
However, it is in the confrontation between its idealization and its construction, with their demeaning or hopeful imprints, that lies its tone.
Vernacular
Those materials and building techniques that use the most available, inexpensive and intuitive. Stone, wood, clays.
But nowadays, these characteristics are found preferentially in surplus and redundancy and its modus operandi can be found on YouTube. This is the contemporary vernacular .
The etymology and semantic of vernacular began in the Etruscan verna, where it meant "born slave". In Latin, the expression vernacula vocabula had the meaning of "native language" with pejorative denotation.
However, it is in the confrontation between its idealization and its construction, with their demeaning or hopeful imprints, that lies its tone.
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