Alessandro Petti: Indeed. A parallel reflection relates to one of the reasons why so much attention is suddenly poured upon informal settlements. Global interest in these expanding urban areas has grown as they themselves expand and become central to the economies and legality of the “formal city”. The act of normalizing the so-called “informal settlements” acquires significance in the midst of an economic crisis: governments need capital and more citizens who can pay taxes. Therefore, some questions, which we would like to pose, emerge. We acknowledge that there are two alternatives: one of them is to maintain the level of poverty in informal settlements or refugee camps; the other one is to intervene and normalize them. Third options create political platforms that are able to articulate different political and social relationships. Human needs, such as the provision of water and electricity for example, are met by the camp as a whole, and not by individual households. In these new articulations, the idea of the common predominates over dichotomies such as private-public, even in the sense and definition of ownership. We have reached a moment in which it is imperative to comprehend the DNA that is emerging from this situation. Grappling with its molecular structure forces us to think about the city in different ways. The city itself is in crisis. Camps becomes the place where we can be inspired to reconstitute a political community, a place where citizens share certain kinds of resources, rather than a privatized field. Another example that contributes to illustrate this point is the cultural center that was built within the Dheisheh refugee camp in 1992 on a site that had been first used by British colonial institutions, then by the Jordanian government, and ultimately by the Palestinian Authority. The community took over the place, and instead of retrofitting it for the same purpose, they transformed it into a cultural center, with sports facilities, a hall for weddings and a library –what the community truly needed. No one perceived this project as embedded in a process of normalization. Quite the opposite: the cultural center did not result from humanitarian help and it improved their lives without normalizing their camp. As architects, we try to build upon these experiences, to understand how one can build something that is in constant tension between two sites, an Architecture of exile.

AMD: You work in the threshold between art, architecture and politics. How do you perceive your role as an architect, considering you work in an interstice that refuses inhabitation.

AP: We work at the juncture of many disciplines, indeed, but it is important to clarify that we discovered that we somehow wanted to function as an architectural studio and consciously chose architectural projects as our guiding methodologies. We believe in collective intelligence more strongly than in the idea of artistic genius or individual copyright. Despite the colonial context, we enjoy our daily life with greater intensity if we are working and sharing with others. That sensibility towards social creation is more akin to the practice of architecture. Another aspect that we wanted to preserve from an architectural studio was the choice to produce interventions that were related to space and material interventions. At the same time, we purposefully take a distance from the normal practice of a professional architectural office. We refuse to search or wait for clients. In that sense, we autonomously decide, more like artists perhaps, which projects we want to embark upon. This allows us to practice architecture in a freer way, not trapped within the constraints of the profession. It is the artistic component of our work that makes it possible. For some, our work seems politically controversial and often perceived naïve and utopian by UN agencies and members of other organizations. But we don`t see our practice in this way. We see our practice grounded in reality and believe that our propositions are more realistic insofar as they do not accept the limit impose by the corrupted political reality. The aim to open up political imagination.