Ghetto Architecture

Photographer and ethnographer Camilo Vergara explains why he has dedicated his attention to urban poverty. "I've always been interested in places that enhance my sense of instability and the precariousness of my own existence." His current project documents the reuse of ghetto architecture as storefront churches. The churches, proclaimed sacred spaces by ambitious pastors and re-branded with homespun additions and hand painted signs, often disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Source: Core77

Amos Klausner suggests that "these spaces become increasingly valuable because they are truly reflective of the people who live and work there". And according to Jane Holz Kay, these images "raise fundamental questions about the definition of architecture".

So much for escaping from the architecture ghetto then, eh Mr Koolhaas?

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Marcus Fairs, Rem Koolhaas (ICON, June 2004)

Jane Holtz Kay, Ghetto architecture: an exhibition of makeshift design (Christian Science Monitor, 7 October 1983)

Amos Klausner, Undesigning America (Core77, undated)

Margaret Rhodes, Voluntary Ghettos: A Radical Idea for Reclaiming Urban Space (Wired, 17 December 2014)