Artigos

This study constitutes the first step of a broader PhD project, which aims to build a bridge between the architectural and the juridical examination of the typicality of low-income settlements within the city of Rio de Janeiro, the favelas. The purpose is to define a rule-based typological analysis to ease the process of evaluating the typicality of favelas and the possible, desirable form of its regularisation. This objective strives to equip all the actors involved in the debate with an analytical device able to represent the socially acknowledged, yet unofficial, rules that have been moulding favelas so far. By this means, this study tests shape grammar as a methodology for approaching this interdisciplinary issue. A shape grammar for a first case study, Parque Royal favela, located in the Governor Island, is presented. As preliminary results of the research, the paper encompasses the three early stages of construction of the case study: invasion, expansion and consolidation.