Informality through Sustainability explores the phenomenon of informality within urban settlements and aims to unravel the subtle links between informal settlements and sustainability. Penetrating its global profile and considering urban informality through an understanding of local implications, the authors collectively reveal specific correlations between sites and their local inhabitants. The book opposes simplistic calls to legalise informal settlements or to view them as 'problems' to be solved. It comes at a time when common notions of 'informality' are being increasingly challenged. In 25 chapters, the book presents contributions from well-known scholars and practitioners whose theoretical or practical work addresses informality and sustainability at various levels, from city planning and urban design to public space and architectural education. Whilst previous studies on informal settlements have mainly focused on cases in developing countries, approaching the topic through social, cultural and material dimensions, the book explores the concept across a range of contexts, including former Communist countries and those in the so-called Global North. Contributions also explore understandings of informality at various scalar levels - region, precinct, neighbourhood and individual building. Thus, this work helps reposition informality as a relational concept at various scales of urbanisation. This book will be of great benefit to planners, architects, researchers and policymakers interested in the interplay between informality and sustainability.

Volume #32 of ""The IT Revolution in Architecture,"" this book dedicated to Francois Roche and his group, raises questions of great importance for the development of architecture. What role can new material technologies have in a process in which the same materials have incorporated growing shares of active behaviors? For example, will they be self-cleaning, un-polluting, self-changing? To what extent will the various components of the buildings be increasingly "interconnected" and able to simulate processes typical of living systems, such as transpiration, dilation, growth, life, and death? Can we begin to speak of living "systems" in architecture? Antonino Di Raimo, PhD works with issues relating to IT and cognition, ecology, and the body. He serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Polis University, Tirana. Founder and editor of the book series before with Birkhauser and Testo&Immagine and now with Edilstampa, is Antonino Saggio. www.arc1.Uniroma1.it/Saggio/IT/"

Volume n. 38 della collana "The IT Revolution in Architecture" il libro su Francois Roche offre un ritratto di sicuro interesse critico di un protagonista della scena digitale internazionale e apre questioni rilevanti. Che ruolo possono avere i nuovi materiali che hanno incorporate nella propria composizione delle quote crescenti di comportamenti attivi? In che misura le diverse componenti degli edifici saranno sempre piu "interconnesse" e possono assimilare processi di traspirazione, dilatazione, crescita, vita e morte tipica dei sistemi naturali? Possiamo cominciare a parlare di "sistemi viventi" in architettura? Antonino Di Raimo, Dottore di Ricerca, e architetto si occupa dei temi relativi alla cognizione, all'ecologia, e al corpo. Insegna Progettazione alla Polis University di Tirana, dove e preside della Facolta di Architettura e Design. Fondatore ed editore della collana prima con Testo&immagine e con Birkhauser e oggi con Edilstampa e Antonino Saggio. http://www.arc1.Uniroma1.it/Saggio/IT/