INTRODUCTION

 

The following essay explores changes in the relationship of urban formality and informality as modes of placemaking in Europe. It is the objective of this work to make the relativity of formal frameworks applied to architecture in modern-day urban contexts visible by critically highlighting the development of the relationship between formal and informal practices on the continent over time. When I indicate that this text is going to focus on the European, I do so, because it is the architecture on this continent, which captured my attention the longest. Although travels to different parts of the world inspired this work, European building history serves as a well-preserved example for the analysis of historically grown cities. In order to draw conclusions based on historical derivations, the impact of the formalisation process will be illustrated briefly by a few examples of urban situations encountered in cities in Austria.

 

I would like to start this investigation into the ebbs and flows of urban (in)formality on the European continent by examining the term informality. Despite the fact that contemporary research locates informally built environments in the Non-West [1], its etymological origin can be traced back to Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth century [2]. It is this development, which deserves greater attention:

 

In their text “Knowing Urban Informalities“ Marx and Kelling state that the informal as a concept first and foremost exists through its pairing and contrasting with the formal, thus resulting in an indivisible binary of both terms. [3] In other words, only the informal renders the formal visible - and vice versa. Without the establishment of a specific form the question of something being different to what is perceived as “according to [this] established form“ [4,5] will not arise. Interestingly, the initial demarcation of buildings as informal originated in Europe during a time, when different types of religious and secular leaders regained strength after the demise of the Roman Empire and the end of the Middle Ages. [6,7] This resulted in great urban developments driven by a powerful elite during the seventeenth century. In other words, opposed to the normality of everyday-building practices, the otherness and greatness of the formal was suddenly discovered and named during the periods of Baroque and Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that at the same time natural science and with it the wider idea of a scientifically structured world gained popularity. [8]

 

While contemporary examples of urban informality as an opposition to planned urbanity in European countries have become scarce [9], Ananya Roy nevertheless aims at locating the discussion within a wider context, when she argues that urban informality cannot simply be equated with poor infrastructure and housing. Instead, by stating that “{…} urban informality is not the ecology of the mega-slum; rather, it is a mode of the production of space […]“ [10] she reasons for a more nuanced perception of spaces built according to - or against prevailing formal logic. 

 

In the following chapters I would like to build on this proposition in order to investigate informality as a mode of production of space on two levels: First, by scanning chronologically through historical époques, in which diverse approaches towards the informally built were practised. Secondly, by presenting historically grown urban situations located in modern-day Austrian cities, the volatility of a formal status will be illustrated. It is the aim of these observations to underline a somewhat notional hypothesis: That from a distant stance - be it distanced in terms of time or in terms of geographic space - the perception of the built form as within the rules of formal logic necessarily has to be subjective. And that therefore the question attached always needs to be where and when the demarcation is made. 

 

A TIME-DEPENDENT DERIVATION

 

As a start I would like to remind the reader of unique urban situations encountered in historic centres of the oldest cities in Europe. Let me paint a picture of arm-long alleys drowning all sun light on a hot summer day, of polygonal plazas faced by low buildings of infinite age, or arcades located alongside cobbled streets, providing shelter during periods of heavy rain. All these situations encountered in historically grown cities on the European continent were adapted and changed continuously throughout past centuries. As part of a city organism they will, in fact, always be in the process of transformation. In that sense, change can be regarded as one of the key qualities of functioning urbanity. But, let us not jump to conclusions. Instead, let history speak for itself, starting with two-thousand-year old approaches to the production and organisation of built space.

 

THE PLANNED AND THE UNPLANNED

Roman forts and extramural settlements

 

One of the remnants for city planning during Antiquity is the Roman fort, or castrum. As part of Roman expansion politics during the first centuries A.D. this structurally robust typology spread not only throughout Italy, but was also exported much further north, to the modern-day territories of Austria, Germany, France, Spain or Great Britain, for example. Though the castrum represents a highly organised, enclosed space where neither buildings nor streets were left to chance, its surrounding area was usually occupied by a civilian settlement, called cannabae [11] or vicus [12].

 

The cannabae was “a civilian settlement, urban area, or village which developed near a military establishment, often to provide services for it.“[13] As an inhabited space it was designated with the lowest legal status of any developed area in the Roman empire. [14,15] Nevertheless, these settlements were extensive in their dimension as well as vital for the functioning of the fort. Around the Roman fort of Housesteads in Britain, for example, a settlement encompassing approximately five-hundred inhabitants covered the area south of the military base. [16] In his text about Roman vici Karl Strobl points out that “these settlements [the cannabae] already had city-like character during the first century A.D..“ [17]

 

Andrew Birley, the director of excavations for the Vindolandia Trust in Great Britain, paints a similar image when he writes: “This [extramural settlement] covered an area of at least three times the size of the fort, yet it was still a cramped and crowded space with shops, streets, houses, wells, water-tanks, temples, store-buildings, a bath house, workshops and a tavern all present.“ [18]

 

As can be noticed in the examples above, one of the most prototypical forms of Roman city foundation, the military base, brings together the planned and the unplanned built environment in one inseparable urban entity. [19] It appears that in the Roman understanding both ways of inhabiting space were regarded as formal, since the planned as well as the unplanned fulfilled a vital part within the wider concept of a functioning military settlement. Roman spacial politics therefore did not equal planned with formal and unplanned with informal. The contrast between the once evenly developed area inside the fort and the evolved settlement outside its walls are still visible today in the layout of cities developing out of Roman military forts.

 

A NEGOTIATION OF SPACE 

New urban centres during the High Middle Ages

 

After the decline of the Roman Empire and the consequential disappearance of urban development, inhabitants of former Roman provinces resorted to more simple forms of organisation of their living environment. At this, the farmhouse regained its prevalent status as a closed legal entity. According to Kluger-Pinsler, “the Early Medieval farmstead consists of a fenced-in court square with a byre-dwelling as well as various smaller buildings. The arrangement of these buildings seems not to have followed any rules but particular needs; one only considered not to place auxiliary buildings in too close proximity to the main house.“ [20] As shown by this archaeological analysis, civilisation in Europe at the turn of the first millennium A.D. had withdrawn from more complex, planned ventures, such as the Roman castrum. Instead, an informal approach prioritising immediate needs and the survival of its inhabitants mirrors in the layout of built environments encountered in Europe at that time. 

 

Mainland Europe soon saw urban development arise in formerly loosely populated areas with the progress of the Middle Ages. In the city of Cologne, for example, the walled farm-house described above served as the typical building form possessed by free landowners at the time. Archaeological reconstructions suggest that these large, legal properties were successively divided into smaller plots during the twelfth and thirteenth century. [21]

 

One indication for the newly arising formal organisation in the context of denser living units can also be found in England during the 12th and 13th century. In “The Making of the English Landscape“, Hoskins reflects on a landlord’s common practice of chartering land in emerging towns during the High Middle Ages as follows: 

 

“[…] most landlords… made no attempt to lay out their new towns. They gave them charters, sometimes supplied building materials, offered low rents and other inducements, but they were content to let the town grow—if it were to grow—as it liked within the prescribed area. And when that area was satisfactorily filled, they were prepared to extend the boundaries of the borough by granting more land for building.“ [22]

 

As a consequence of increasing - though rather loose - placemaking policies practised at the time, conflicts, especially border disagreements between house owners arose in denser populated areas. Reacting to these conflicts, the prevailing elite invented rules with the aim of settling all present disputes. One astonishing example for these early legislations can be found in the London Assizes of 1189 and 1212. It reads as follows: 

 

“When two neighbours shall have agreed to build between themselves a wall of stone, each shall give a foot and a half of land, and so they shall construct, at their joint cost, a stone wall three feet thick and sixteen feet in height. And, if they agree, they shall make a gutter between them, to carry off the water from their houses, as they may deem most convenient.“ [23]

 

This comprehensive building law tailored specifically for one area of conflict arising within neighbourhoods of row houses surprises. The quote gives universal proof that the idea of form according to rule already existed eight-hundred years ago in a format much resembling contemporary rules for placemaking. The idea of formality therefore proceeds its etymological definition by almost three-hundred years. Similarly to the relationship of planned and unplanned urbanity during the Roman period, both states continue to exist side by side in the Medieval city. At the same time, an early distinction can be observed: While the outer shell of buildings started to be subject to formal rules, its interior remained in a state of unnoticed informality. 

 

At the end of the High Middle Ages, this growing sense for a formal organisation of the space outside got more complex. The way cities were built at the end of the thirteenth century entirely depended on the system of order implemented by few holders of power. [24] Here, the High Middle Ages once again clearly illustrate the dangerous balance between rule and rule-making: Those in power determined what was acceptable in terms of building practices [25] and thus regarded as formal, laying dissimilar ground stones for almost all historically grown cities in Europe.

 

During the Middle Ages the organisation of space had been an issue of the city as an urban entity. Therefore, the subsequent development set into motion through Renaissance architectural theory was remarkable: Around 1450 scattered formal ideas about the organisation of cities became more and more available to a broader public, gradually initiating a new era of architectural understanding in urban centres from Italy to France, Germany and England from 1550 onwards. [28] For the first time since antiquity, authorities throughout Europe started to act on a similar set of formal rules, united in their idea of an aesthetic organisation of space.

 

DIRT AND ORDER

Shifting rules in growing industrial cities

 

The prevalence of specific architectural styles throughout Europe during the Renaissance can be regarded as a phenomenon limited to city states and should thus not be confused with an overall formal organisation, such as national building law. The idea of spacial organisation according to national tradition only started to gain strength in Europe after considerable social and economic change had taken place in the course of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution. In his lecture series about building history at the TU Dresden, Hans-Georg Lippert summarises the development as follows: 

 

“From 1815 onwards the national realignment of Europe through the Kongress of Vienna, strengthened from 1850 onwards through industrialisation [and an] increasing “embourgeoisement“ of society, [as well as] the progression of industrialisation during the nineteenth century and with it the emergence of the middle class as well as the formation and solidification of European nation states [took place].“ [29]

 

Lippert continues to argue that in the course of this process, the interest of society in natural and engineering sciences increased, thus leading to a more systematic exploration and documentation of the historically built environment. At the same time, with the progress of globalisation, strong counter-reactions from the middle class to rapidly developing cities can be observed. At this, the search for typical national architectural styles and their preservation went hand in hand with the fear of loss of identity during a century of modernisation and industrialisation. [30]

 

In this sense, the formal order during the nineteenth century was closely linked to the idea of national identity. At the same time, strong forms of informality emerged on the European continent. The term slum, for example, was invented in England during the nineteenth century in order to describe precarious living conditions of the working class in industrial centres. [31] The slum per definition delineated a “dirty back alley of a city, or street of poor or low people.“ [32]

 

As a theoretical concept, the slum was later exported to European colonies around the globe and applied to numerous cultural contexts in many different ways. However, the discussion about the role of colonialism in the export of ideas about informally built environments, such as the slum, is too wide a subject to be treated in this essay. For the purpose of the present investigation about the development of the formal and informal in Europe, it should simply be noted that issues of poverty, low rank and dirt as a definition of informal building practices can be regarded as a relatively new phenomenon. 

 

It is safe to assume that prior to the industrial revolution, the perception of built forms as informal or formal was mainly concerned with aesthetic ideas. While, for example, grand formal Renaissance and Baroque buildings clearly existed in contrast to normal, informal types of construction, both were accepted as built environments at the same time - each with their specific, socially accepted raison d’être within. With industrial change and the strengthening of a burgeois formal logic, however, this balance shifted. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the informally built urban environment began to be perceived as a counter-concept to safety, order and cleanliness. 

 

FROM SCATTERED RULES TO UNIVERSAL REGULATIONS

Building law and the nation state before the Second World War

 

At the turn of the nineteenth century, a series of shortcomings accompanying the rapid growth of urban centres throughout the continent rendered a constant adjustment and refinement of rules for building in the crowded spaces a necessity. Most European monarchs and leaders thus developed sets of rules in order to advert danger to growing cities within their territory.

 

Various tendencies in the reactions of European countries to problems emerging from the growth of their cities were observable on the continent until the Second World War. In Prussia [33], for example, city expansions caused by extreme demographic growth were met with a law about the “layout of roads and squares in cities and rural towns“ in 1875. [34] With this law, the idea for universal building rules encompassing the entire country of Prussia, rather than only parts of it, emerged. This subsequently lead to a series of more general regulations, such as the “law for housing“ established in 1918, which included aesthetic criteria for construction as well. [35]

 

A bit further east on the European continent, the monarchic administration of Austria’s capital city Vienna passed its first building code in 1829 with the following introduction: “Through consideration of public safety, regularity and proportion of buildings of the capital city, it was decided by the administration to subject private building practices within the boundaries of Vienna to specific legal restrictions.“ [36] The document was set up not only to unify dispersed building regulations, but also to establish a certain regularity and proportion in building practices at the time. As can be perceived, a concern for the socially safe city was combined with aesthetic ideas, thus further restricting the scope of built practices which acted against a progressing idea of formal urban order.

 

As a parallel to the development in German speaking countries, rules for the alignment of houses facing streets as the initial subject for formalised building practices can be found in France before nineteen-hundred. [37] Here as well, regulations gradually grew more complex, from a relative freedom to build within an aligned space to the right to construct on property under fulfillment of specific obligations. At the same time, cities in Spain faced precarious spacial and sanitary situations, which were met with a series of regulations by the countries monarchy, as listed by Pedro Bidagor Lasarte [38] in his essay about the historical circumstances leading to the genesis of a modern urban order in Spain: “[…] regulations applied were the law for extension and enlargement passed in 1892, as well as for rehabilitation and improvement of interior spaces in 1895 […]“. [39]

 

A GOLDEN AGE OF FORMALITY

Reconstruction and modernisation after the Second World War

 

The formation of a formal order expressed by building regulations experienced a drastic recess in the course of the First and Second World War, when historically grown cities throughout Europe suffered irretrievable damage to their building stock. In dealing with different levels of destruction, reconstruction became the sole focus for European countries during the nineteen-fifties and sixties. As Europe lay in ashes, it seemed indispensable to tie in with the formal order groomed so carefully before the wars. Thus, exceptional efforts were made in the building sector in order to reinstate normality after 1945. The newly founded Federal Republic of Germany, for example, issued so-called “Trümmergesetze“ [40], in order to facilitate reconstruction works. Successively, in 1960, Germany issued its first nationwide urban planning legislation, which combined hitherto fragmented regulations in one modern legislative text. [41]

 

At the same time, the concept of a building permit [42] was introduced for the first time by French state law with the “Loi sur urbanisme“ [43] in the nineteen-forties. Together with the “Code de l’urbanisme et de l’habitation“ [44] issued in 1954, a basis for modern-day building law was thus created during the middle of the twentieth century - a basis which legislation in France continued to build on until today. [45]

 

In Spain, likewise, a phase of preparation for the introduction of an urban building law was on its way. In preparing for it, Spain looked to solutions applied by other European countries since the World War for initial orientation, as described by Bidagor: “Provisions examined with great determination were the Italian law for urbanism from August 1942, the French law for urbanism from the 15th of June 1943, the law for plans for order of cities in Belgium issued on October 23rd ,1946, the English law for urban and rural planning from July 6th, 1947, the Swiss law for urbanism from the 30th of June 1947 and the Polish law for national territorial planning issued on January 3rd in 1945.“ [46] Building on these examples, Spain initiated its first “Ley de Suelo“ [47] in 1956. [48,49] With this step, Spanish placemaking-policies had advanced towards an increasingly corrective mode of urban organisation as well. 

 

This tendency for a regulation of the built form, heretofore unprecedented on the European continent, increased from the nineteen-sixties onwards, almost entirely replacing all practices performed against the postulated formal order henceforth. In order to illustrate the development of legal frameworks developed in Europe during past decades, I would like to provide an insight into the progress of building law in my home country Austria, with a focus on its historically grown capital city Vienna.

 

Building practices in Vienna are based on regulations initiated by the city during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. A considerable law for construction followed the first Viennese building code [52] in 1930, henceforth serving as the basis for following building codes. Its contemporary version consists of 140 paragraphs and is supplemented by a number of laws issued by the city of Vienna between 1955 and 2008. [53] In 2007, this set of formal rules was complemented by a series of six comprehensive directives on roughly 400 pages issued by the state of Austria, [54] thus achieving a nation-wide regulation of construction-practices in all nine Austrian federal provinces for the first time in history. [55] Complimentary to building laws issued by the Austrian state as well as individual regulations passed by its federal provinces, the so-called ÖNORM [56], a set of construction rules covering every conceivable craft encountered at a construction site, has gradually been developed since 1920. [57] One century after its invention, the ÖNORM encompasses approximately 350 regulations [58], which are published and regularly updated by the institute Austrian Standards International. Since these rules are regarded as state of the art technology, they need to be taken into consideration by every person who wishes to formally construct a building in Austria. 

 

CONCLUSION

 

As presented in the chapters above, the equilibrium between formal and informal urban environments has been in constant transformation during the past two thousand years. The delicate nature of the relationship of these substantially contrary modes of thinking, planning and practising lies at the heart of European urbanity since its beginning. Despite clearly observable tendencies towards a complete formalisation, the regulated and the unregulated built form have always complemented each other in the European city.

 

As illustrated in this essay, formality as a spacial concept underwent a series of drastic changes during past centuries, ranging from inexistence to an absolute definition of the built environment. In the Roman understanding, unregulated auxiliary settlements were considered as formal as the planned fort they were attached to. While cities during the High Middle Ages saw a formalisation of urban spaces according to bishops’ or secular leaders’ aesthetic taste, the industrial revolution brought significant demographic change and need-orientated rules with it. Thus, the relationship between formality and informality had transformed significantly, from a pragmatic approach during Roman times, to form built according to taste and finally according to necessity. From the eighteenth century onwards, the unplanned, unregulated form experienced critical cuts: Building regulations were applied extensively as a means to formalise cities according to prevailing aesthetic ideas while argumentatively safety and hygiene dominated the process. After the shock the Second World War brought to urban environments throughout Europe, the reconstruction of cities and nation states accelerated the development of an order “according to rule“ in a hitherto unprecedented way. 

 

Considering the above, the question arises whereto current place-making policies are heading and how tendencies towards an exclusive, all-encompassing formality are going to find expression in future cities. We should be aware of the fact that in the modern-day European understanding of formal placemaking, almost none of the manifold, well-beloved built situations encountered in historically grown city-centers would stand a chance to building regulations established at the moment. All the same, real spacial value can be discovered in the transformation process of these situations. Hence, a continuous negotiation of the balance between formal and informal practices will be essential for contemporary, as well as future cities on the European continent.