1

LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MAY/JUNE 2011
PROFILE NO 211
GUEST-EDITED BY MARIANA LEGUA
2 ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
FORTHCOMING 2 TITLES
Volume No
ISBN
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 PROFILE NO 213
RADICAL POST-MODERNISM
GUEST-EDITED BY CHARLES JENCKS AND FAT
Radical Post-Modernism (RPM) marks the resurgence of a critical architecture that
engages in a far-reaching way with issues of taste, space, character and ornament. Bridging
high and low cultures, it immerses itself in the age of information, embracing meaning
and communication, embroiling itself in the dirty politics of taste by drawing ideas from
beyond the narrow connes of architecture. It is a multi-dimensional, amorphous category,
which is heavily inuenced by contemporary art, cultural theory, modern literature and
everyday life. This title of 2 demonstrates how, in the age of late capitalism, Radical
Post-Modernism can provide an architecture of resistance and contemporary relevance,
forming a much needed antidote to the prevailing cult of anodyne Modernism and the
vacuous spatial gymnastics of the so-called digital avant-garde.
Contributions from: Sean Grifths, Charles Holland, Sam Jacob, Charles Jencks
and Kester Rattenbury.
Featured architects: ARM, Atelier Bow Wow, Crimson, CUP, FAT, FOA, douard
Franois, Terunobu Fujimori, Hild und K, Rem Koolhaas, John Kormelling,
muf, Valerio Olgiati.
Over the last 15 years, contemporary architecture has been profoundly altered by the advent
of computation and information technology. The ubiquitous dissemination of design software
and numerical fabrication machinery have re-actualised the traditional role of geometry in
architecture and opened it up to the wondrous possibilities afforded by topology, non-Euclidean
geometry, parametric surface design and other areas of mathematics. From the technical aspects
of scripting code to the biomorphic paradigms of form and its associations with genetics, the
impact of computation on the discipline has been widely documented. What is less clear, and has
largely escaped scrutiny so far, is the role mathematics itself has played in this revolution. Hence
the time has come for designers, computational designers and engineers to tease the mathematics
out of their respective works, not to merely show how it is done a hard and futile challenge
for the audience but to reect on the roots of the process and the way it shapes practices and
intellectual agendas, while helping dene new directions. This issue of 2 asks: Where do we
stand today? What is up with mathematics in design? Who is doing the most interesting work?
The impact of mathematics on contemporary creativity is effectively explored on its own terms.
Contributors include: Mark Burry, Bernard Cache, Philippe Morel, Antoine Picon, Dennis
Shelden, Fabien Scheurer and Michael Weinstock.
JULY/AUGUST 2011 PROFILE NO 212
MATHEMATICS OF SPACE
GUEST-EDITED BY GEORGE L LEGENDRE
Volume No
ISBN
Sustainable design and ecological building are the most signicant global challenges for the design profession.
For architects to maintain a competitive edge in a global market, innovation is key; the design of new
processes, technologies and materials that combat carbon emissions and improve the sustainable performance
of buildings are paramount. Many contemporary practices have responded by setting up multidisciplinary
internal research and development teams and collaborative research groups. This title offers insights into how
a wide range of established and emerging practices are rising to these challenges. In pursuit of integrated
sustainability and low-energy building, material and formal innovation and new tools and technologies, it will
illustrate that the future of architecture is evolving in an exchange of ideas across disciplines. Incorporating
the creation of new knowledge about ecological building within the profession, it also identies the
emergence of a collective will to seek out new routes that build in harmony with the environment.
Contributors include: Robert Aish, Peter Busby, Mary Ann Lazarus, Andrew Marsh, Hugh Whitehead
and Simos Yannas.
Features: the GXN research group at 3XN; Advanced Modelling Group at Aedas; Foster + Partners
Specialist Modelling Group; the Adaptive Building Initiative, Hoberman Associates and Buro Happold;
Biomimicry Guild Alliance, HOK and the Biomimicry Guild; and the Nikken Sekkei Research Institute.
Projects by: 10 Design, 2012 Architecten, Baumschlager Eberle, Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh
McDowell Architects (BNIM), HOK and RAU.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 PROFILE NO 214
EXPERIMENTAL GREEN STRATEGIES: REDEFINING ECOLOGICAL DESIGN RESEARCH
GUEST-EDITED BY TERRI PETERS
Volume No
ISBN
1
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS
GUEST-EDITED BY
MARIANA LEGUA
o|aorr
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
VOL 81, NO 3
MAY/JUNE 2011
ISSN 0003-8504
PROFILE NO 211
ISBN 978-0470-664926
2
GUEST-EDITED BY
MARIANA LEGUA
LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS
IN THIS ISSUE
1
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
6 ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
Mariana Legua
8 INTRODUCTION
Latin America at the Crossroads
Mariana Legua
r6 Simultaneous Territories:
Unveiling the Geographies
of Latin American Cities
Patricio del Real
aa PREVI-Limas Time:
Positioning Proyecto
Experimental de Vivienda in
Perus Modern Project
Sharif S Kahatt
PREVI-Lima led the way in the 1960s as the
seminal informal housing project low-rise and
high-density with exibility integral to the design.
a6 The Experimental Housing Project (PREVI),
Lima: The Making of a Neighbourhood
Fernando Garca-Huidobro, Diego Torres
Torriti and Nicols Tugas
a Elemental: A Do Tank
Alejandro Aravena
8 Tlacolula Social Housing, Oaxaca, Mexico
Dellekamp Arquitectos
EDITORIAL BOARD
Will Alsop
Denise Bratton
Paul Brislin
Mark Burry
Andr Chaszar
Nigel Coates
Peter Cook
Teddy Cruz
Max Fordham
Massimiliano Fuksas
Edwin Heathcote
Michael Hensel
Anthony Hunt
Charles Jencks
Bob Maxwell
Jayne Merkel
Peter Murray
Mark Robbins
Deborah Saunt
Leon van Schaik
Patrik Schumacher
Neil Spiller
Michael Weinstock
Ken Yeang
Alejandro Zaera-Polo
3
6| Formalisation: An Interview
with Hernando de Soto
Angus Laurie
68 Playgrounds: Radical
Failure in the Amazon
Gary Leggett
|a Governing Change: The
Metropolitan Revolution
in Latin America
Ricky Burdett and Adam Kaasa
a The Olympic Games and
the Production of the Public
Realm: Mexico City 1968
and Rio de Janeiro 2016
Fernanda Canales
8 Articulating the Broken
City and Society
Jorge Mario Juregui
o A City Talks: Learning from
Bogots Revitalisation
Enrique Pealosa
6 Bogot and Medelln:
Architecture and Politics
Lorenzo Castro and
Alejandro Echeverri
ro| From Product to Process:
Building on Urban-Think Tanks
Approach to the Informal City
Interview with Alfredo
Brillembourg by Adriana
Navarro-Sertich
rro Latin American Meander: In Search
of a New Civic Imagination
Teddy Cruz
rr8 Supersudacas Asia Stories (AKA
at Home in the First, Second,
Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds)
Supersudaca
ra| When Cities Become Strategic
Saskia Sassen
ra8 Organising Communities for
Interdependent Growth
Enrique Martin-Moreno
r| Universities as Mediators: The
Cases of Buenos Aires, Lima,
Mexico and So Paulo
Mariana Legua
r|| COUNTERPOINT
Looking Beyond Informality
Daniela Fabricius

y6 Urban Responses to Climate

Change in Latin America: Reasons,
Challenges and Opportunities
Patricia Romero-Lankao
As the main emitters of greenhouse gases
in Latin America, cities will determine
climate change in the region.
8o Filling the Voids with
Popular Imaginaries
Fernando de Mello Franco
86 Civic Building: Forte, Gimenes
& Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos
(FGMF), So Paulo
FGMF
4
1
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MAY/JUNE 2011
PROFILE NO 211
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Helen Castle
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Front cover: Ricardo La Rotta Caballero, La
Quintana, Tomas Carrasquilla Park Library,
Medelln, Colombia, 2007. Sergio Gomez
Inside front cover: Gary Leggett, P.A.I.D.
(Project in Assistance of International
Disasters), Jan Van Eyck Academie and Yale
University, 2010. Gary Leggett. Concept
CHK Design
o|aorr
5
EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
Since the 1950s, Latin America has had a particular fascination for architects. While
Europe was still war-torn, a bright new Modernist urban future was being realised on the
South American continent. This was epitomised by Lcio Costas and Oscar Niemeyers
vision for Braslia. In the early 1960s a new kind of debate started to open up around the
question of housing in response to the massive and often unofcial expansion of South
American cities in the form of informal settlements. 2 was instrumental in bringing this
to international attention with its seminal August 1963 issue on dwelling resources in
South America co-edited by John FC Turner.
1
Turner, a graduate from the Architectural
Association (AA) in London, was appointed in 1957 by Eduardo Neira, a Peruvian architect
educated at the University of Liverpool, to work as an assistant to the Director of the
Ofce for Technical Assistance to Popular Urbanisations of Arequipa (OATA). In the late
1950s, Arequipa, a city in southern Peru, already had Urbanizaciones Populares, or informal
settlements, covering a thousand hectares, an area far greater than that of the ofcial urban
area. By the time a major earthquake hit the region in January 1958, Turner had taken over
as Director of OATA. With funds available from earthquake reconstruction, it became
apparent that far more housing units could be built through a self-build programme in the
Urbanizaciones Populares than in the traditional city. In 1962, Turner was stirred to produce
a publication on urbanisation in South America by an article by James Morris (now Jan
Morris) for The Sunday Times colour supplement: an appallingly misleading, bleeding heart
view of the barriadas; it also came to the attention of the British Ambassador in Peru, who
called Turner and suggested he do something about it.
2
This just happened to coincide with
a trip by Monica Pidgeon, the longstanding Editor of 2, who toured the barriadas with
Turner. The resulting 2 was one of the rst illustrated publications to positively investigate
the possibilities of urban housing and self-build in Latin America.
This title of 2, so adeptly guest-edited by Peruvian-British architect Mariana Legua,
also condently portrays Latin America. This time as a continent that is on the cusp of
change. The most obvious manifestation of this is perhaps Brazils burgeoning economy
and Rio de Janeiros successful bid to host the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It
is, however, the advocacy of design solutions that engage with informal settlements and
directly address social and economic problems that provide the most compelling thread
to this issue, picking up where Turner left off. Teddy Cruz also argues potently for the
lead that Latin American municipalities have taken, politically reconnecting public policy,
social justice and civic imagination and addressing inequality through new models of urban
development (see pp 1107). With the intensication of urbanisation in Asia and elsewhere
in the world, the engagement with the informal provides an international paradigm for
working towards pragmatic solutions to housing. It is an approach that has far-reaching
implications both for architects future mediations in the city and also for occupiers of
settlements. In her Counterpoint to the issue, Daniela Fabricius very bravely raises her
head above the parapet and questions whether in settling for informality, we might just be
failing in our aspirations for a large portion of the population and accepting that they must
continue to live precariously on sites of scarcity and deprivation.
Add your own opinion to the debate at: www.architectural-design-magazine.com. 1
Notes
1. For an insight into this period see Interview of John F C Turner, World Bank, Washington DC, 11 September
2000 available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTUSU/Resources/turner-tacit.pdf, an edited transcript by
Roberto Chavez with Julie Viloria and Melanie Zipperer, audited by Rufolf V van Puyembroeck, Legal Department
and Assistant. A further edited version is also published in La Collective, 1 March 2010, Supersudaca Reports 1.
2. Ibid.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image Steve Gorton
1, Vol 33, August 1963
Born in Chile, Monica Pidgeon, 1s
longstanding editor, had a personal
interest in Latin America. In Lima in
1962, she met the British architect
John Turner. The result was the
pioneering 1963 issue on housing.
6
LLAMA urban design (Mariana Legua and
Angus Laurie), Housing development and
retail unit, Lima, 2010
top: This is one of the few new buildings
in Lima that does not have a 3-metre
(9.98-foot) security wall. Along with the
retail unit on the ground oor, this will help
activate the public realm.
Yncluye (Mariana Legua, Nelson Munares
and Maya Balln), Proposal for the Plaza
de la Democracia, Lima, 2009
above: Through creating a protected
but permeable facade facing the busy
surrounding roads and at the same time
activating the inactive walls of the third
facade, the proposal aims to generate
a public square for the city of Lima
that acts as an anchor of activity and a
cultural centre.
LLAMA urban design, Small is More, 2007
opposite: This strategic approach
for zoning, taking into consideration
diversity of use through pedestrian
distances, will give different results in
the way the public realm is activated
and used throughout the day.
7
ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
MARIANA LEGUA
Mariana Legua is a Peruvian-British architect and urban designer currently based
between Lima and Toronto. In 2007, along with her partner Angus Laurie, she
co-founded LLAMA Urban Design (www.llamaurbandesign.com). The practice
focuses on giving the city back to pedestrians. To achieve this goal, it has developed
urban strategies that encourage encounter between a diversity of users within the
public realm through enhancing the small scale and diversity of land use and tenure
in both regeneration and urban expansion projects. Within her own research, Small
is More, at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 20067, Mariana found
that integration and activity in the public realm depends not solely on density or
the traditional concept of land use, but is related to the diversity and pixelation of
programme mainly along the ground oor of buildings, where small-scale units
with a mix of uses can create a balance of activity, achieving a level of integration
among different socioeconomic groups. As part of LLAMA urban design, she is
currently working to develop this research into a book.
In 2002, she co-founded the Lima-based practice (Y)ncluye. Ciudad (www.
yncluye.com), through which she has developed new participatory design processes,
which have been put into practice for projects in Chincha and in Pisco, 200
kilometres (124.2 miles) south of Lima. The practice is concerned mainly with
the design of public, civic or community buildings as anchors of activity for the
conguration of public spaces.
Between 2006 and 2009, Mariana worked extensively on different urban
projects for a large architectural ofce in London, including a masterplan for
the historic Covent Garden in central London and a number of other major
international urban projects in Russia, Europe and the Middle East. Between
2002 and 2003 she worked as a collaborator at Estudio Teddy Cruz in San Diego,
California, a practice based on the USMexican border zone.
Her experience has led to a blending of the global and the local, from bottom-
up methodologies applied in remote villages in the Peruvian Andes to her large-
scale strategic work for entirely new cities in Europe and the Middle East.
Mariana is currently a professor in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of
the Catholic University of Peru. She holds an MSc in City Design from the Cities
Programme of the LSE, and a degree in architecture and urbanism from Ricardo
Palma University in Peru. She has lectured in universities in both Peru and the UK.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 6(t), 7(b) LLAMA urban design, Mariana Legua, Angus
Laurie; p 6(t) Mariana Legua; p 6(b) (Y)NCLUYE. arquitectura. ciudad. Mariana Leguia, Maya Ballen,
Nelson Munares
8
LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS
INTRODUCTION
By Mariana Legua
9
10
Lcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer with
Roberto Burle Marx, City of Braslia,
Brazil, 19561960
previous spread right (top and bottom)
and opposite left: A landmark in the
history of town planning, the utopic
city of the future was built over an
uninhabited desert with scarce water
and few animals and plants. The
Brazilian Congress and the Presidential
Palace are major iconic features not only
of the city, but of modern architecture
across Latin American.
Differences encroaching on Peru
below: Urban grid between a planned
area and an informal area of Lima,
divided in some sectors by a wall. There
is a notable difference in the levels of
vegetation and landscaping together with
the scale of the plots.
Invasions on Limas coast, 196989
previous spread top left and opposite
right: Vacant land was taken overnight
by squatters. Today these areas form
part of the consolidated and sprawling
city of Lima.
Alfredo Dammert, Mercado Central,
Lima, 19634
previous spread bottom left: Informal
street traders surround the modern
structure of the citys Central Market
in 1989. As part of a recent local
improvement programme, the informal
vendors have been forced to leave.
11
Latin American citizens are constantly reminded of the social
polarities in our cities through the urban form where 3-metre
(9-foot) tall security walls and bars on windows are the norm
within island-like enclaves of wealth. Within this context,
architects currently work to produce well-designed interior
spaces that deliberately turn their back on the public realm
streets and public spaces resulting in large sections of cities
where the street is overlooked only by inactive walls. Until the
last 20 to 30 years, with obvious exceptions such as Curitiba,
1

there has been little consideration among Latin Americas
architects and urbanists as to how practitioners might mitigate
strong social and spatial polarities and challenge the prevailing
architectural language of segregation and fear.
Even today, many Latin American architecture students
are taught to look to Europe and the US to learn from
the latest trends of the northern hemisphere. On the rare
occasions when Latin America-based projects are studied,
these generally are the grand projects from the mid-20th
century that were an imposition of occidental thought in
anticipation of progress and modernity, but within a different
social and political reality where older residents can still
remember life within a feudal system. This transposition of
modernity is exemplied in projects like Braslia, perhaps the
largest-scale realization of Le Corbusiers theories and ideas
built anywhere in the world,
2
and in the Modernist university
projects that took root in Rio de Janeiro and Bogot in the
1930s, in Caracas in 1944, and in Mexico in 1954.
3

The development of these grand projects was extolled in a
number of exhibitions and publications of the time, including
MoMAs Brazil Builds (1943)
4
and Modern Architecture
in Latin American Since 1945 (1955).
5
At the time, none
of the cities had the industrial capacity to produce the
prefabricated materials required, as predicated by the modern
discourse, in order for the projects to be realised.
6
They were
only feasible through the availability of mass cheap labour.
Since then, the centralised, utopian model has broken down.
The socioeconomic climate behind these modern projects
triggered an increasing informality and mass migrations from
the countryside leaving cities socially and spatially divided. All
in all, over the last 70 years, Latin America has undergone an
urban revolution comparable to the mass migrations resulting
from the industrial revolution in Europe, which took place over
a period of 200 years.
In response to urban expansion, mainly during the 1960s
and 1970s many governments initially sought to house
migrants in large superstructures or tower blocks, mimicking
postwar housing projects in Europe. Despite their grand
intentions, such projects represented a vision that clashed
with the social and cultural reality of the time, as the dwellers
for which these units were built were mostly rural migrants,
and were still very dependent on a traditional subsistence type
of economy.
7
Many failed, as single-use Modernist apartment
blocks did not work well within an informal economy where
the dwelling is envisioned not only as a home, but as a site
of production;
8
where the built form is capable of offering
multiple opportunities for the user and for its use.
Subsequent exhibitions and international publications,
including Architecture Without Architects (1964),
9
tackled
a new set of concerns relating to Latin Americas rapid urban
expansion. During this time, Peter Land, on behalf of the
Peruvian government and the United Nations, conceived the
Experimental Housing Project (PREVI) (1968) (see article on
pp 225), an ambitious social housing project that drew in
international gures including, among others, James Stirling,
Aldo van Eyck and Christopher Alexander. The aim of the
project was to develop methodologies for producing low-rise
high-density housing
10
with limited funds.
This issue of 2 does not stand alone, but revisits an older
story, following on from John Turners often-quoted article
from 1963 entitled Dwelling Resources in South America,
11

which marked a moment in time in the representation of the
region, leaving us in suspense until now.
12
Since then, much has changed. Hernando de Soto, who
published The Other Path in 1986, made a case supporting
informality, showing that people living in informal areas
were in fact entrepreneurs who contributed to the economy
and who wanted to integrate, but were excluded by
innumerable barriers.
12
In 1996, Alan Gilbert, the rst
to coin the term mega-city, published The Mega-City in
Latin America,
13
seeing informal settlements as a potential
solution to the rapid growth in Latin Americas cities, and
making a clear argument for their consolidation.
Once a blind spot in cities representation, informality is
now considered an asset to be understood and
incorporated. This paradigm shift towards viewing
informality as a positive generator for the city rather than as
a blight has created the opportunity for architects to
develop new methods of research and responses to work
within this challenging context. Additionally, as sustainability
becomes an increasingly important issue, informal
settlements offer a number of innovative sustainable
solutions embedded in a culture in which resourcefulness
and recycling are necessities rather than trends.
14
I learned about these processes and the richness of the
informal parts of Tijuana in comparison with the sterile
planned areas of San Diego while working in collaboration
with Teddy Cruz and experiencing the border region between
Mexico and the US in 20023. It became clear that the
same phenomenon was repeated in my home city, Lima,
and in many other Latin American cities. The wall that
divides San Diego from Tijuana is similar to the countless
walls in Latin American cities that separate wealthy planned
neighbourhoods from informal, no-go areas, or the 3-metre
(9.98-foot) security walls that separate middle- and
upper-class homes from the street.
13
After this experience, and within my own practice
in Peru, it became clear that it is necessary to develop
participatory methodologies, to challenge the ways in
which we represent ideas in projects, and to understand
that when designing for communities, architects need to
work with their desires and not only with nished forms.
Desires relate to programme; how people will use and
interact in a space rather than the form of the space itself.
Furthermore, in trying to achieve a successful public realm,
the development of a design needs a holistic approach,
looking at economics, policy and managerial strategies that
can help projects make visions into reality. On the other
hand, social, political and economic strategies, such as
those of Hernando de Soto, are generally not spatial, and
for this reason their success can vary drastically based on
their interpretation and physical manifestation on site.
Through these new processes of change in the
understanding and application of theory, universities and
faculty members have become important in developing
alternative methodologies to encourage new modes of
architecture that, within multidisciplinary approaches,
can integrate students, communities, government agents
and professionals.
At the same time, new urban strategies by municipal
governments have drastically improved some cities including
Curitiba, Medellin and Bogot, and the latter received
the Venice Architecture Biennales Golden Lion Award for
Architecture in 2006 for being at the forefront of urbanism.
Another notable example is Guayaquil in Ecuador, where the
Malecn 2000 project, together with a reconguration of the
citys public transport, succeeded in drawing people back
into the centre and in consolidating the once no-go informal
settlement of Cerro Santa Ana into a tourist destination.
15

Paraisopolis, Morumbi, So Paulo
opposite bottom: Tuca Vieiras now
famous image of the Paraisopolis favela
clearly synthesises the strong spatial and
social divide between the informal areas
of Latin American cities which often stand
next to planned and segregated areas of
great afuence.
Reinventing new methodologies
of communication: participatory
workshops in Peru
below, from top to bottom: Architecture
& Participation course run by architects
Maya Balln, Mariana Legua and Claudia
Amico in Chincha, Peru (2007), workshop
run by Espacio Expresin in Pisco (2009),
and (Yncluye (Mariana Legua and Maya
Balln) in Pisco (2005).
Malecn 2000 Foundation with local
architects (Douglas Dreher and Luis
Zuluaga) and architects from Oxford
Brooks University (Alberto Fernandez
Davila, Raul Florez, Mariano Jakobs and
Noe Carbajal), Malecn 2000, Guayaquil,
Ecuador, 2000
opposite top and centre: Malecn 2000
is an urban regeneration project of the
former Malecn Simn Bolvar. With a
2.5-kilometre (1.5-mile) extension of the
riverfront promenade next to the River
Guayas, it is adding value in the citys
central neighbourhoods which had been
suffering a long decline due to ight to the
suburbs. Over 300,000 people use the
Malecn daily, for recreation or to engage
in commercial activities. Following this
project the municipality also regenerated
the adjacent area of Cerro Santa Ana,
once a no go-area.
14
Sebastian Irarrazaval, Escuela Manuel
Montt, Retiro, Chile, 2010
below left: This modular system was
developed from containers in just one
week, in a rapid response to the collapse of
a school during the 2010 earthquake.
Gualano + Gualona Arquitectos, Civic
Centre, Pueblo Bolivar, Uruguay, 2007
below right: Sponsored by Venezuelas
President Chavez after a visit to Uruguary,
the new civic centre includes a multi-
purpose room, a health centre, public
toilets, rooms for community meetings and
a childrens playground.
al bordE arquitectos (David Barragn
and Pascual Gangotena), Escuela de
Buena Esperanza, El Cabuyal, Manab,
Ecuador, 2009
opposite: The majority of the local
population of Manab was illiterate
due to the lack of a primary school.
The new school not only responded to
this urgent need, but also introduced
an alternative construction technique
using the methodologies and local
materials of the region.
15
Evidenced by the adoption of the bus rapid transit (BRT)
model (rst developed in Curitiba in 1974) in a number of cities
across North America, Europe and Asia, the world now looks
to Latin America for inspiration. These progressive policies by
city mayors have provided fertile ground for new methodologies
developed by Latin American architects, which are showing great
potential to alleviate social segregation and spatial injustice,
widening the discourse in so many ways. These alternative
practices are increasingly gaining attention in international
publications and exhibitions. Comparing these exhibitions to the
historic ones of the 1940s and 1950s demonstrates a profound
re-evaluation of the role of architects in Latin American society
as agents of social change.
16
This issue on Latin America comes at a critical moment in
time, when the image of the regions nation-states is in ux as
stable governments, economic growth and globalisation are
reshaping its cities and societies. The issue illustrates the current
processes of urban expansion in Latin America and the
corresponding alternative home-grown methodologies. As Rio
prepares to host the 2016 Olympics,
17
Latin America will likely
receive more international attention than at any time in history.
Both the World Cup (2014) and Olympics (2016) in Rio de
Janeiro have started to produce positive urban results due to new
initiatives for the regeneration of formerly paralysed, no-go areas of
th city. The Morar Carioca project will deal with this complex task
over the coming years and will be undertaken by 40 architects
recently selected in a competition organised by the Institute of
Architects of Brazil (IAB).
18

In parallel, its wealth and diversity of resources has drawn
increased foreign investment into new territories; the Amazon
region, at the heart of the continent, is considered the lungs
of Earth, but also a site of conict between those who wish to
preserve it, and others who hope to exploit its vast resources.
Latin America at the Crossroads exposes these new strategies
and social roles, informed by the informal and the solutions
practitioners have developed to stitch together polarised areas of
the regions cities. Such solutions to urban problems represent
the vanguard in mitigating strong social and spatial divisions in
cities across the globe. Rather than constructing major projects in
search of an El Dorado, like Voltaires protagonist Candide, Latin
America is learning from the benets of tending its own garden. 1
Notes
1. Curitibas urban regeneration took place mainly through the 1970s.
2. Valerie Fraser, Building the New World: Studies in the Modern
Architecture of Latin America 19301960, Verso (London), 2000, p 1.
3. Ibid, p 62.
4. Philip Goodwin, Brazil Builds: Architecture New and Old 16521942,
MoMA (New York), 1943.
5. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Latin American Architecture Since 1945,
MoMA (New York), 1955.
6. Fraser, op cit, p 7.
7. Ibid, pp 1201. In the 1969 2 editorial on Caracas, Walter Bor praised
the make-shift accommodation of the poor and criticised high-rise ats
for being restricted in oor space and social amenities. See Walter Bor,
Venezuela, 2, August 1969, p 425.
8. Teddy Cruz, Small Scale, Massive Change: New Architectures of Social
Engagements, curated by Andres Lepik, MoMA, Autumn 2010.
9. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects, MoMA (New York),
1964.
10. A concept widely explained in the article on PREVILima by Fernando
Garca- Huidobro, Diego Torres Torriti and Nicols Tugas Fandez, pp 2631
of this issue.
11. John Turner, Dwelling Resources in South America, 2, Vol 33, August 1963.
12. Hernando de Soto, The Other Path, Basic Books (New York),
1989, p 12.
13. Alan Gilbert (ed), The Mega-City in Latin America, United Nations
University Press (New York), 1996.
14. This was well represented in the last Holcim awards, an initiative of the
Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction based in Switzerland, which
took place in Mexico in 2010.
15. Alberto Fernndez-Dvila: http://titofd.blogspot.com/2008/04/
regeneracin-urbana-del-cerro-santa-ana.html.
16. In the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, entitled Cities Architecture
and Society and curated by Richard Burdett, Bogot received the Golden
Lion Award for Architecture for being at the forefront of urbanism. In
2009, the 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, Open
City: Designing Coexistence, curated by Tim Rieniets, Jennifer Sigler and
Kees Christiaans, developed many of these themes. Later on, Small Scale,
Massive Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, curated by
Andres Lepik (MoMA, Autumn 2010), demonstrated new methods of social
engagement by alternative practices from all over the world, including four
representatives (Teddy Cruz, Alejandro Aravena, Jorge Juregui and Urban-
Think Tank) from Latin America (see pp 110114, 307, 5863 and 1049
of this issue).
17. The second time in history for a Latin American country and the rst for
a South American country.
18. Juan Arias, 40 arquitectos cambiarn la cara de 215 favelas de Ro de
Janeiro (40 architects will change the face of 215 favelas in Rio de Janeiro),
9 December 2010; see www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/arquitectos/
cambiaran/cara/215/favelas/Rio/Janeiro/elpepuint/20101209elpepuint_2/Tes.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 8, 11(r), 13 Archivo El Comercio;
pp 9, 11(l) Nelson Munares; pp 10, 12(t&c) Mariana Legua; p 12(b) Tuca
Vieira; p 13 (y)ncluye and Espacio Expresin; P 14(l) Sebastian Irarrazaval; p 14(r)
Gualano+Gualano arquitectos; p 15 al bordE arquitectos, David Barragn &
Pascual Gangotena
16 16
SIMULTANEOUS TERRITORIES
UNVEILING THE GEOGRAPHIES OF LATIN AMERICAN CITIES
The harmonious, utopian image that housing in Latin America exuded across the world in
the postwar years is very much at odds with the current view of the region, in which unbridled
shantytowns dominate. Patricio del Real sets out to understand how such a rupture might have
been possible: What was the process of exclusion at play in these Modernist projects? How does
Modernism represent simultaneous territories in which emerging challenges to the social and
political status quo were merely mufed by the architectural seduction of the 1950s?
Patricio del Real
17 17
In its October 1950 issue, Architectural Review claimed
that the Pedregulho housing development may be about to
make an outstanding contribution to another phase of the
modern movement; LArchitecture dAujourdhui, in its 1955
issue dedicated to Mexico, exalted the Presidente Jurez
neighbourhood unit in Mexico City as the clearest example
of how the deep consciousness of tradition could exercise a
positive inuence in a modern world; and a year earlier, Domus
had called on Caracas, with its extraordinary superblock
housing developments, to become the world capital of modern
architecture.
1
By the end of the 1940s, Latin America had
become a cynosure of Western modern architecture. Riding
the spectacular economic growth as well as the technological
and industrial expansion of the war years, and honing the
development of modern architecture and design that had
started two decades before, the entire region burst with
building after building, which created ripples throughout every
major architectural magazine.
In their pages, the stylish balance between tradition and
innovation the sensuality of the landscape in glamorous
Rio de Janeiro or in silent Mexico, the pleasures of life in
loose Havana or elegant Buenos Aires, picturesque societies
in charming Bogot or serene Montevideo, or the dynamic
economies in booming Caracas and industrious So Paulo
presented to European and North American readers an
appealing quasi-likeness, exotic, yet familiar. But above all, Latin
American architecture of this period was seen as, in one word,
harmonious. These were images of a Western world lacking
the contradictions and conicts that had torn Europe apart; in
a place still untouched by unbridled US commercialism. These
hopeful images were, however, simplistic accounts. Early on,
many critics saw through the dreamy pictures reproduced in
every article, aware of the incompleteness of the utopia, the
unevenness of the societies, the remnants of a dark tradition,
and the small enclaves of progressive Modernism that
announced the conicts that, from the 1960s onward, would
engulf the entire region into the imaginary of a Third World.
The predominant images today of favelas-ranchos-villas
miseria-barriadas-barbacoas the slums that characterise the
contemporary Latin American city for outside observers
force us to return to Modernist housing projects to understand
the mechanisms of exclusion that these structures enacted
and the dual, if not multiple, geographies they constructed.
A project such as Mario Panis 1948 Presidente Alemn
housing complex in Mexico City was created for the modern
citizen: the burgeoning middle and professional classes
associated with governmental corporatism that crafted a
singular modern nation through an activist state. Yet, these
projects took many built forms, including Wladimiro Acostas
Hogar Obrero (194151), with its elegant insertion into the
urban grid of Buenos Aires, and the Unidad Vecinal Portales
(195466), by Bresciani, Valds, Castillo and Huidobro in
Santiago, which followed International Congresses of Modern
Architecture (CIAM) planning strategies. These, like many
others, manifested formal and technological experiments that
underscored the conicts between architectural production
and the logics of mass housing, and they ultimately revealed a
partial industrialisation identied early on by developmental
economists such as Ral Prebisch.
The growth of industrialisation confronted a labour-
intensive and craft-oriented architectural production organised
in small studios and managing a developing standardisation as
the act of building negotiated infrastructural hindrances such
as a limited transportation network.
2
But partial technological
industrialisation in architecture was not the only barrier to an
inclusive modern world. Housing policies and organisations
such as the Fundaao da Casa Popular in Brazil, or the Banco
Central Hipotecario in Colombia, deployed a bureaucracy
of exclusion through screening and selection processes that
prevented many of the working poor from gaining access to
any citizens utopia. In all, these programmes were created
by corporatist enclaves tied to a working-class public sector
and were based on notions of liberal ownership and bourgeois
family values that emerged as early as 1906 in Chile with the
Law on Workers Housing.
3
These values were also discussed
within the Pan-American Congress of Architects, such as
the 1927 Buenos Aires meeting which engaged the problem
of Casas Baratas Low Cost Houses.
4
The early postwar
housing projects carry the aura of a progressive state unfolding
a landscape of shared social values. These projects also reveal
a weak state that could act only through symbolic gestures
in the realm of social housing.
5
The general lack of urban
planning across the region exposed the inability of the state
to coordinate and control a disarticulated urban landscape
dominated by rampant speculation.
6
The seductive black-and-
white photographs promoted locally and circulated across the
world completed the exclusion of the urban poor by creating a
distinct geographic imaginary and an actual restricted defensible
space as the accelerated process of urbanisation accentuated the
fragmentation of cities through growing peripheral slums and
deteriorating colonial cores.
The geographic imaginary of Modernism created yet
another territory as housing policies were reorganised under
persuasive national planning programmes, and new state
institutions including the Corporacin de la Vivienda in
Chile or the Comisin Nacional de Viviendas in Cuba sought
to produce modern citizens through technocratic efciency.
These levelled techno-legal territories, however, had to
contend with charged political urban landscapes administered
through populist quid pro quo contracts that legalised land
appropriations and effectively made visible a marginal and now-
vocal countergeography. The active demands of the urban poor,
not to mention those of the rural poor, signalled the hinging of
Modernist geographies and countered the imagined distance
between them. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Perns
Argentina, where every possible imaginary was mobilised to
build and secure not only a popular political base but also the
modern activist nation.
7

Carlos Ral Villanueva and Taller de Arquitectura del Banco Obrero,
Urbanizacin 23 de Enero, Caracas, Venezuela, 19558
The use of primary colours on the facades of the superblocks attempts to minimise the oppression of the
exposed structural grid and mask the extreme economy of the construction. At the same time, pictorial
and geometric abstraction undergirded the universalism that drove the Venezuelan integration of the arts.
18 18
The geographic multiplicity that Modernism produced
allowed for a technological colonisation from the ground up
as the Division of Housing and Planning of the Organization
of American States (OAS) deployed programmes of assisted
self-help which echoed the Puerto Rican experience
throughout the region.
8
The OAS colonisation of the everyday
became prevalent with the creation in 1952 of the Inter-
American Housing Center (CINVA) in Bogot. Although
CINVA emphasised regional coordination of technical and
socioeconomic research, it also served to deepen the inuence
of the US, fastening low-income housing to foreign aid
programmes and to a technological development that, under
the banner of the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s, showed its
true plastic nature by retooling old corporatist modernisation
to t military regimes. A devastated landscape of Modernism,
unhinged yet again, was now concealed under the bruised and
swelling geography of dependency.
Amid these rich worlds of expanding ideas, needs and
desires, and simultaneous geographies, the work of the Banco
Obrero in Caracas (19526) rises to the foreground since it was
able to cohere the centrifugal forces of modernity. Specically
aimed at slum clearance, the massive 85 superblocks of the 2
de Diciembre complex (today 23 de Enero) and its companion
projects of Cerro Grande, El Paraiso and Cerro Piloto, all
located in Caracas, fused master Modernist aesthetics with
mass production and experimentation, clearly locating itself in
the dreamy orb of the Western world. This clean geography,
however, was performed through exclusionary practices that
symptomatically erased the ever-growing and invading slums,
which were carefully eliminated in every photo opportunity.
9

It should also be noted that this Modernist utopia, celebrated
by Domus as the land of liberty, was possible only under a
dictator enabled by the oil wealth of Venezuela.
10
In this respect,
less ambitious programmes under democratic governments
aimed at developing a national consensus fared better within a
diversifying political urban landscape and a restless countryside
demanding land reform, which reached boiling points in Bolivia
(1952) and Guatemala (1954).
The advent of the Cuban Revolution, and a decade later
Salvador Allendes democratic socialism, proved that the
dreams of development channelled through Modernism
and its unfolding territories were not enough, and that the
geography of contestation unleashed by modernisation could
not be suppressed. One must return to the iconic images of
Modernism in the region to rescue the simultaneous territories
caught in them to listen to the emerging challenge that is being
mufed by the architectural seduction of the 1950s. It is in these
images we can witness the dynamics of presence played out in
architecture precisely at the moment of the regions greatest
international visibility.
As the current architecture of Latin America regains
currency in contemporary architectural magazines, it is worth
asking how this visibility will be replayed; to what geography do
these images belong? What territories, if any, do these images
unleash? We live in a time in which there is an acceleration
of images that are sustained by the return of an imagined
geography embodied by the mobile elite. But if the Modernist
geographic unfolding was once performed through static visual
seductions, today these unhingings of the built landscape are
performed through the rapid consumption of images.
Affonso E Reidy, Conjunto Habitacional Pedregulho, So Cristvo, Rio de Janeiro, 194854
The unnished main serpentine residential block can here be seen in the background. To ensure
the construction of the social infrastructure, including the swimming pool also seen here, Reidy
scheduled them rst to avoid the budgetary shortfalls typical in this kind of project that might
have prevented their completion.
The geographic multiplicity that
Modernism produced allowed for
a technological colonisation from
the ground up as the Division
of Housing and Planning of the
Organization of American States
(OAS) deployed programmes of
assisted self-help which echoed
the Puerto Rican experience
throughout the region.
19 19
The fascination exerted by slums anchors us. In fact, it
creates a suture: the slow-moving landscape of anti-modern,
romantic dreams and actual human hardship articulates
our relationship to Modernist visual seduction and to our
contemporary too-fast architecture. The architects quest
remains how to build upon this raw joint.
If, as the French philosopher Jacques Rancire has
articulated, utopia is not a dreamy and unrealisable future, to
paraphrase his words, but an intellectual construction that brings
together a space of thought with an actual perceptible space, it is
then worth asking whether these latest images of contemporary
architecture of Latin America are merely staged visions of
a failed Modernist seduction or attempts at a speedy escape
into the world of Western privilege? Instead, contemporary
Latin American architecture may full a promise to reveal the
geography of the city as a site of productive conict. 1
Notes
1. Architectural Review, Vol 108, No 646, October 1950; LArchitecture
dAujourdhui, Vol 26, No 59, April 1955; Domus, No 295, June 1954.
2. On the profession in Brazil see: Henrique Mindlin, Modern Architecture in
Brazil, Reinhold (New York), 1956. The Argentinian context offers a counter
example with larger team-based architectural production. See Jorge Francisco
Liernur, La Arquitectura en la Argentina del siglo XX: La construccion de la
modernidad, Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Buenos Aires), 2001. For Chile,
see Fernando Prez Oyarzn, Rodrigo Prez de Arce, Horacio Torrent and
Malcolm Quantrill, Chilean Modern Architecture Since 1950, Texas A & M
University Press (College Station), 2010.
3. Law 1838 of 1906 on Worker Housing established the Consejo de
Habitaciones Obreras, an organisation that promoted the construction of
low-cost units and rationalisation along hygiene principles. See Rodrigo
Hidalgo Dattwyler, La Reestructuracin de la Administracin Pblica
y Las Innovaciones en la Poltica de Vivienda en Chile en la Dcada
de 1950, Scripta Nova: Revista Electrnica de Geografa y Ciencias
Sociales, No 6976, 2000.
4. For a general outlook, see Manuel Ruiz Blanco, Vivienda Colectiva
Estatal en Latinoamrica: Periodo 19301960, Instituto de Investigacin,
Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Artes, Universidad Nacional de
Ingenieria (Lima), 2003. For Brazil, see Nabil Bonduki, Otra mirada sobre
la arquitectura brasilea: La produccin de vivienda social (19301954),
Block, No 4, 1999, pp 11021.
5. For Pani, see Mario Pani, Mario Pani: Arquitecto, Universidad Autnoma
Metropolitana/Noriega Editores (Mexico), 1999. For Acosta, see Juan M
Otxotorena, Wladimiro Acosta: 19001967, Escuela Tcnica Superior de
Arquitectura (Pamplona), 2008.
6. The economic boom years for the region saw their dawn with the lack of
capital that sent Chile and Brazil into crisis in the mid-1950s. The need to
increase capital investments in Latin America was a primary concern in US
economic circles. Washington, however, refused any form of aid and was
instead keen on the promotion of private investment in the region.
7. See Anahi Ballent, Las huellas de la poltica: vivienda, ciudad, peronismo en
Buenos Aires, 19431955, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes/Prometeo (Buenos
Aires), 2005. Also Rosa Aboy, The Right to a Home: Public Housing in Post-War
II Buenos Aires. Journal of Urban History 33, No 3, 2007, pp 493518.
8. Puerto Rican housing programmes were modelled on New Deal policies
that managed federal subsidies through national, regional and city agencies.
Highly dependent on technical expertise, these programmes were aimed
at slum clearance and the development of a house-owning middle class.
Puerto Rico was included within the activities of CINVA from the outset.
See Inter-American Housing and Planning Center. Cursillo de introduccin
institucional. El intercambio cientico y documentacin del CINVA, por
Luis Florn, Centro interamericano de vivienda y planeamiento, Servicio de
intercambio cientco y documentacin (Bogot), 1958.
9. I would like to thank Helen Gyger for bringing this to my attention,
and for her comments on an early draft of this essay. See also Viviana d
Auria, Caracas Cultural [Be]longings: The Troubled Trajectories of the
TABO Superbloque, in Latin American Modern Architectures: Ambiguous
Territories, Routledge, forthcoming.
10. See Gio Ponti, Venezuela, patria della libert, Domus, No 317, April
1956, p 2.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 16 Fundacin Villanueva; p 18 Marcel
Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles; p 19 Archivo de Originales. Centro de Informacin
y Documentacin Sergio Larran Garca-Moreno. Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseo y
Estudios Urbanos. Ponticia Universidad Catlica de Chile
Bresciani, Valds, Castillo and Huidobro, Unidad Vecinal Portales, Santiago de Chile, 195466
Built on former university agricultural research lands, the slender ve-storey housing blocks were
designed to minimise their impact on the site. Open bridges and ramps develop a network of public
pedestrian circulation enhanced by a street within the blocks through which cars can circulate. This
street allowed the architects to circumvent height restrictions.
20
A TIMELINE OF COLLECTIVE
HOUSING IN LATIN AMERICA
By Supersudaca
As captured here by Supersudaca, the history of social housing is one of
rising and falling densities and a wide range of approaches from formal
Modernism to the informal. Commencing in the 1930s with New Deal low-
rise neighbourhood units, it was characterised in the postwar period by huge
housing ensembles, which preceded even their European counterparts. By the
1970s, large-scale urban development had given way to the unplanned and
the ad hoc with the unchecked growth of low-rise squatter settlements as the
efcient gave way to the exible, and big boxes were replaced by small units.
21
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Images courtesy of Supersudaca
22 22
PREVI-LIMAS TIME
POSITIONING PROYECTO
EXPERIMENTAL DE VIVIENDA
IN PERUS MODERN PROJECT
Launched in 1968, the PREVI-Lima housing competition
brought informal urbanisation to the attention of architects
worldwide. The competition brief required the design of low-rise,
high-density expandable homes, grouped in neighbourhoods.
Here Sharif S Kahatt puts PREVIs experimental project within
the social, political and theoretical context of the time.
Sharif S Kahatt
23 23
The aim of the PREVI-Lima was to produce a new generation
of unidades vecinales (neighbourhood units) with spatial and
formal qualities able to ultimately achieve social meaning
and to create a sense of community through the dwellers
appropriation of the houses and public spaces. Unidades vecinales
were the most signicant product of the Peruvian Modern
Project, a political and cultural modernisation movement that
gained momentum in the 1940s. This overlapping of Anglo-
Saxon modernisation and traditional patterns endured for
several decades, reaching its climax in the 1960s. Proyecto
Experimental de Vivienda (PREVI) (196875) was a Peruvian
government initiative and United Nations-sponsored project.
It was the most signicant effort to overcome the housing and
urbanisation crisis in a third world country in those years, and
its strategies are still relevant today.
Limas barriadas, or shantytowns, emerged in the 1950s and
were one of the fastest growing forms of urban settlement for
the poor. Between 1940 and 1972, the city grew from nearly
650,000 to 3.5 million inhabitants, an increase of approximately
500 per cent, and the number of squatters grew from 1 per
cent to 25 per cent of the total population. In response to
this, the Peruvian government launched a consulting group to
identify the housing crisis problems and the potential solutions.
The Comisin de la Reforma Agraria y Vivienda (CRAV)
(19568) was led by architect Adolfo Cordova, advised by
architect Eduardo Neira and anthropologist Jos Matos Mar.
The housing decit was the result of deep structural social
and economic problems, and CRAV therefore proposed the
improvement of the barriadas as the best way to tackle it.
Accordingly, the team promoted the idea of site-and-service
developments (neighbourhoods with a minimum number of
units that provided only basic services such as power, water
and perimeter walls) and self-help construction to overcome
the governments lack of economic resources to provide
mass housing. This resulted in the expandable housing unit
concept, the viviendas elemental (elemental houses), that were
to be completed progressively by their owners with technical
assistance provided free of charge by the government through
the Corporacin Nacional de la Vivienda (CNV). CRAV also
believed that the self-help process would connect the people
with their houses as they built them. Hence from the mid-
1950s, ideas of participation in architecture and urbanism
began to take shape in Limas squatter towns. Indeed, even
though participation has always been associated with advocacy
and participatory planning ideas drawn from the international
scene, British architect John Turner took from his involvement
in housing in Peru an understanding of the possibilities of
pluralistic and inclusive representation of citizens interests in
urban development.
Turner worked in various Peruvian cities for government
agencies between 1957 and 1965, dealing with emergency
housing and on the improvement of the barriadas and self-
build projects. This context of uncontrolled urbanisation
and informal settlements was surveyed and exposed by him
in his article Dwelling Resources in South America, in the
now legendary 1963 issue of 2.
1
Since then, and in Turners
subsequent writings on the subject, barriadas and self-build have
represented peoples fundamental freedoms: to budget ones own
resources, community self-selection, and to shape ones own
environment. According to Turner, enabling the individual to
have these choices was the best way of realising freedom in the
contemporary industrialised society. Similarly, open form and
open design as the open work theory were already present
in urban housing experiments such as Ciudad de Dios (19548),
the rst site-and-service project in Lima by the Corporacin
Nacional de la Vivienda.
PREVI Ofce, Urban project site plan for
2,000 units, Lima, Peru, 196875
opposite: Designed by the PREVI Ofce
team directed by Peter Land, the nal
project combines the competition entry
clusters with urban infrastructure and
service buildings.
below: Aerial view of the projects rst
phase in 1975 showing the different
clusters of the PREVI competition entries.
This rst phase was the only one built.
The subsequent phases were planned to
be connected through the pedestrian spine
and a central community service building.
24 24
PREVI-Lima competition, 1969
The Peruvian and international proposals
developed by the PREVI Ofce. The
proposals show diversity in the design of
the clusters and different interpretations of
public space and pedestrian networks.
25 25
ofcials meant a dead-end for PREVI. Although the PREVI
Ofce produced a new neighbourhood plan for 2,000 units,
including 24 of the originally proposed 26 clusters, the
project was scaled down in scope and its potential impact
greatly reduced, its 500 evolving units becoming just a test
of the solution. Nevertheless, PREVIs houses embody
the hybridisation of the Peruvian Modern Project and also
embrace the physical overlapping and rich negotiation of the
complexities of local urban culture.
After PREVI, Peter Land left Lima and the project
experienced a number of delays before nally being inhabited
in 1977. Since then, only one unidad vecinal (Los Proceres)
in the early 1980s deliberately followed this strategy in Lima,
and the idea slowly vanished. However, though it may have
been idle for many years, such a concept now seems to be
serving as an important platform for fresh mass and popular
housing initiatives around the world. One can see Turners ideas
recaptured and developed in Mike Davis Planet of Slums;
4
or
more specically, the whole idea of PREVI revamped in Chiles
Elemental housing competition in 2003 and the various city
housing projects by Alejandro Aravena/Elemental ofce (see pp
327). Bold ideas seem to be back. 1
Notes
1. Turners relevant work includes: John FC Turner and William Mangin,
Dwelling resources in South America, in Monica Pidgeon and Patrick Crooks
(eds), 2, Vol 33, August 1963; John FC Turner, The Squatter Settlement:
Architecture That Works, in Monica Pidgeon and Gwen Bell (eds), The
Architecture of Democracy, 2, Vol 8, No 38, 1968; Horacio Caminos,
John Turner and John Stefan, Urban Dwelling Environments, MIT Press
(Cambridge, MA), 1969; John FC Turner and Robert Fichter (eds), Freedom
to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process, Macmillan (New York),
1972; John FC Turner, Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building
Environments, Marion Boyars (London), 1976
2. See PREVI-Lima: Low Cost Housing Project, in 2, Vol 4, 1970.
3. The organisation of the competition, although effectively carried out by
Peter Land and his team at Banco de la Vivienda, was ofcially run by the
Colegio de Arquitectos del Peru and the International Union of Architects
(UIA), and the announcement made by the Housing Ministry and the United
Nations Organization on 23 September 1969. The members of the jury
(Eduardo Barclay, Manuel Valega, Ricardo Malachowski, Daro Gonzlez,
Alfredo Prez Peru; Jos Antonio Coderch Spain; Halldor Gunnlogson
Denmark; lvaro Ortega UN; Carl Koch USA/UIA; Ernest Weissman
UN; and Peter Land UN) chose six ofcial winners of the competition.
These were Atelier 5 (Switzerland), Maki, Kitutake, Kurokawa (Japan), Ohl
(Germany), Mazzari, Llanos (Peru), Chaparro, Smirnoff, Wyzkowski, Ramrez
(Peru) and Crousse, Pez, Prez Len (Peru). Although there was an ofcial
recognition of the winners, none of the winning proposals was built in its
entirety; nor was the project divided between the six winners as suggested.
4. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso (London), 2006.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 20 Drawing: Sharif Kahatt; p 21
PREVI Ofce; p 24 Sharif Kahatt
Synthesising all these experiences, the PREVI competition
was promoted by Peruvian president and architect Fernando
Belande and sponsored by the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) between 1968 and 1975. Its objective was
to outline solutions to the overwhelming informal urbanisation
in developing countries and to create new models for economic
housing. The main aim of PREVIs director, the British architect
Peter Land, was to adopt current thinking on prefabrication and
mass-housing production and to adapt it to the constraints and
sociocultural context of a developing world city such as Lima.
Land, who had been teaching urbanism in Lima since 1964, had
been working on preliminary studies for low-income housing
since 1966, and in 1968 was all ready, along with his project
ofce, to launch the PREVI international competition.
The competition brief was for a proposal for 1,500 housing
units on a desert site of 40 hectares (98.8 acres) next to the
Pan-American Highway, 8 kilometres (4.9 miles) north of
Limas downtown. Plots were to be no smaller that 80 square
metres (861.1 square feet) or larger than 150 square metres
(1,614.5 square feet), with a built area between 60 and 120
square metres (645.8 and 1,291.6 square feet). The basic unit
was to be the one- or two-storey patio house that could be
expanded up to three storeys high, based on a standardised
modular design for easy production. PREVIs plan was for an
initial settlement of 8,400 inhabitants, growing to a population
surpassing 10,000. In order to minimise built space and
maximise public space, an innovative approach was required.
Sustainable factors such as orientation, ventilation, sun and
noise control needed to be considered. The project also needed
to serve different family sizes and interpret Limas traditional
public spaces plazas, church atria, paseos and alamedas in
order to encourage social interaction.
PREVI thus called for an urban-architecture project
based on six main requirements: establishing high-density,
low-rise urban housing as an urban principle; organisation of
the neighbourhood based on the concept of cluster around a
plaza to generate a sense of community; interpretation of the
notion of casa-que-crece (expandable house), with a garden/patio
to allow growth and change; a landscape plan with lighting
and street furniture; prefabricated low-cost materials for mass
production; and the envisioning of an entirely human-scale
pedestrian environment neighbourhood with trafc separation.
2
The jury met in Lima in September 1969 to elect the
six winning proposals, though none was ever fully realised.
3

Conicts between Perus new military regime and UNDP
26
THE
EXPERIMENTAL
HOUSING
PROJECT
(PREVI),
LIMA
THE MAKING OF A
NEIGHBOURHOOD
The original vision at PREVI-Lima was only ever partially
realised: less than a third of the 1,500 planned housing units were
built and the governmental crisis of the late 1960s meant that
the occupants were left to their own devices. Fernando Garca-
Huidobro, Diego Torres Torriti and Nicols Tugas look at how,
abandoned by the authorities, the families at PREVI turned into
incidental architects, completing the project and rendering the
neighbourhood an integrated part of the city.
Fernando Garca-Huidobro
Diego Torres Torriti
Nicols Tugas
27
PREVI-Lima, carried out between 1968 and 1975 through
an international
1
and a national
2
competition, was an
opportunity for an internationally diverse group of renowned
architects of the time, such as James Stirling from the UK,
Atelier 5 from Switzerland, Charles Correa from India and
Christopher Alexander from the US, to test the concept of
low-rise high-density housing.
The concept was a statement against the Modernist model
of urban design that was heir to the time of the rst CIAM,
3

the negative effects of which were already being experienced in
certain European and Latin American cities. Its primary goals
were exibility of the housing element combined with different
land-use strategies. The commitment of the PREVI initiative
to this low-rise high-density housing concept thus produced a
proposal for a neighbourhood of different housing typologies to
suit diverse family sizes and with various expansion possibilities.
Although the original aim of the competition was to build
1,500 units of the winning project in different phases,
4
in the
end the jury
5
instead proposed building a small piece of each of
the 26 project entries as a collage neighbourhood of 467 units
in the rst and, as it was to turn out, only phase of the initiative.
The Development Group,
6
an interdisciplinary team led by
the British architect Peter Land, was in charge of the design
of the masterplan and construction of the neighbourhood
that would stitch all the different bits together. However, the
governmental crisis of the late 1960s delayed the schedule; it
became impossible to provide technical assistance and advice to
the end users and, after delivering the houses, the project was
discontinued and the experience forgotten.
In 2003, the current state of PREVI was researched as part
of our architectural degree thesis at the Ponticia Universidad
Catolica de Chile.
7
This focused on verifying how the families,
turned into incidental architects, had completed the project
and transformed it into a consolidated and integrated piece of
the city. The houses have been transformed, dozens of small
businesses ourish and special rental systems for subdivisions
of the original units make up a dense, active neighbourhood.
opposite: On-site survey sketch. below: Isometric schemes of the original
project and the current state of the
neighbourhood, highlighting selected
case studies.
28
of transportation. It was the foundations of an unnished
city, planned to be self-completed, which in the end was
transformed by the community beyond what had been planned
into a functional neighbourhood and thriving economy
evidence of the delicate balance between economic planning
and free market design.
The urban approach included three main strategies:
1 A pedestrian axis that connects educational and sports
facilities and the main park. Running through the centre
of the neighbourhood, the pedestrian street activates and
denes its core, allowing any public transport to stop to
make the whole system more efcient.
2 A network of small plazas and pedestrian passages based
on the relationship between the urban unit (the plaza)
and the social unit (the self-organising community). This
urban/social connection promotes the collective care
and maintenance of public space, allowing the plazas to
serve as an extension of the domestic space. This plaza-
and-passage scheme also articulates the different clusters
formed by the original projects.
3 Trafc separation, with perimeter roads, cul-de-sacs
and parking areas a layout that does not interrupt
the pedestrian network of public spaces. Avoiding the
fragmentation of traditional street layouts in this way
means signicantly reduced air and noise pollution, and
increased safety, improving quality of life.
Multi-Scale Thinking
The PREVI experience demonstrates the importance of
having a planning team with a comprehensive urban approach;
since only with a complex and collective understanding of
the urban phenomenon beyond the residential is it possible
to create optimal strategies that enable its eventual users
to continue the projects development. PREVIs approach
Despite the lack of technical advice, PREVI has become a high-
quality urban neighbourhood. So what were the strategies of the
original plan? What was the logic behind this transformation,
and what are the lessons to be learned from the project?
Dynamic Habitat
The lack of resources typical of social housing projects has
several consequences in the overall quality of the houses: for
example, their inability to adapt to changing family needs,
and their tendency to decrease in value over time. Taking into
account the efforts families make to transform their properties
is necessary in order to design projects that can accommodate
change while preserving the quality of the built environment.
But even more important is recognising housing as a dynamic
process that has consequences on the efciency of public
spending: increases in property values have a direct impact
on the quality of life of their inhabitants, whether in terms of
the improved standard of the dwelling itself, or the increase in
capital which allows the family to move on to a better house or
wealthier neighbourhood.
The PREVI neighbourhood was planned for expansion;
its urban layout allows for the interventions of each family
yet resists a higher density, increasing the value of both the
properties and the neighbourhood. It is an example of how
such increases in value have encouraged subsequent generations
to remain in the same neighbourhood, preventing the cycle of
deterioration that results when family incomes increase and
their houses are unable to respond to their new aspirations,
forcing them to move away and ultimately limiting the
neighbourhood to low-income families.
Open Urban Design: Support for Development
The PREVI project succeeded in delivering what would
otherwise have been very difcult to achieve in a low-income
neighbourhood: metropolitan-scale infrastructure and
services, and a sophisticated network of public spaces offering
access to each plot that also articulates the different modes
29
incorporated the metropolitan scale (connectivity), the
neighbourhood scale (service provision), the vicinity scale (the
network of plazas and pedestrian corridors), and the housing
scale (expansion strategies).
Change of Use
The transformation of a house depends to a great extent on
the familys needs. However, the location of a house within
a diverse urban fabric is also a determining factor for its
potential development. The emergence of new uses beyond
the residential is directly related to the various aspects of
the neighbourhood design. In PREVI, the properties facing
the perimeter roads connecting the neighbourhood with
the city have been transformed into convenience stores. The
main pedestrian street also has a large number of shops,
but these are more of the local corner-shop kind. Around
the central park, the houses have been transformed into a
couple of nurseries and a school that use the park for various
activities, intensifying the use of public space. Understanding
the location patterns of new uses such as these makes it
possible to design a neighbourhood well prepared for change,
without generic or overdetermined zoning, that promotes
entrepreneurship (in the form of new family businesses) to
strengthen the local economy.
Self-Managed Transformation: A Family Pattern
The family evolution pattern is the sequence in which a
family satises its changing needs, and is key in the design
of neighbourhood projects planned to be self-managed or
self-completed. The pattern follows the following stages:
1) installation the family makes minor modications to
secure the property and to establish its own identity; 2)
densication the family grows and incorporates new family
nuclei, the stage that demands the greatest building effort;
and 3) consolidation and diversication once completed,
the house is divided into different units, in many cases
incorporating new uses.
opposite and below left, from left to
right: Main pedestrian and amenities axis;
pedestrian structure of community plazas
and walkways; trafc structure, vehicle
penetration and parking areas.
below right: New uses at PREVI.
Commercial uses tend to be located
towards the perimeter streets and the
main pedestrian street. Educational uses
surround the main park.
Understanding the location patterns
of new uses makes it possible to
design a neighbourhood well prepared for
change, without generic or overdetermined
zoning, that promotes entrepreneurship
(in the form of new family businesses) to
strengthen the local economy.
30
31
Added Value
The virtue of such projects is in the added value created by such
extensions and changes. To achieve this, the initial stage of the
project must include guidelines that are exible enough to allow
for future customisation, but also impose certain safety and
environmental conditions. This is facilitated by the provision of
the correct structural elements and vacant spaces for inhabitants
to carry out extensions to their houses later on. The permanent
xtures, such as the central yard or base of the house, a sidewalk
or a plaza, must also be clearly identied.
The rst stage must also begin a process that promotes the
domestic economy, the formation of social networks and the
incorporation of income units; that is, independent houses
or facilities which families can use to increase their income.
Examples of this include the multifamily house and, to a greater
extent, the hyperhouse.
8
In the latter case, the value of the
house lies not only in its capacity as a home, but also in its
potential for generating income and strengthening the familys
economy. It thus represents an optimal approach to social
investment in housing issues.
A Turning Point
Half a century after the regional urban crisis, the built
environment in Latin America shows that its governments
were, to a large extent, convinced that the social crisis was a
housing crisis. The housing decit somehow resulted in the
mass-production of the isolated housing block, the building
of low-density projects on the outskirts of the cities, and the
implementation of projects to provide services and facilities
such as water, sewerage and electricity only when demand far
exceeded supply all of which have had the negative effect of
planning for marginalisation. PREVI-Lima is a repository for
the concepts of the functional city and low-rise high-density
housing, and a counterpoint in its approach to cooperative
urban strategies and in its close relationship with the social unit.
The now almost four decades of constant consolidation, increase
in families capital and the transformation of public spending
into social investment conrm the PREVI experience as a valid
approach to achieving a successful development. 1
Notes
1. The following 13 international teams were invited: James Stirling
(UK); Esquerra, Samper, Senz, Urdaneta (Colombia); Knud Svensson
(Denmark); Atelier 5 (Switzerland); Toivo Korhonen (Finland); Charles
Correa (India); Herbert Ohl (Germany); Kikutake, Maki, Kurokawa
(Japan); Iiguez de Onzoo, Vsquez de Castro (Spain); Hansen,
Hatloy (Poland); Aldo van Eyck (the Netherlands); Candilis, Josic,
Woods (France); Christopher Alexander (US).
2. The Peruvian teams selected in an open competition were: Miguel
Alvario; Ernesto Paredes; Mir-Quesada, Williams, Nez; Gunter,
Seminario; Morales, Montagne; Juan Reiser; Eduardo Orrego; Vier,
Zanelli; Vella, Bentn, Quiones, Takahashi; Mazzarri, Llanos;
Cooper, Garca-Bryce, Graa, Nicolini; Chaparro, Ramrez, Smirnoff,
Wiskowsky; Crousse, Pez, Prez-Len
3. The rst ve versions of the Congrs International dArchitecture
Moderne (CIAM), introduced between 1928 and 1937, had housing
as the main issue. Gathered around the gure of Le Corbusier, CIAM
developed the concept of high-rise housing blocks and strict urban
zoning to tackle the urban problems and future challenges at the time.
4. The jury, made up of national and foreign members, dened
three prizes at the same level for the teams in each category. The
international teams were: Atelier 5; Herbert Ohl; and Kikutake, Maki,
Kurokawa. The Peruvian teams were: Mazzarri, Llanos; Chaparro,
Ramrez, Smirnoff, Wiskowsky; and Crousse, Pez, Prez Len.
5. The jury members were Peter Land (UN), Jos Antonio Coderch
(Spain), Halldor Gunnlogsson (Denmark), Ernest Weissmann (UN),
Carl Koch (USA, UIA), Manuel Valega (Peru), Ricardo Malachowski
(Peru), Eduardo Barclay (Peru) and assistants Daro Gonzlez (Peru)
and lvaro Ortega (UN).
6. The Development Group consisted of international and national
specialists during the different stages of the project. In the initial
stages, the project was carried out by Peter Land (architect, creator of
the PREVI initiative and head consultant) and lvaro Ortega (architect,
interregional consultant for the UN) as supervisor. The national
managers included Fernando Correa Miller (architect), Carlos Morales
Macchiavello (architect) and Oscar Pacheco (architect) as three of
the 10 co-managers of PREVI. Raquel Barrionuevo de Machicao
(civil engineer and drains engineer) and Javier Santolalla Silva (civil
engineer) were involved in all the phases of the project, including the
comprehensive assessment of PREVI.
7. The research has now been published as: Fernando Garca-
Huidobro, Diego Torres Torriti and Nicols Tugas, Time Builds!: The
Experimental Housing Project (PREVI), Lima. Genesis and Outcome,
Gustavo Gili (Barcelona), 2008.
8. The term refers to the capacity of such houses to have a
multidimensional programme or complementary uses that can
generate an income through the inclusion of small businesses or
rooms for rent.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images Fernando Garca-Huidobro, Diego
Torres Torriti and Nicols Tugas
opposite top: Fernandez family house in
a Kikutake, Maki, Kurokawa design. The
installation of a shop and rental apartment
consolidates the house, thanks to the potential
of the original project: the double frontage that
allows for separate access for the family and
the shop, the patio which separates both uses
and provides environmental quality, and the
stairs that enable the division of the house and
provide versatility. The lack of denition of the
frontyard space means the houses can expand
up to the boundary of the sidewalk.
opposite centre: Zamora family house in a
James Stirling design. A rigid perimeter, not
easily modied and which delineates the
property; the pillars that mark out the corners
of the yard and allow a permeable, uent
connection between the living quarters and
the yard; and the top slabs for the subsequent
extensions, all make this type one of PREVIs
successes. The family has taken advantage of
the strategic position of this corner house, in
front of a community plaza and the main park,
to build a shop and a couple of ofces.
opposite bottom: Castro family house in a Charles
Correa design. This house was designed to
accommodate a 12-children family by expanding
the original unit by 3.5. After 11 of the children
moved abroad, leaving just one daughter in
charge, the house was transformed into a
boarding house with 10 rooms, communal spaces
and an independent apartment for the owner.
The double frontage allows for independent
access. On a larger scale, all the houses of this
type were expanded up to the outermost lines of
their facades, transforming the original irregular
clusters into regular blocks.
32 32
ELEMENTAL
A DO TANK
Alejandro Aravena has gained
international honours and awards for
his pioneering work at Elemental. An
independent practice with a social
conscience, Elemental seeks to deliver
greater equality for urban dwellers and
improve the quality of peoples lives. It has
formed key partnerships with Universidad
Catolica de Chile (Chiles Catholic
University) and the Chilean oil company,
COPEC. Here Aravena describes some of
the works that have informed Elementals
strategy: from its rst housing project in
Iquique in northern Chile to a sustainable
masterplan with Arup for the coastal
town of Constitucin in the wake of the
Chilean earthquake.
Alejandro Aravena
Elemental is a for-prot company with a social conscience
working on projects that capitalise on the citys capacity to
create wealth and provide a short cut to equality by improving
quality of life without having to wait for income redistribution.
Elemental has been operating since 2002, and since 2006 has
worked in partnership with Universidad Catolica de Chile
(Chiles Catholic University) and the Chilean oil company,
COPEC. This unusual combination of academic excellence,
corporate vision and entrepreneurship has been instrumental in
enabling Elemental to expand its scope in the city. It is currently
engaged in upgrading urban infrastructure, transportation
networks, services and housing.
Elemental Housing
When Elemental rst took off at Harvard University in 2000,
social housing was associated with a dearth of economic and
professional resources that meant limited options for poor
families. Elemental sought to change this negative association,
using professional skills to work with social housing providers.
The aim was to generate a technical scenario that would
guarantee value gain over time without the need to change
existing policies or market conditions.
There have been perhaps two major moments in the
history of social housing. The rst came in 1927, when, in
the Weissenhofsiedlung of Stuttgart, the best architects at
the time, made built contributions to try to solve the problem
of low-cost housing. The second came in 1970, after the
PREVI-Lima project (196875), when attempts by avant-
garde architects to help overcome a housing decit came to an
end. We are planning to write the third chapter of this story by
again bringing the best architects to solve that most difcult of
architectural issues: extremely low-cost housing that can be a
real means to overcoming poverty.
1

Elemental Iquique (2003) was the rst project in Chile
to apply the companys design criteria and conrm that
the methodology worked. Five years after its construction,
there was an overall increase in the value of both houses and
neighbourhood. The project, in a city in the North Chilean
desert, involved settling 93 families on the site where they
had been squatting for the last 30 years in the heart of Iquiques
downtown instead of displacing them to the periphery. The
budget was US$7,500 per family. The opportunity to develop
this site allowed Elemental to test its own developed design
criteria for ensuring that each unit appreciated in value so that
social housing could become a social investment instead of a
social expense. Success was achieved by clearly identifying the
restrictions and then working with the families themselves in
participative workshops, proving feasibility on a local level. The
results? People were able to double the area of their original
homes (36 square metres/387.5 square feet) at a cost of only
$1,000 each. Today, ve years later, any house in the Elemental
Iquique project is now valued at over $20,000.
33 33
When Elemental rst took off at Harvard University in 2000, social housing was
associated with a dearth of economic and professional resources that meant
limited options for poor families. Elemental sought to change this negative
association, using professional skills to work with social housing providers.
Elemental_Lo Espejo, Santiago, 2007
top: Elemental housing shown before and
after customised expansion. The house
grew from 36 square metres (387.5
square feet) to 72 square metres (775
square feet).
Elemental_Renca, Santiago, 2008
opposite: Community workshop where
both the projects limitations and its
benets were communicated through paper
models made by the families.
Elemental, Quinta Monroy, Iquique, 20056
above: First half of the house built at a
cost of US$7,500; the second half
(self-construction) for $750. The market
value of the house after completion was
$20,000.
34 34
Resolving the housing problem of
the worlds poor requires action on a
massive scale that can only be achieved
by worldwide cooperation in the transfer
of technology. Elemental is committed
to developing projects together with
local builders and governments around
the world, transmitting its experience
through specic projects.
Elemental_Monterrey, Mexico, 2010
centre: First Elemental housing project
located outside Chile. Winner of the Brit
Insurance Prize for Architecture, 2010.
Elemental_Paraispolis, So Paulo, 2011
above: This high-density housing complex,
located in the Paraispolis favela on the
outskirts of So Paulo, is currently under
construction.
Elemental_E-block, Prefabricated
prototype, 2008
top: The new prefabricated prototype,
customisable through self-construction
by the owners.
35 35
Scale and Speed
By 2030, the population of the world living in cities will have
increased from 3 to 5 billion, with 2 billion of these living below
the poverty line. The problem the world needs to solve is to
build a 1-million-inhabitant city per week for the next 20 years
for $10,000 dollars per family. Elemental is working on a scale
and speed strategy to share its experience and quality standards
with poor communities around the globe.
Scale
Resolving the housing problem of the worlds poor requires
action on a massive scale that can only be achieved by
worldwide cooperation in the transfer of technology. Elemental
is committed to developing projects together with local builders
and governments around the world, transmitting its experience
through specic projects. For example, the company has worked
in partnership with the Make It Right Foundation-New
Orleans, the City of So Paulo and the government of Nuevo
Len, Mexico, to develop projects using Elementals design
principles. In Mexico, the Housing Institute of Nuevo Len
commissioned a group of 70 homes on a site of 0.6 hectares
(1.48 acres) in a middle-class neighbourhood in Monterrey
(2010). This project demonstrates the adaptability of the design
criteria abroad, empowering local builders by giving them the
knowledge that allows them to take these same innovations and
apply them themselves.
Speed
The key to increasing the speed of construction lies in
prefabrication. Historically, prefabricated systems have been
criticised for their inability to adapt to varied situations.
However, if the goal is to prefabricate only half a house, this
problem no longer exists. Each owner, when building the second
half of his or her house, is responsible for customising the nal
solution. Moreover, while the rst half becomes more strategic
(ie, concentrating on the difcult parts of the house), it achieves
a more universal application, justifying and conrming the
advantages of prefabrication. These concepts were implemented
in the Milan Triennale prototype (2008) that can be assembled
in 24 hours, successes which then led to the second phase
development of the E-block, a second-generation of prefab
prototypes that with speed and exibility can generate housing
for whole neighbourhoods where resources are scarce.
Elementals Response to the Chilean Earthquake
On 27 February 2010, an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the
Richter scale, and resultant tsunami hit Chile, affecting
the greater part of the country. Two days after the incident,
Elemental began work on three different projects, at varying
speeds and scales, to assist the people and cities of Chile.
Elemental_Milan, Prefabricated
prototype, 2008
top: Isometric showing the prefabricated
concrete panels that can be assembled in
24 hours, and the built result.
Elemental_Rolling Water, 1st-day
response, Chile, 2010
above: First-day relief response following
the 8.8 magnitude earthquake an
innovative strategy for distributing water by
rolling it along instead of carrying it.
36 36
1st-Day Response
The process of collecting water from a central distribution
tank is inefcient for two reasons: water is heavy, making
it impossible to carry large quantities at any one time, and
containers that can efciently hold and carry water are not
readily available. Under normal circumstances, a family needs
between 20 and 25 litres (5.5 gallons) of water daily to meet
their basic drinking, cooking and washing needs. Obviously,
these simple tasks will require much more time if water has to
be collected several times rather than once.
Referencing methods of transporting water in Africa,
Elemental proposed rolling water instead of carrying it. Rolling
water is a more efcient means of transporting this necessity.
The process, which is so easy that even a child can do it, consists
of: 1) lling plastic bottles with water; 2) packing the bottles
tightly inside a tyre; 3) lifting the tyre into an upright position;
and 4) rolling the tyre alongside you.
10th-Day Response
Each 32-square-metre (344.4-square-foot) Elemental
emergency housing unit was designed to utilise natural light and
cross-ventilation and to be assembled within 48 hours by a team
of three people. Made from 14 structurally insulated panels
(SIPs) that can later be reused for constructing permanent
accommodation, it is possible to build 50 units daily. The goal
was to buy time so that the quality of reconstruction was of a
higher standard; otherwise the urgency and pressure to provide
solutions would compromise the end result.
100th-Day Response
The municipality and government of Constitucin contacted
Elemental inviting the company to join a team of Chilean
organisations and the international engineering rm Arup to
work on PRES, a masterplan for the sustainable reconstruction
of this coastal city. About 80 per cent of the city was destroyed
by the earthquake and resultant tsunami; the team had 90 days
to completely redesign the city including its infrastructure,
energy distribution systems, waste management, housing, public
spaces and facilities.
One part of the masterplan consisted of a 7-kilometre (4.3-
mile) long park to be situated along the river and coastal edge of
the city. Not only does this provide much-needed green space,
but a heavily wooded area serves to mitigate the effects of future
tsunamis, with a modeled potential reduction in the force of the
water of up to 41 per cent and of its height by up to 28 per cent.
PRES also plans for increased density at the city
centre while transforming certain streets into pedestrian
walkways. In addition to the reconstruction of keynote
public buildings, different housing typologies were designed
to take account of variables such as surface area and to allow
for the possibility of expansion. And with reconstruction
came the opportunity to capture the citys renewable energy
potential. Photovoltaic lights were incorporated into the
new pedestrian walkways and, rather than electricity, solar
The municipality and government of
Constitucin contacted Elemental inviting the
company to join a team of Chilean organisations
and the international engineering rm ARUP to
work on PRES, a masterplan for the sustainable
reconstruction of this coastal city.
Elemental_Emergency House, 10th-day
response, Chile, 2010
top: Relief response for the 10th day
following the earthquake an emergency
shelter made of 14 SIP panels which can
be assembled within 48 hours.
Elemental_PRES, 100th-day response,
Chile, 2010
above: Relief response for the 100th day
following the earthquake. A sustainable
masterplan for the reconstruction of
Constitucin, a city left with 80 per cent
destruction due to the earthquake and
resultant tsunami. The proposal called
for construction of a park along the coast
of the river and ocean to mitigate future
tsunami damage.
37 37
panels are used to heat water for homes. Also, the residual
heat produced by the cellulose plant near the city centre
would be harnessed to heat public buildings and facilities.
Citizen Participation
Implementing PRES involved meshing the know-how and
experience of professionals and local authorities with the
views and aspirations of the citizens. Utilising the design of
Elementals emergency housing unit, a town hall was built in
the city centre that housed various forums and discussion groups
on the citys development. During the 90 days within which
the redesign of the city had to be completed, the town hall
received 6,300 visitors, more than 1,200 ideas were deposited in
its mailbox, and 4,230 votes were counted in community polls.
It was an unprecedented level of participation that allowed the
vision and priorities of the citys citizens to be incorporated
within the nal proposal.
Chile has a history of destructive earthquakes, but each one has
left behind a legacy of improved construction standards. In part
due to the latest disaster, Elemental believes it is now necessary
to design coastal cities with an inherent ability to withstand
tsunamis, and to consider seismic isolation for basic services and
utilities serving all cities.
One last point. Under normal circumstances, Chilean (and
other Latin American) cities do not grow at the same rate as
per capita income. Which is why the process of reconstruction
with its emphasis on public space within the citys natural and
geographic setting is an opportunity to improve upon the citys
potential for growth. 1
Note
1. Alejandro Aravena, Elemental: Building Innovative Social Housing in
Chile, Harvard Design Magazine 21, Fall/Winter 2004/5.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images Elemental
top: The mitigation park was designed to
reduce the speed and height of tsunami
waves by means of trees and landscaping
that create friction with the water.
above: The town hall served as a venue
for the citizens and designers to meet
to discuss and vote on the development
of the city.
38 38
TLACOLULA
SOCIAL HOUSING,
OAXACA, MEXICO
Oaxaca in southern Mexico is one of the most economically
marginal states in the country, with a large portion of its
population requiring social housing. This has been further
exacerbated by the widespread adoption of a suburban American
housing model that has led to local communities becoming
socially and culturally alienated. At Tlacolula, in Oaxaca,
Dellekamp Arquitectos describe how they have set out to create
a housing development that engenders locality and a sense of
community through a traditional barrio neighbourhood design.
Dellekamp Arquitectos
39 39
Tlacolula is a housing development
project that bets on locality: it interprets
ancestral solutions embedded in local
traditional architecture, speaks to the
local aspirational model by integrating
culturally rich uses of public and private
space, and aims at creating an urban
system that grows and adapts to the
communitys needs. Currently under
construction, the 1,200-unit project by
Dellekamp Arquitectos, for local private
developer Novaterra Inmobiliaria, is
located 26 kilometres (16.1 miles) from
the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, most of whose
population is in need of social housing
due to their low income.
Although the region has exploited its
long-standing traditions to attract tourism,
social housing development has culturally
and socially alienated local communities.
Developers across the country have
purblindly implemented a distortion of the
suburban American housing model that
has proven unsuitable to local conditions.
When made to t native constraints, this
model has led to isolated, overcrowded
neighbourhoods severed from major city
services and cultural hubs.
1
By fragmenting
informal social networks and stagnating
social mobility, the overall effect has been
to undermine the communities identity and
wrest long-term surplus value from them
and transfer it to property. The standardised
model systemically produces block dwellers
rather than city dwellers. Moreover, it is
environmentally detrimental: it overlooks
climate restrictions, public health, service
quality, local resources, workplace commutes,
education availability and the social fabric.
Tlacolula proposes a viable alternative
model that hinges on community engagement
to facilitate civic integration and aspirational
expression. Houses are designed as an
ecosystem that leads to a site-specic,
sustainable and self-sufcient eco-social
setup that integrates transport hubs and
commercial, service and green areas. The
project follows four main strategies. First,
it actively engages residents, giving them a
voice in how their community is developed.
Houses are designed as an ecosystem
that leads to a site-specic, sustainable
and self-sufcient eco-social setup
that integrates transport hubs and
commercial, service and green areas.
Dellekamp Arquitectos, Social Housing,
Tlacolula, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2010
opposite: The system of shifting modules
is designed to provide courtyard spaces
that offer the benets of collective
shading and cross-ventilation. The
variety of units also offers a number of
different-sized courtyards.
below: The Tlacolula housing modules can
be combined in a variety of ways to create
a diverse and unique urban experience.
Furthermore, each is painted in bright
unique colours inspired by the colourful
traditions of local Oaxacan culture.
bottom: Each home in the development
is built around a courtyard with open
access from the outside, strengthening
communication between neighbours and
accommodating local customs.
40 40
41 41
Second, it draws from vernacular building
forms and idioms a sense of place and
belonging is key to preserving the spirit of
community. Third, it creates a system rather
than a grid plots, walkways and streets
facilitate informal social networks while
clearly dening the private realm through a
framework for individual expression. Finally,
it provides a network of open public spaces
to establish a well-dened civic realm where
public spaces function as an integral part of
the communitys self-image and identity.
Tlacolula restores community through
traditional barrio neighbourhood design.
Courtyard exterior circulation, one of the
idioms of local barrio design, frees up 50 per
cent of each units plot. The houses delineate
trafc-free roads and are connected through
a network of walkways that interweave
service and green spaces. Streets and parking
areas have been pushed to the periphery to
create a pedestrian-friendly environment that
reduces car use.
Produced using local materials and to
suit different income levels, the units can be
articulated into a panoply of patterns. The
system of shifting modules yields benets
such as collective shading and cross-
ventilation, and the houses also employ
other simple energy-reduction practices such
as solar heaters and rainwater collection.
All vegetation is local and irrigated with
rainwater harvested and ltered through
permeable pavements. The exible nature
of this system allows it to adapt and shift
to accommodate different topographic
conditions, climates and family settings.
The dwellings are designed to grow, within a
predetermined set of construction guidelines,
with home-owners needs, to increase the
value of their housing patrimony. The result
is affordable, sustainable, opportunity-lled
housing within a community that supports its
residents and their requirements. 1
Note
1. Jeffrey H Cohen, Remittance Outcomes in Rural
Oaxaca, Mexico: Challenges, Options and Opportunities
for Migrant Households, Population, Space and Place
11, 2005, pp 4963.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images Dellekamp
Arquitectos
opposite: Located just outside the city of
Tlacolula, this project for 1,200 homes
employs socially and environmentally
sustainable strategies to create a growing
and exible system. As the project
continues to be built, the housing units will
form a network of pedestrian streets linked
to service and green areas.
top and centre: Inspired by the vernacular
courtyard house, each unit includes
a courtyard that provides a space for
conversation, games and leisure.
bottom: In order to support ample
amounts of vegetation, the development
is designed to be hydrologically
sustainable and efcient.
42
Ricky Burdett
Adam Kaasa
GOVERNING CHANGE
In 21st-century Latin America, cities are taking the lead. With the greatest
populations and economic output concentrated in large-scale metropolises,
there is a real sense that the largest cities are outgrowing their national
contexts. In many cases, power has been devolved at a municipal level. This
has enabled mayors to implement infrastructural and transport projects.
As Ricky Burdett and Adam Kaasa highlight in their discussion of two
particular initiatives in So Paulo and Mexico City, it has also opened the
way for innovative new community projects.
43
THE METROPOLITAN REVOLUTION
IN LATIN AMERICA
44
For thousands of years Latin America has been a region of
cities, but also a region of change. Whenever governments
change, or empires come and go, those same cities remain, often
taking on different social roles and physical shapes. Change
makes lucid the relationship between people, architecture and
the form of their cities, and the agents that govern them. In
1535, Lima, then known as La Ciudad de los Reyes, came into
existence as one of the most important early port cities of the
Spanish Empire, shifting the centre of power in the region from
Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire deep in the Andes, to the
primacy of coastal trade. From 1815 to 1821, Rio de Janeiro
became the capital city of the Portuguese Empire when royals
ed from Lisbon during the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. And
So Paulo, a small and relatively unpopulated outpost at the
turn of the last century, transformed as fast as the movement of
capital into one of the largest metropolitan regions in the
Americas. This is a region of endemic change but constant cities.
Over 200 years ago, revolutionary leaders across Latin
America took up arms against their colonial rulers. By 1840
the modern map of Latin America was redrawn. From old-
world empires to new-world nations Colombia and Peru,
Argentina and Brazil the regions nation-states as we know
them today were carved out of the viceroyalties of Spain and
Portugal. Governance in Latin America seems to have come in
waves of scale, moving from empires of conquest to nations of
revolution. Perhaps now a third governance revolution is taking
place, one that will transform the architecture and urban realms
of those cities as drastically as did the move from the lake city
of Tenochtitln at the heart of the Aztec Empire, to Mexico at
the centre of the viceroyalty of New Spain, to Mexico City as
exemplar of the modern urban condition of the 21st century.
This revolution is a metropolitan one.
Complexity and Change: Comparing Latin American Cities
From a distance, a metropolitan revolution in Latin America
reveals certain similarities, two of which stand out. First, most
of the larger Latin American cities concentrate percentages
of population and economic output that far outweigh their
national averages.
1
While cities have been magnets for
investment and trade throughout the regions history, they now
appear to be outgrowing their national contexts. This is not to
say that Lima is no longer in need of the national framework
afforded by Peru, but it does imply that social and economic
policies created at the national level no longer make scalar sense
for the complexities of large individual cities. Cities are the
drivers of change in the 21st century.
Second, while the wealth and centrality of cities has long
been subject to the political use and abuse of empire, or of
national governments, recent devolution has increased real
governmental authority in leadership at the local scale. Since
1997, for example, citizens of Mexico City have been able to
elect their mayor directly for the rst time in that citys history,
even though he is responsible for the central Federal District
(Distrito Federal) that contains about one-third of the 22
million population that spills over on to the state of Mexico.
Previously appointed by the national government, the mayor
of Mexico City DF remains one of the most important ofces
in the country, now with the local legitimacy and endorsement
of its constituents.
A similar constitutional amendment in Argentina in 1993
created the autonomous city of Buenos Aires with the power to
elect its own leadership. In 2007, the city embarked on a new
decentralisation scheme, creating new comunas managed by
seven-member elected committees. These have authority over
social and cultural policies at the neighbourhood level as well as
the management of green spaces and secondary roads.
In Brazil, the 2001 federal Statute of the City gave
more power to local government to use masterplanning to
avoid being held ransom by urban land markets. Yet still
today the mayor of So Paulo, the countrys largest city and
its economic engine, governs over only part of the built-
up area of this vast urban plateau, while large sections are
the responsibility of the governor of the larger state of So
Paulo, who often has different priorities to the more localised
interests of the city administration.
While the 1990s onwards saw shifts towards greater
metropolitan governance, there remained difculty in regionally
integrated decision-making within these metropolitan regions,
let alone between the federal, state and metropolitan scales.
However, the complexity and richness of the metropolitan
introduces more textured analysis of the contemporary urban
landscape than is often offered by more macroeconomic or
Change makes lucid the relationship
between people, architecture and
the form of their cities, and the
agents that govern them.
45
planning analysis. It is true that urban and social change in large
cities is never without national political consequence; still, these
recent changes mark the important rise of local governance
authority in Latin America and the move for national change to
start at the local city scale.
A third striking similarity is the high levels of inequality,
and the resulting spatial organisation of wealth and poverty.
Many large and successful Latin American cities continue to
act as funnels, consolidating rural populations into larger and
larger conurbations, and yet the region remains one of the most
unequal on the planet.
Much of the growth remains on the outer edges of cities,
like the Guarapiranga-Billings reservoirs in So Paulo, with
little access to services or amenities. Central areas of cities also
remain drastically divided, allowing multiple layers of a city
to operate simultaneously and in the same spaces but with
limited intersection. Gated residential communities and heavily
guarded public spaces like shopping centres have become
legitimate responses to the reality of urban violence, creating a
complex system of hierarchies of space within the city. Exclusive
hypermobilities of extensive highway systems and overpasses,
coupled with the inaccessibility of public transit and high land
values, fracture the lived experience of the rich and the poor,
thus affecting the physical layout of the city. Cities become
the spatial distillation of gross inequalities. Still, these same
cities play host to the saturated space of innovation and civic
engagement where those inequalities begin to change.
City Different: Spatial Representation, Density
and Transportation
Latin American cities share certain urban conditions, like
holding large concentrations of wealth and population,
being at the centre of recently devolved governance and
being radically unequal. However, if we zoom in to the
level of urban neighbourhoods, each is incredibly complex.
Compared to So Paulo or Buenos Aires, whose municipal
administrative boundaries do not begin to account for their
urban populations, the vast majority of Bogots citizens live
within these boundaries. This is a very important distinction. It
means that municipal governments are able to make decisions
and implement infrastructural and urban-planning changes
Complex land use and governance
opposite: View from the Carlos Laso Bridge
heading into Santa Fe, Mexico Citys
largest business district. It boasts Latin
Americas third-largest mall. The diversity
of land use in Mexico City adds to the
complexity of planning governance.
Good governance and integrated
decision-making
below: The governance charts of So Paulo,
Buenos Aires and Bogot demonstrate that
urban change requires integrated
decision-making across federal, state,
metropolitan and neighbourhood scales.
46
The disjuncture between
political administrative
boundaries and the actual
built-up area of a city offers
challenges for devolved
governmental decision-
making, particularly with
respect to quality of design,
equity of space, city nances,
control over growth, land use
and transportation.
47
or architectural design standards that will likely affect a very
large proportion of their citys larger population. For example,
the overwhelming majority of Bogots residents are served by
the TransMilenio initiative, largely attributed to the mayoral
leadership of Enrique Pealosa who prioritised bus rapid transit
over traditional rail-based metro transport and the massive
infrastructure requirements of the private car (see pp 905).
The disjuncture between political administrative boundaries
and the actual built-up area of a city offers challenges for
devolved governmental decision-making, particularly with
respect to quality of design, equity of space, city nances,
control over growth, land use and transportation. At the same
time, calls for metropolitan or regional governance bodies to
coordinate large infrastructural decisions across these political
lines are gaining salience.
While density maps differ more slightly across our cities,
when compared with the typology of buildings they reveal an
incredible story. Take the two largest cities in Latin America,
Mexico City and So Paulo, each with similar populations and
average densities. Mexico City, however, has a peak density of
over 48,300 people per square kilometre with So Paulo only
reaching 29,380 people per square kilometre. Mexico City, we
can say, has a building typology capable of accommodating
larger concentrations of residents. The comparison becomes
striking, however, when we look to the typologies prevalent in
these two cities: So Paulos skyline is dominated by high-rise
apartment blocks, while Mexico Citys is consistently low-rise.
Urban form and density are therefore two important debates
routinely juxtaposed, but not necessarily related.
Transportation infrastructures also differ greatly from city to
city. Transport is a fundamental character in the life of a city,
and the nuances of each system contain unique challenges that
demand unique solutions. So Paulo and Buenos Aires have the
largest proportions of people using cars for travel. In Mexico
City and Lima, the majority of residents use mini-buses, while
Rio de Janeiro has the most people who walk as their main form
of mobility. In So Paulo and Buenos Aires, integrated planning
mechanisms are required so that state and federal infrastructural
decisions for the metropolitan regions, often beyond the city
limits, support rather than hinder municipal transport goals. On
the other hand, large national transport policies and frameworks
Praa da S
Acute inequality
opposite top: Latin America is one of
the most unequal regions on the planet,
rivalled only by some countries in
Africa. Latin American cities, however,
consistently prove to be more equal than
their respective nations. Here we compare
material inequality using the Gini index,
The lower the Gini index, the more equal
the income and wealth distribution.
Informal housing and urban ecologies
opposite bottom: So Paulo is grappling
with the recent informal urbanisation of
its Guarapiranga-Billings reservoirs at
the south end of the city. An increase of
dwellings in the area threatens the water
quality of the entire region, while at the
same time highlighting the difculty of
housing vulnerable populations.
Real cities and abstract boundaries
left: One of the fundamental issues with
city government is the disjoint between
political administrative boundaries
and where people actually live. The
metropolitan footprint therefore acts as a
visual representation of the actual lived
city, stressing the need for local integrated
decision-making. Top to bottom: Buenos
Aires, Bogot, Lima, Mexico City, Rio de
Janeiro and So Paulo.
48
are unlikely to reect the subtleties of the terrain of Rocinha, the
largest favela in Brazil, located on the hillside of Rio de Janeiro.
Driven by auto-construction, basic sanitation and transport,
infrastructure is better here than in most favelas across the
country due to systematic local community intervention.
The relationship between ofcial and lived city limits,
social inequality, territory and urban form, density, urban
morphology and transportation speaks to the complexity of
urban conditions, and points us to the requirement for new and
innovative devolved forms of integrated governance. Mayors
are increasingly called into debates about environmental and
social sustainability, urban infrastructure and social inequality.
However, with built-up areas often crossing traditional
administrative political borders of government, informal
governance structures begin to exert inuence on urban forms.
With a growing rift between experts and citizens over what
the priorities for city government should be, local civic leaders
alongside community groups offer complementary systems of
urban implementation.
Equalising City Moves: Community Groups and Urban Change
The rst of these initiatives
2
is the Cortio Rua Soln, a raw,
partially completed, concrete-frame multistorey structure.
Abandoned after the death of the developer in the 1970s, the
building housed a squatter community maintaining a precarious
system of electrical and water supply and a very basic form of
waste disposal. By the late 1990s, an overcrowded 70 families
were living in all available spaces including the incomplete
elevator shafts. This is an example of the wrong kind of density:
a density of the vulnerable. The building needed improvement if
this group of urban poor was going to keep a safe and habitable
roof over their heads.
Its location in Bom Retiro, close to So Paulos central
district, added formal developmental pressure, but the
community reached out to form a unique partnership with
local government, human rights groups and private enterprise,
and with students from the University of So Paulos Faculty
of Architecture. The result was a de-densication process
rehousing 30 families, and treatment of the collective electricity,
water and sewage systems. Finally, with internal spaces cleaned
and improved, the buildings facade was nished and a new
Population density and building height
below: Mexico City (top: population
19,890,011) and So Paulo (bottom:
population 19,226,426) have similar
average densities. Mexico Citys is 12,541
people per square kilometre and So
Paulos is 10,299 people per square
kilometre. However, their spatial
organisation of density differs drastically;
So Paulo is consistently high-rise, and
Mexico City (right) low-rise.
Mayors are increasingly
called into debates about
environmental and social
sustainability, urban
infrastructure and social
inequality.
49
Auto-construction and
community development
left: Development of new concrete and
brick houses in Rocinha, the largest
favela in Brazil located on the hillside of
Rio de Janeiro, is largely driven by auto-
construction. Even so, basic sanitation
and infrastructure are better here than in
most favelas across the country due to
systematic community intervention.
Moving in the city
below: Transport infrastructure is a
critical driver of urban form, enabling
centralisation of economic functions
and the accommodation of a growing
population along metropolitan rail and
bus routes. Clockwise from left: the modal
splits are of Bogot, Lima, Buenos Aries,
Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo.
50
name Edifcio Unio was xed to the bright-orange exterior.
The revived state of the building, and the residents increased
agency in making it happen, triggered a new-found motivation
that led many of them to make improvements inside their own
apartments. Far from a top-down governmental intervention
that would likely have demolished the building and rehoused
the residents in far-off public housing, as in Cidade Tiradentes,
this kind of devolved governance, to the smallest of urban units,
the building, showcases a renewed and revolutionary local
civic engagement in So Paulo with great effect on building an
inclusive built environment.
A second notable initiative brings us to the heart of the
other largest metropole of the Americas, Mexico City; or if not
the heart, perhaps more like the ngertips. The Asamblea
Comunitaria de Miravalle is a community-based project that
runs a comprehensive set of cultural, health, environmental,
educational and employment programmes within a low-income
neighbourhood on the southeastern outskirts of the city. Located
in the borough of Iztapalapa and founded by indigenous people
from different ethnic backgrounds who migrated to the city,
Miravalle is another example of a partnership bringing together
several local and metropolitan organisations.
A project set up to collect and recycle two tonnes of PET
plastic per week generates employment for some 30 local young
people. A vegetable garden grows much of the food for their
low-budget cantine, which provides affordable meals for over
300 members of the community. Art workshops, dance classes, a
skateboarding court and educational programmes aimed at
developing technological literacy sharpen the social impact of
the centre. Spatially transformative, among the partnerships
rst achievements was the transformation of a former waste
dump into a well-used public space, complete with an
amphitheatre for community programmes. The precise scale of
Miravalles governance intervention allows it to recover the
notion of public space, helping to alleviate urban and social
problems in the near future and reinvigorating the combination of
urbanity and community.
Both Cortio Rua Soln and the Asamblea Comunitaria de
Miravalle are revolutionary forms of local governance operating
in Latin American cities. What is pronounced is the resurgence
of collective will to foster democratically run and accountable
Public and expert opinions
below: There are marked differences
between the publics perception of the city
and that of key stakeholders and experts
with regard to the main challenges in So
Paulo. The public view (left) was gathered
by the Urban Age So Paulo poll conducted
by Ipsos Mori in June 2008 of 1,000
residents living within the So Paulo
Metropolitan Region. The perception of
leaders and experts (right) was extracted
from meetings in August 2007 with 44 key
individuals working in various urban
spheres of government and private practice.
Cortio Rua Soln and innovative
regeneration partnerships
bottom: Cortio Rua Soln is a raw,
partially completed, concrete-frame
multistorey structure located in the Bom
Retiro neibourhood. Constructed in the
1970s, the building remained unnished
due to the death of the developer, and was
subsequently squatted. In partnership with
the University of So Paulos Faculty of
Architecture, the building was retrotted for
the community with improved electrical,
water and sewage facilities.
Community-based complex urbanism
opposite: Asamblea Comunitaria de
Miravalle is a community-based project
that runs a comprehensive set of cultural,
health, environmental, educational and
employment programmes within a
low-income neighbourhood on the
southeastern outskirts of Mexico City.
Located in the borough of Iztapalapa and
founded by indigenous urban migrants, it
runs a community garden, recycling centre,
and educational and computer literacy
programmes, and reclaimed a landll site
as a public space with an amphitheatre to
house most of the community programming.
51
locally bound and responsive institutions. Perhaps the idea of a
metropolitan revolution does not quite capture their resilience
and impact. Still, the devolution of ideas and initiatives in the
city towards citizen engagement is having lasting effects on urban
and architectural interventions in cities across Latin America.
Deep History and the Metropolitan Impetus
Next morning, we came to a broad causeway and continued
our march towards Iztapalapa. And when we saw all
those cities and villages built in the water, and other great
towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway
leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns
and cues and buildings rising from the water, all made of
stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of
Amadis. Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether it
was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I
should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do
not know how to describe this rst glimpse of things never
heard of, seen or dreamed of before.
3
Over 500 years ago, Bernal Daz del Castillo, marching towards
Iztapalapa with the armies of Hernan Corts, encountered the
dream-like, almost magical city of Tenochtitln (later to become
Mexico City) oating in the middle of a large lake. Tenochtitln
surpassed all other cities at the time, including Venice and
Constantinople, with the size of its buildings and population, and
the sheer incongruity of an entire city rising out of the water.
Today, in that same neighbourhood of Iztapalapa, we encounter
the Asamblea Comunitaria de Miravalle, a new kind of Latin
America, and we are once again privy to glimpse[s] of things never
heard of, seen or dreamed of before. It is a locally based dream.
This deep and local history is also a transnational one.
Latin American cities are inherently multicultural. They are not
just simply hybridities of an indigenous and European culture,
the quintessential mestizo. Across Latin America, more than
200 indigenous languages are still spoken. These are deeply
multicultural places. In Lima we might hear German, Hindi,
Arabic and Japanese, not to mention the recently established
ofcial languages of Quechua and Aymara. Jos de Souza
Martins writes of the transitive multiculturalism of So Paulo,
a multiculturalism that is less about a national immigration policy and
more about an urban condition to become someone new and different.
4

Newness and the capacity for difference are precisely the kinds of urban
social and spatial sensibilities that are thriving across these cities, and
reected in the shifts in both informal and formal modes of governance.
We are witnessing the third large-scale revolution in governance in
Latin America, from empire to nation to city. In terms of urban social
change, Mexico City became the only place in Mexico to legalise
abortion in 2007, and in 2009 it became the rst jurisdiction in all of
Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage. While same-sex unions
have been recognised in Buenos Aires since 2002, it took eight years
before the nation caught up with the city. Cities are beginning to grow
impatient with the national norm. In terms of the physical, new forms
of urban infrastructures move us into the realm of ordinary, everyday
architectural interventions that operate one building or community
garden at a time. The metropolitan revolution is upon us, and its
impact is only beginning to be felt in the structures that will govern
for complexity and change in Latin Americas cities. 1
Notes
1. All facts, gures and data, unless otherwise noted, come from two recent Urban
Age publications: Ricky Burdett (ed), South American Cities: Securing an Urban
Future, Urban Age (London), 2008, and Ricky Burdett, Philipp Rode et al, Cities
and Social Equity: Inequality, Territory and Urban Form, Urban Age (London), 2009.
The Urban Age programme is part of LSE Cities, an International Centre of Excellence
located at the London School of Economics and in partnership with the Deutsche
Banks Alfred Herrhausen Society. From its beginnings in 2005, it has hosted
conferences in New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Berlin,
Mumbai, So Paulo and Istanbul. All Urban Age materials are freely available online
at www.urban-age.net.
2. The two initiatives mentioned here were recipients of the Deutsche Bank Urban
Age Award (DBUAA). In 2008, Cortio Rua Saln won the competition in a eld
representing 133 of the best community-led urban projects in the city. In 2010
the Asamblea Comunitaria de Miravalle was chosen as the recipient from over 193
applications. The DBUAA was established in 2007 to encourage citizens to take
initiatives to improve their cities. It is a travelling award organised in parallel with the
Urban Age programme. In 2007 it was given in Mumbai, in 2008 in So Paulo, in
2009 in Istanbul, and in 2010 in Mexico City. In 2011 the award will be presented
in Hong Kong. For more information on the award, the jury and the application
process, visit www.alfred-herrhausen-gesellschaft.de/en/38.html.
3. Bernal Daz del Castillo [1576], The Conquest of New Spain, trans JM Cohen,
Penguin Books (London), 1963, p 214.
4. See Jos de Souza Martins essay The Multicultural City in Rickey Burdett, South
American Cities, op cit.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 42-3 Armin Linke; pp 44, 48(t) Philipp
Rode; pp 45, 46(t), 47, 48(b), 49(b), 50(t) LSE Cities, London School of Economics and
Political Science; p 46(b) Nelson Kon; p 49(t) Dante Busquets; pp 50(b), 51 Alfred
Herrhausen Society, Deutsche Bank
52 52
THE OLYMPIC GAMES
AND THE PRODUCTION
OF THE PUBLIC REALM
MEXICO CITY 1968 AND RIO DE JANEIRO 2016
For Brazil, which is currently the worlds eighth largest economy and is tipped to become
the fth, the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016 represent a unique opportunity.
Fernanda Canales looks at Rio de Janeiro 2016 in light of Mexico City 1968, and considers
how the Games should provide an occasion for both urban regeneration and also recasting
the citys often previously conicting image for an international audience.
Fernanda Canales
53 53
It is almost a clich to say that the Olympic
Games have been a strategic tool for the
deployment of urban agendas. However, prior
to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City,
with the possible exception of Berlin 1936, no
other city had embarked on such an ambitious
urban revitalisation project that combined
infrastructure, culture and communication as
a way to reimagine a city. This moment may
well represent a turning point between the idea
of architectural and cultural modernity and
another based on political and social renewal.
In the case of Latin America Mexico
in 1968 and Brazil in 2016 the Olympic
Games not only explain much of the urban
and social agenda of these countries, but
also account for the idea of modernity
itself. In both cases, with an interval of
almost 50 years, the main aim has been
that of presenting an image of a unied,
homogeneous and planned territory. Instead of
understanding the Olympic Games merely as
an excuse to upgrade transportation systems,
improve housing and infrastructure, they have
increasingly become a great anti-crime policy,
a health policy, a social equaliser: an assertion
of modernity and cohesion.
The Olympic Games in Mexico City
offered a renewal strategy based primarily
on representation. They were the rst
Olympic Games in the world to be televised
in colour and to be aired live via satellite
communications, attesting to the profound
relevance given to their representation as
image.
1
The social crisis characterised by
the student rebellions of 1968, came to a
head with the Tlatelolco massacre in which
hundreds were killed by military forces scarcely
10 days before inauguration. The Games
were thus constructed by decisions based
on what to show and how to show it. The
exaltation of structures of power, exemplied
by the relevance given to the formal power of
institutional architecture, set the tone for a city
that wanted to be seen from the outside, and
was therefore made to be perceived in motion,
primarily through television, by car or by plane.
Rio de Janeiro, 2016
opposite: The new projects, Barra
Media Village (by BCMF Arquitetos) and
Barra Cluster (by BCMF Arquitetos and
LUMO Arquitectura) for Barra de Tijuca,
a nouveau-riche neighbourhood at the
wealthiest end of the city, where more than
half of the new facilities will be located.
Mexico City, 1968
below: Housing and sports facilities built
alongside Anillo Perifrico on the outskirts
of the city, where the idea of a new and
modern territory was implemented.
54 54
Mexico City, 1968
below: Project by Mathias Goeritz in which
a 17-kilometre/10.5-mile (vehicular)
route of sculptures made by artists from
diverse countries connected the different
dispersed Olympic sites, tracing the path
and expansion of the Anillo Perifrico
(peripheral ring) in an interesting mixture
of culture, art and infrastructure. Anillo
Perifrico was in itself a model of urban
modernity, as had been the case of Torres
de Satlite built by Goeritz and Luis
Barragn a decade earlier.
bottom: The construction of the modern
city was based on the idea of mobility
and the use of cars.
Barcelona, 1992
opposite: Villa Olimpica, a legacy of the
Olympics of 1992 which regenerated the
city, and especially its relationship with
the waterfront.
The Olympics in Mexico were a
spectacular communication and
design programme, but above all
they were the vehicle to present a
facade of unity and modernity.
55 55
The Olympics in Mexico were a
spectacular communication and design
programme, but above all they were the
vehicle to present a facade of unity and
modernity. This emphasis on coordination,
or Olympic identity, was highlighted by the
beginning of the construction of the subway
system as a new way of organising the city.
Unlike the graphics which would become
a landmark and the artistic contributions
with the creation of the Cultural Olympics
planned to last the entire year the rst
Olympic Games in Latin America produced
little architecture worth noting. They
were particularly characterised by specic
interventions scattered around a growing
urban footprint. The choice of locations was
based on the availability of government-
owned property and on adaptations on
existing buildings, accentuating the pressing
need for a coherent and strong image. The
entire city, already brimming over, was
imagined as the Olympic stage, unlike past
Olympic Games where most construction lay
within Olympic villages.
2
As social contrasts and the demand for
national democratisation increased after
the student riots, architecture, as well
as public space, gradually became more
monumental and representative and less a
place for interacting. Public congregations
began to represent a threat to government
authorities, which favoured not the use of
open architecture characterised by plazas and
patios, but a new city thought out for the use
of cars. While the population doubled (from 3
million to 6 million), the urban area increased
by more than 100 per cent, from 200 to 320
square kilometres (77.2 to 123.5 square
miles), and the number of cars tripled, from
130,000 to 450,000 in a fast-growing area
where 60 per cent of the settlements were
created illegally.
While in Mexico, after the confrontation in
Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, public
space took on negative connotations for the
political order, in other examples, Barcelona
being the most paradigmatic, the creation of
a modern metropolis was based on the idea
of a city focused on open spaces. Operation
Barcelona 92 consisted of transforming
old factories, opening the city towards the
sea and giving the outskirts a monumental
nature, but above all it was based on the
transformation of a city by dening its
public space, conceived as a system for
guaranteeing citizenship and freedom.
3

Whereas the Olympic Games in Mexico
City signied the end of a period marked
by the gure of the architect as a planner
or strategist
4
from Mario Pani to Ramrez
Vzquez
5
the Olympics in Barcelona
in 1992, on the other hand, marked the
beginning of the city of architects. As a
result of the successful Barcelona model,
architectural euphoria has nurtured many
of the Olympic strategies since then (from
Beijing to London).
6
However, for London
2012, the sustainable legacy angle is
stronger. Bringing the East End closer to the
centre, replacing polluted areas with green
spaces and thinking long term 30 years
instead of the just weeks that the Olympic
Games usually last are the main ingredients
of the upcoming Games, planned for all
spectators to arrive by public transport, on
foot or by bicycle, and for infrastructure to be
downsized, sold and reused.
In a manner similar to that of Londons
green agenda and that of Beijings ostentation
of modern China on the global stage, Brazil
plans to use the Olympics as a way of
showing off the countrys transformation.
The Rio de Janeiro Olympic and Paralympic
Games in 2016
7
are based to a great extent
on fostering the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India
and China) economies. They are planned
to take place in metropolitan Rio, mainly in
Barra de Tijuca where more than half of the
Olympic facilities will be located, but also in
the districts of Maracan, Copacobana and
Deodoro. This choice is intended to focus
the Olympic investments on the regions
where the greatest amount of development
is currently aimed, although a prevailing
rhetoric promises to distribute the Games
benets among the general population.
8

Rio de Janeiro, boasting on one hand its
condition as one of the ve most urbanised
cities of Southern America
9
and, on the
other hand, its 90 kilometres (55.9 miles) of
beaches and image of virginal paradise, has
always been a city conicting between two
main ideals: that of development understood
in terms of building and growth and that of
conserving nature. The dichotomies between
its exuberant nature and an urban landscape
sprawling across its territory have dened its
56 56
Rio de Janeiro, 2016
below: Aerial View of Rio de Janeiro,
October 2010.
opposite: Street view of Rio de Janeiro,
February 2010. Nature and informality
clustered in different pockets across
Rio form a strong visual contrast to the
planned city.
57 57
split identity. With the Olympics, Rio regains
the capital condition that had been stolen
by Brasilia in 1960 and searches for the
possibility of reimagining the coexistence of
informal growth with planning, as well as
reconciling nature with urban development in
a territory where dichotomies are accentuated
due to an extreme topography which
challenges the idea of a planned and socially
homogeneous city.
President Lula da Silva has asserted
that the word favela used to describe
the shantytowns where more than one
million people live in Rio
10
(a third of the
population in 2001) will disappear in
time for the Games,
11
and he has also
announced an ecological seal backed by the
idea of a green city. Hence, the Olympic and
Paralympic Games in Rio have become a
political and social discourse: an attempt to
civilise the city. The favelas praised by Le
Corbusier during his travels in the 1930s and
considered by Richard Neutra as the hopeful
reserve of the community,
12
now become a
symbol of the desire and promise to rewrite
the social and urban history of Rio.
The Games are part of a broader political
and touristic campaign intended to sell
the idea that landscapes of inequality and
uneven development can be transformed
into efcient, safe and socially homogeneous
territories. Intense worries and complaints
have already arisen due to ecological
legislations that obstruct the interests of real-
estate speculation. The credibility of pacifying
favelas is also at stake with almost half
of the 1,000 slums of the city dominated
by violence
13
but Brazil, being the worlds
eighth-largest economy and heading to
become the fth,
14
overtaking the UK and
France, has to integrate the squalid districts
within the city, transforming favelados into
citizens in a project for the city that attempts
to build in seven years more infrastructure
than in the past 50 years.
The Olympics as a strategy of
representation reveals the forces at work
behind the urban agendas of cities. Whether
large-scale interventions based on dormant,
former industrial territories as Londons East
End project, or whether through acupuncture
interventions inside problematic and fast-
growing cities, as in the case of Mexico and
Rio, representation and image are sometimes
far more important than the nal results. In
Latin America, where development is seen
always through a short-term perspective,
staging the Olympics has become a
persuasive media event designed to hide
social instabilities, to display a competitive
tness on a global scale and above all to
work under a national agenda.
The nearly half a century separating the
Mexico City Olympic Games and those of Rio
de Janeiro shows that, despite the fact that
the Games are an excuse for driving urban
transformation, they reinforce the idea that,
in the end, all urban planning projects are
also a way of doing politics, and it is within
this concept that a way of understanding the
public realm is constructed. 1
Notes
1. The countrys political and social instability, teetering
on actual breakdown, was translated into a strong
message of national unity a message that pervaded
almost every aspect of creative expression in a sports
event that was as much a political and urban one.
2. The urgency due to the inauguration date and
nancial limitations was a dening factor in the project,
led by the architect Pedro Ramrez Vzquez. Mexico
1968 signalled the end of far-reaching modernisation
strategies as well as the end of architecture understood
as a national project, replaced by isolated actions on
a smaller scale in which the public realm has been
progressively controlled and fenced in.
3. With architect Oriol Bohigas as the main driving force
behind the denition of a new contemporary culture
through the formalisation of public space and as the
person responsible for post-Franco urban planning in
Barcelona, public funds were used to design the empty
spaces, the voids in the city. After decades of prohibition
of the Catalan language and an active discouragement
of the congregation of large crowds, the city began by
reinventing itself in a social arena, particularly based on
public space.
4. The Olympic Games represent the last major project
for the city. The all-encompassing enthusiasm that had
made possible projects like Ciudad Universitaria in the
1950s proved unattainable over the following decades.
5. In Mexico, with the modern agenda on the verge of
being torn apart after 1968, the representative purpose
of construction became increasingly relevant, creating
architecture that was as autonomous and authoritarian as
the regime to which it owed its existence.
6. In time, however, Barcelona gradually moved towards
an atmosphere that gloried architecture and restricted
the public realm in favour of private initiatives, with the
Diagonal Mar project in 2004 built as the new paradigm
of regenerating the city, which received mixed reviews.
7. It is the rst time that a South American city is to host
the greatest event in world sport and will also site the
World Cup two years earlier.
8. The prospectus talks of redeveloping the decaying
port area, and cleansing the polluted Guanabara Bay, but
whereas Barcelona built its Olympic village in a derelict
part of its port, in Rio it will be sited in Barra da Tijuca,
a neighbourhood at the wealthiest end of the city. See
Rios Expensive New Rings, The Economist, 8 October
2009.
9. Urban Age conference, So Paulo, December 2008.
10. Juan Arias, Rio de Janeiro, El Pas, 1 December 2010.
11. Juan Arias, Un nuevo Ro para 2016, El Pas, 5
October 2009.
12. Richard Neutra, Architecture as Social Concern in
Regions of Mild Climate, Gerth Todtmann (Chicago),
1948, p 190.
13. Juan Arias, Rio de Janeiro, op cit. See also Rio
de Janeiro, a Magic Moment for the City of Good, The
Economist, 10 June 2010.
14. Brazil Takes Off, The Economist, 12 November 2009.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 52(l) RIO2016/
BCMF Arquitetos; p 52(r) RIO2016/BCMF Arquitetos/LUMO
Arquitectura; pp 53-4 Ramn Revert Collection; pp 55, 57
Augusto Roman; p 56 Tatiana Bilbao
58 58
ARTICULATING
THE BROKEN
CITY AND
SOCIETY
Jorge Mario Juregui of Metrpolis Projetos Urbanos (MPU)
has been responsible for more than 20 projects for the Favela-
Barrio (slum-to-neighbourhood) Programme implemented by
the Rio de Janeiro city government, and two large-scale urban
redevelopment projects for President Lulas PAC (Growth
Acceleration Programme). Here Juregui describes the
strategies behind his work and specically the transformation
of public space that was undertaken at the Complexo de
Manguinhos in northern Rio as part of the PAC scheme.
Jorge Mario Juregui
59 59
The contemporary metropolis is constantly moving between
conicts, contaminations, interferences, transformations, political
decisions and economic interests. Today we recognise two conditions:
on one hand, the intensication of urban issues everything from
urban violence and inequality between the formal and informal city,
as in Rio de Janeiro, to endless suburban expansion and lack of
power of the city centre, as in Bogot, to the disconnection of parts
and fragmentation of the city, as in Mexico City. On the other
hand, the inevitable necessity of the coexistence of differences in
which we must nd a way to work together.
These contemporary conditions are manifested in three
types of urban space:
1
1 Spaces generated through a long process of
accumulation and substitution, where the background
of some architectural parts is unknown and other parts
can be identied as having specic authors. When the
accumulation of functions and histories reaches a certain
critical mass, it constitutes a recognisable identity. These
urban sectors, identied as barrios (neighbourhoods),
create a condition of structural regularity that denes
them as visual pictures belonging to the city as a whole;
for example, the neighbourhoods of Palermo in Buenos
Aires or Urca in Rio de Janeiro.
2 Spaces that escape public control, which usually occupy
great expanses and peripheries of cities constituting
areas of impunity that have no traditional legal and
juridical societal code. In some cases, action in this
condition would require a certain degree of planning
for disasters or war confrontations. To urbanise the
peripheries and favelas (shantytowns) means to inscribe
points of consistency and singularity with the capacity
to produce wide-reaching effects in the communities
and their surroundings. These pieces of the urban
network the favelas, which in many cases are not even
registered in the citys plans, such as the Manguinhos
Complex in Rio de Janeiro depict the noir aspects of
society. However, they can also be seen as spaces open
to new possibilities for creativity, urban innovation and
social experimentation. Places where what is in process
is in permanent experimentation.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Center for
Generation of Work and Income,
Rio de Janeiro, 2010
opposite: This building for the inhabitants
of Complexo do Alemo and its
surroundings includes a business incubator
and support services for small businesses
and entrepreneurs.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Complexo de
Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, 2008
below: Masterplan.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Park-Library
Manguinhos, Complexo de Manguinhos,
Rio de Janeiro, 2010
bottom: External view of the Park-Library
Manguinhos with relocation buildings and
a public square.
60 60
3 Spaces produced at the will of a large corporation be
it national or multinational, public or private which
are organised around various spatial themes such as
the entertainment parks of Celebration, Florida, the
international exhibition of the Beijing Olympics in
2008, or the articial revitalisation of the historical
centre of the Pelourinho in Salvador, Brazil. These
spaces are disconnected (whether voluntarily or not)
from the urban structure, generally constituting
what could be considered islands of fantasy in the
archipelago of the city.
Through a sequence of urban development projects in Rio de
Janeiro rst the Favela-Barrio programme in 1995, then the
urban development plans for the Manguinhos Complex and
Alemo Complex in 2004, and the Programa de Accelerao do
Crescimento (PAC), also the Growth Acceleration Programme,
established by President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva (2007) and
the ongoing development of PAC II, it has been possible to
create a reference base of strategies that address a wide range
of urban-scale interventions. This knowledge of concepts and
methods can be applied to similar situations in other Latin
American countries.
The aim is to articulate the divided city and society by
providing greater accessibility, investments in infrastructure,
new public social facilities (such as hospitals, public libraries,
technical schools, centres for the generation of work and
income, and community and youth centres) and environmental
revitalisation, connecting the formal and the informal parts, and
thus improving the quality of life for residents.
The studio of Metrpolis Projetos Urbanos (MPU) in
Rio de Janeiro has been working on urbanisation projects
in dozens of favelas around the city for the last 15 years.
The strategy and methodology it has put into practice for
several of its projects including the Manguinhos Complex
(2010) have consisted of various stages including: site visits
to understand the genius loci and existing conditions to
determine the appropriateness and feasibility of the proposal;
listening to the desires of the local residents (through the
Freudian method of free association and uctuant attention),
and talking with different community representatives, local
leaders and residents;
2
research into historical, cultural,
economic, social and environmental conditions, as well as
technical site surveys; envisioning the future potential of
the site; establishing dialogues with signicant institutions
involved in the intervention area; considering the support of
interdisciplinary input including education, health, transport,
labour, legal aspects and housing; and formulating the urban
scheme by reinforcing existing focal points and introducing
new ones to recongure the sense of place.
Psychoanalysis is an important instrument to help distinguish
the manifest and latent desires of the inhabitants in the process.
Architects have the ability and responsibility to propose an ideal
to stretch the limits of expectation and imagination.
The Manguinhos Complex, Rio de Janeiro
The Manguinhos Complex is made up of 11 informal
communities favelas with a total population of 32,000
residents on 400 hectares (1.5 square miles) of land. The project
affects a broader area of the North Zone of the city, 1,400
hectares (5.4 square miles) in total, and intersects major access
points for the city of Rio de Janeiro. The site includes a major
highway and other principal roads, a river and a railway line.
The railway line acts as a barrier, dividing the area into various
disconnected fragments.
Historically, the complex is home to a variety of uses:
old industrial parks, educational and research institutions,
commercial areas and a portion of the principal port area. It
is also a stronghold of one of the citys three drug-trafcking
factions, and the neighbourhoods within the complex are
subject to high levels of drug use, crime and violent police
raids. The physical-territorial issues addressed by MPUs
architectural approach for the project are symptoms of the
reality of severe social problems.
The main challenge was to restructure an area historically
stigmatised and environmentally degraded with a proposal that
could be feasibly implemented under the PAC programme
within the four-year term of the federal government, which
took control of the process of urbanisation and formalisation of
the large complexes of favelas in Rio, through PAC, in 2007.
For the rst time, the federal, state and municipal governments
are working together and investing an unprecedented amount of
money and resources in the favelas. The previous urbanisation
programme, the Favela-Barrio, addressed these issues on a
neighbourhood scale on a municipal level. PAC represents a
similar urbanisation process, but on a signicantly larger scale,
The studio of Metrpolis Projetos Urbanos
(MPU) in Rio de Janeiro has been working
on urbanisation projects in dozens of favelas
around the city for the last 15 years.
61 61
Jorge Mario Juregui, Relocation
buildings, Complexo de Manguinhos, Rio
de Janeiro, 2010
bottom: Green public square between the
relocation buildings.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Rambla
Manguinhos, Complexo de Manguinhos,
Rio de Janeiro, 2008/2011
below: The train line is elevated,
eliminating the division established by the
existing walls in a place known locally as
the Gaza Strip, and creating a permeable
boundary instead.
62 62
working in areas that include a broader urban scale throughout
the city, and with federal support and funding. Due to this large
level of investment, physical, social and ecological issues can be
addressed simultaneously, along with aspects of policing and public
security. Numerous social programmes and efforts to regulate
land tenure now run parallel to the physical architecture project.
By 2004, the MPU architecture team had completed
masterplan proposals for two communities Complexo do
Alemo and Complexo do Manguinhos and was thus selected
to realise the projects under the PAC programme three years
later. At Complexo do Alemo, the introduction of a cable-
car system (to be inaugurated in 2011) will connect six of the
morros (hills) and each station includes elements of social and
economic interest such as small libraries, commercial spaces,
classrooms and outdoor public gathering spaces. The project in
Manguinhos elevates a divisive and dangerous railway line and
transforms it into a linear park for recreation and commerce.
The rst step in the proposal for Manguinhos was to dene
the boundaries of the area of intervention, and analyse and
respond to its complex geographical (the convergence of a river,
highway and railway line), topographical (treatment of edges
of rivers, canals and landlls) and social (the complex social
realities of life in Rios favelas) aspects, such as the circulation
and spatial patterns, and the established cultural and social
conditions of both the informal and formal areas of the site.
The team addressed the adjacent neighbourhoods in terms
of accessibility, infrastructure and the reorganisation of urban
nodes and centralities.
In addition to the overall development plan, the architects
focused specically on the area around Leopoldo Bulhes
Avenue, the most conict-ridden sector, known locally as the
Gaza Strip, which was divided, both spatially and socially, by
the railroad. The proposal elevates the railway to unite the two
divided neighbourhoods with a linear public space underneath
connecting the new civic centre with the Manguinhos train
station. This public walkway, known as the Rambla, creates an
active urban street facade along a major avenue and a new 24-
hour transportation interchange connecting the train, bus, taxi,
motorcycle taxi, van shuttle service and bicycle routes.
The new landscape design consists of a series of commercial
kiosks and work spaces, areas for recreation, social meeting
spaces, and abundant plantings and vegetation. It was inspired
by the highly successful Flamengo Park, a linear waterfront park
By 2004, the MPU
architecture team had
completed masterplan
proposals for two
communities Complexo do
Alemo and Complexo do
Manguinhos and was thus
selected to realise the projects
under the PAC programme
three years later.
63 63
in Rio de Janeiro designed by landscape architect Burle Marx
(1965), which embodies the values of a modern democratic
urban space, serving as a place of relaxation, recreation and
culture for all to enjoy. The Rambla design carefully took into
account the potential benets and uses of different sectors
of the local population: culture and recreation opportunities
for children and families as well as commerce and income-
generating activities for workers. Particular emphasis was placed
on providing alternative activities for the local youths, who
are all too often seduced into the prevalent drug-trafcking
activities that unfortunately generate a large number of jobs in
the low-income areas of the city.
This multifunctional programme at Manguinhos transforms
a once dangerous and abandoned sector into an active public
space, converting the site from divider to connector. It promotes
a type of public space that has the power to act as a social
articulator, integrating residents internally, within the favela, as
well as externally with the larger city as a whole.
The existence of enormous areas in our cities where
the inhabitants are excluded from the benets of urbanity
affects everybody. We know that when we try to exclude from
ourselves something that we wish to expel, it always returns.
However, we can broaden our horizons by recognising the
limits and incorporating the excluded ones within our lives,
within our cities and within the world. Whether it is the
recycling of garbage, reforestation politics or the creation of
conditions to generate work and income, the question remains
the same: How can we reinsert humanity into ourselves
through the recognition of the other? 1
Notes
1. These parts of the city remain unarticulated between each other,
maintaining distance in their interaction. Thus, articulating the broken city
implies that we have to consider the intersection of physical aspects (urban,
infrastructural and environmental), social aspects (economic, cultural) and
ecological aspects (mental ecology, social ecology and environmental ecology).
2. The participation of local residents is usually organised into four stages:
1) an on-site meeting with representatives of the project team, at the
beginning of the project; 2) exchange of local knowledge with community
representatives in the rst stages of the project design; 3) as informal
inspectors, and labour during the construction process; 4) as representatives
of community interests in the POUSO (Urban and Social Orientation Center)
established by the city government to address potential conicts after
project completion.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: photos Jorge Juregui, photos Gabriel
Juregui; drawings MPU
Jorge Mario Juregui, Cable-car stations,
Complexo do Alemo, Rio de Janeiro, 2011
opposite: Aerial view of the Complexo do
Alemo and the cable-car stations.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Complexo do
Alemo, Rio de Janeiro, 2008
below: Masterplan.
Jorge Mario Juregui, Relocation buildings,
Complexo do Alemo, Rio de Janeiro, 2010
bottom: Relocation buildings constructed
using ecological bricks.
64 64
FORMALISATION
AN INTERVIEW WITH
HERNANDO DE SOTO
The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto
is internationally renowned for his writings on
the informal economy. Through his work as
the President of the Institute for Liberty and
Democracy (ILD) in Lima, he has effectively
advocated the creation of a legal system to help
the poor access property rights. In his latest
book, The Amazon is not Avatar, he makes a
signicant shift away from the problems caused
by massive urban migrations to cities to focusing
on the benets of property and business rights
for resource-rich indigenous communities in
the Amazon. Angus Laurie interviews De Soto
on his current thinking and highlights why he
has had such an important inuence on social
housing in Latin America.
Angus Laurie
After a bloody conict between indigenous Amazonians and
national security forces on 5 June 2009, the remote Peruvian
jungle community of Bagua was making international
headlines.
1
The conict started as a response to new policies
providing petroleum, mineral and forestry companies with easier
access to the resource wealth of the Amazon Basin.
2
The death
of more than 30 people and injury of a further 155 marked
with an exclamation mark the arrival of globalisation to the
unprepared heart of Latin America.
This was a window into a region set to change immensely
over the coming years.
Shortly after the clash, the Peruvian economist Hernando
de Soto travelled through the region to discover the roots
of the conict. De Soto is the president and founder of the
Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), a Lima-based
think tank devoted to property and business rights reform in
developing countries, and his ndings will form the content
for his forthcoming book, The Amazon is not Avatar.
3
His new
work marks a departure from the problems caused by massive
migration into the cities throughout the developing world to the
benets of property and business rights in the predominantly
rural Amazon and similar resource-rich indigenous
communities elsewhere in Latin America and Africa.
4

James Camerons lm Avatar (2009) serves De Soto as
a useful metaphor; but unlike in the lm, he does not think
leaving the region alone is a viable option. Firstly, most of the
miners are informal and come from the region itself. Secondly,
he says the Amazonians should not be treated as museum
pieces, and I believe that those who say leave them alone
maybe that argument was relevant 450 years ago. Im not
saying it was correct to do what the Spaniards did, or what the
Republic did. Im not saying that at all. But the fact is weve
got what weve got. And at this time, most of them are talking
about integration: integrating into modernity so that they, too,
can start and grow businesses, protect those assets, afford a
decent education for their children and healthcare.
[People] talk about them as if they were living in splendid
isolation. They are not living in splendid isolation. They
are already integrated in the Peruvian economy, and theyve
got the raw side of the deal. Im sure there must be a few
tribes who are isolated and dont want to integrate, and thats
ne. But again, they still need rights, otherwise somebodys
going to come and take away from them the valuable natural
resources they have that could benet their communities the
gas, lumber and agricultural land.
According to De Soto, all Perus Amazonian communities
are currently in litigation,
5
and their lack of property rights
or titles leaves them in a precarious position. A great deal of
resource wealth is being discovered in their areas, and they
are at risk of not beneting from this boon as they do not
understand, or indeed have, a system of law which protects
them. They are living extralegally, without the legal tools that
we take for granted: property rights, formats for organising
their businesses productively, ways to expand their markets.
65 65
For De Soto: There is no possibility of progress unless they
have their rights well spelt out. This is what he means by
legally empowering the poor.
In contrast to expert-led consultation, where outsiders
advise local people on what they need, De Soto is trying to
draw the Amazonian communities into a position where they
can propose things on their own, giving them a level of legal
autonomy that would allow them to govern and to prosper
from their region. His goal is to help the people of this volatile
region to adapt, and to provide them with the tools necessary
to participate and direct how globalisation will affect their lives.
While De Soto is not against government or NGO provision
of physical infrastructure such as roads, sewerage or electricity,
he says they do not help in getting communities organised in a
way to protect their assets and benet economically from their
natural resources. Organisation will come through a process
that begins with holding legal titles for land, resources or
businesses. In this way, people can participate in the judiciary
with legitimate documents in order to resolve disputes. This will
help to empower remote communities and bring them closer to
democratic participation.
Once organised in this way, the Amazonian people can
even start getting to their own natural resources. I mean here
youve got these big mining companies and big oil companies.
Whats the difference between those and the indigenous
people? That the big companies are organised in legal ways that
make them productive and prosperous. Thats the difference
What [the indigenous] have got is land, and the bushes that
grow on land, and thats what they ght and die for. So rst of
all, why not give them control. The advantage of doing that is
its an exercise that allows them to understand the importance
of organisation and rules.
Some have criticised this aspect of De Sotos work, claiming
that titles will weaken the position of indigenous people in
settling disputes. They argue that De Soto is parcelling land and
therefore dividing indigenous communities in their ght against
would-be invaders.
6
Furthermore, some state that land in the
Amazon is generally held communally, and that parcelling land
goes against indigenous peoples cultural identity.
7

For De Soto, these critiques miss the main point:
Essentially, as time has gone by, the concern is not so much
private property as such or even public property, but the
importance of being precise about control. In other words,
I really, deep inside, dont very much care if people decide
to organise something collectively or they do privately. For
me the important thing is how much of your destiny can
you control if you live in a world where the law asks you for
denitions and you have none.
De Soto goes on to explain that the so-called collective
rights held by the Amazonian people are not property rights,
but have to do with giving a form of sovereignty to certain
ethnic groups or communities. The problem with community
organisation through these collective rights is that there are
around 5,000 communities in the Amazon. How successful
Entrance to the Torres de San Borja
(completed in 1983), one of the large-
scale social housing projects initiated by
ex-President Fernando Belande Terry
(in power between 1963 and 1968,
and 1980 and 1985). The project
was predominantly residential, with
segregated movement of pedestrians
and cars through an internal network of
pedestrian-only streets.
66 66
do you think youre going to be with 5,000 sovereign systems
with an average of between 200 and 250 people per sovereign
system? he asks. Do you really want to be sovereign on such a
small scale? What does that do to your economics, what does
that do to your capacity for getting organised productively?
For De Soto, then, it is not just about property rights: it
is about control. The people of the Amazon have no control
over their territory. They need to be legally empowered to take
advantage of what they already have.
De Sotos work is decidedly in the realm of economics and
law; yet here he is being featured in an architecture publication.
His relevance spreads well beyond the immediate eld of his
work into policy, housing and urbanism. He says that the
self-built informal cities of Latin America were admirable
and beautiful, but very expensive for their inhabitants. The
cost of informal self-construction is three times as high as the
same construction carried out by a developer. For this reason,
in The Mystery of Capital he advocates the development of
mass housing for the poor through economies of scale, where
inhabitants could build more for less cost, and receive titles and
utilities from the inception of their project.
8

This idea, along with De Sotos broader work in providing
titles, has inuenced how city governments and architects
approach housing issues in Latin America and throughout the
world. In Mexico City, for example, recent housing policies have
tried to reduce the amount of self-built construction, and to
lower construction costs for poorer residents through economies
of scale, create jobs and allow a new group to enter into the
capital market.
9
This is done through the governments Prosavi
programme, which provides mortgages for families who earn
less than ve times the minimum wage. The construction of the
actual houses is done for prot by developers who build small
houses, provide infrastructure, give titles and help negotiate
mortgages for potential buyers. Images from these projects show
rows of identical detached houses stretching across vast areas
of the city. They have been criticised by the Mexican architect
Arturo Ortiz Struck among others for selling credit rather than
housing, leaving some families indebted for years with a nal
cost more than three times that of the original house.
Alejandro Aravena from Elemental in Chile has also
quoted and taken inspiration from De Sotos work, the result
being something totally the opposite of the housing projects of
Mexico (see pp 327). Elementals Quinta Monroy project in
Iquique provides a exible design where units are constructed
as a shell left for residents to nish over time. The design
facilitates a wide range of uses and inhabitants, and judging
from the metamorphosis of the housing units since their
inception, they have been a success.
On being shown one photo of Quinta Monroy and another
of a mass housing project in Mexico to illustrate how his ideas
De Sotos work is decidedly
in the realm of economics
and law; yet here he is being
featured in an architecture
publication. His relevance
spreads well beyond the
immediate eld of his work
into policy, housing and
urbanism.
67 67
are being made manifest, De Soto recalled another occasion
when he was presented with two similarly contrasting photos:
I remember talking to [the Peruvian ex-] President Belande
when our ideas rst started coming out and he called me in.
He was a trained architect and an eminent public housing
specialist, and he brought out a big picture and said, This is
something Ive done the Torres de San Borja and this is
the kind of thing that youre promoting. He showed me an
informal settlement, a Lima shantytown, and said, What do
you think about these two pictures?
I replied, Well youre looking for a ght so I like the
informal settlement better. He asked why, to which I responded:
To begin with, the thing that you did before, Residencial San
Felipe, you did it for these people supposedly the poorest and
after two years 90 per cent of them had moved out because
you didnt gure out right the social housing. It was too expensive
for them. They would have rather had part of that income go
towards a smaller house, probably not so well located, but also
have an automobile, or have some education. So thats why 90
per cent moved out in two years. Thats a lot of moving out. So
the question is, how much demand can you satisfy according to a
governments idea of what looks like an orderly city?
But I tell you, I dont go into those things. What I do go
into is the general idea that youve got to ask what [people] want,
and its never exactly what you would like them to have. 1
Notes
1. Simon Romero, Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Perus
Amazon, The New York Times, 11 June 2009.
2. Simon Romero, 9 Hostage Ofcers Killed at Peruvian Oil Facility, The New
York Times, 6 June 2009.
3. Due to be published by Grupo Editorial Norma in Autumn 2011.
4. Fourteen years have passed since the publication of The Other Path, the
book that launched De Soto into international recognition. It was a direct
challenge to the terrorist movement The Shining Path and largely invalidated
the terrorists claims that Perus poor lived communally. The conict in Bagua
is a reminder that there is still underlying frustration among Perus poor.
Hernando de Soto, The Other Path, Harper & Row (New York), 1989.
5. Unless otherwise stated, all gures and quotes are from Hernando de Soto
during his interview with the author on 23 September 2010.
6. Argument of Margarita Benevides of the Instituto de Bien Comun (IBC)
from her interview with Ricardo Marapi in the video El Misterio de Hernando
de Soto, CEPES Peru, Lima, September 2009.
7. Ibid.
8. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital, Basic Books (New York), 2000,
p 194. De Soto also writes in The Mystery of Capital that elites will benet
nancially through housing reform that brings the extralegal into the formal
market. The Mexican housing developer, Consorcio ARA, proves this point,
having made a return of 25 per cent on its progressive units (under $20,000)
and 29 per cent on affordable housing units (under $35,000) in 2005. See
www.consorcioara.com.mx.
9. Housing Situation in Mexico, 2005, Centro de Investigacion y
Documentacion de la Casa (CIDOC) and Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal. See
www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/international/som2005.pdf.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 64 Hernando de Soto; pp 65-6
Angus Laurie; p 67(t) Philippe Gruenberg & Pablo Hare; p 67(b) Arturo Ortiz Struck/
Taller Territorial de Mxico
opposite top: Mototaxis wait for a fare
outside the informal market in San Juan
de Miraores, one of Limas many informal
barrios jovenes.
opposite bottom: Example of an
informal, self-built house in Medalla
Milagrosa, one of Limas consolidated
informal pueblos jovenes.
below: Main public space at the San
Felipe housing development (completed
in 1966) in Lima. Photograph by
Philippe Gruenberg and Pablo Hare.
bottom: Arturo Ortiz produced and handed
out these four stickers as a critical political
statement against mass affordable housing
programmes in Mexico (2009).
68 68
Gary Leggett
This map shows some of the failed
agendas discussed in the article: Herman
Khans great lakes proposal, Fords rubber
towns, Roosevelts expedition, as well as
current projects, such as the Transoceanic
Highway and the Inambari Dam Project.
69 69
PLAYGROUNDS
RADICAL FAILURE IN THE AMAZON
Covering more than 8.1 million square kilometres (3.127
million square miles), the Amazon is a vast territory that has
captured peoples imaginations and ambitions. These range
from Henry Fords attempt in 1928 to build a rubber company
town near Santarm, Brazil, to more contemporary projects
that have aimed to boost and connect the continents
economy. Gary Leggett explores the failure of
such totalising projects across time and
asks why they might have proved
inherently awed.
70 70
Dr Strangeloves closing remark in his namesake lm of
1964 comes right before the world presumably ends. He
stands up from his wheelchair, addressing the president
(Mein Fhrer! I can walk!), and the lm cuts abruptly to a
sequence of atomic blasts. A bomb is jockeyed overseas by a
wild-eyed pilot. Dr Strangelove bursts out, right before the
nuke hits the ground: Sir! I have a plan!
S tanley Kubrick based part of Dr Strangeloves character
on the well-known neocon strategist and thermonuclear tsar
Herman Khan, a theorist at the RAND Corporation, founder
of the Hudson Institute and coiner of Kubricks Doomsday
Machine. In 1965, Khan proposed the creation of ve great
lakes South Americas own Third Coast in the Amazon
Basin.
1
The initiative was meant to curb the expansion of
communism in Latin America and shore up local economies
with a steady ow of hydropower; a single dam, 30 to 50
kilometres (18.6 to 31 miles) long, would have produced around
a quarter of the US-installed electrical capacity. The idea never
came to a head, of course; it was intended more as a casual
napkin sketch than a full-blown development plan based on a
napkin sketch (as was Brasilia).
In any case, this kind of totalising gesture was not
uncommon. The list of failed projects and proposals for the
Amazon is eye-dryingly long. Theodore Roosevelt organised
an expedition there in 1914 with his son Kermit a kind
of rite of passage, we assume, into Teddys Rough Rider
manhood and among other things (15 pages of poisonous
snake talk, for one), Roosevelt wrote that the Amazon, if
properly reined in, would make for a generous food basket or
global manufacturing centre.
2
He almost died of a esh-eating
bacterial infection during the trip.
Years before, Matthew Fontaine Maury, the US Navy
lieutenant-cum-cartographer, astronomer, historian,
meteorologist, geologist, oceanographer and all-round
Confederate powerhouse, writing under the pen name Inca,
claimed that the Amazon Basin was but a continuation of
the Mississippi valley, an appendage, a natural extension of
the Unions interrupted destiny: What one lacks, the other
supplies. Together, they furnish all those products and staples
which complete the list of articles in the circle of commerce.
3

One of Maurys more unhinged proposals was to relocate
Confederate slave-owners to the Amazon Basin, arguing that
in the same way that the Mississippi valley had been the escape
valve for the slaves of the Northern Sta tes, so will the Amazon
valley be to that of the Miss.
4
S tanley Kubrick based part of Dr
Strangeloves character on the well-known
neocon strategist and thermonuclear tsar
Herman Khan, a theorist at the RAND
Corporation, founder of the Hudson Institute
and coiner of Kubricks Doomsday Machine.
In 1965, Khan proposed the creation of ve
great lakes South Americas own Third
Coast in the Amazon Basin.
Fordlandia houses on Riverside Avenue,
Fordlandia, Brazil, c 1933.
71 71
What we begin to see then are variations on a theme, a kind
of do-it-yourself Manifest Destiny that will use the Amazon,
time and again, as a projection screen or fairy-tale mirror writ
large. The sheer size of it 8.1 million square kilometres (3.127
million square miles), occupying 60 per cent of the total area
of the eight Amazonian countries, 6 per cent of the planets
land surface, and holding 25 per cent of the worlds water
supply produces the illusion of an innite eld of speculation.
5

And so the list of failed projects goes on and on: missionaries,
entrepreneurs, explorers, presidents, Nazis, environmentalists, all
chipping in on one of the globes longest-standing debacles.
The Crudest Machine in the World
But perhaps the best example of ideological failure (or
inadvertent self-critique) that transpired in the Amazon is
Henry Fords attempt in 1928 to build a rubber company
town near Santarm, Brazil, a couple of hours downriver from
Manaus. Ford sent the Michigan-based botanist Carl LaRue
to nd a good area somewhere to plant rubber in an effort to
free his company from British-owned Asian rubber (vertical
integration, Ford dixit).
6
The town was developed to the
image of an American suburb it looks a bit like Frank Lloyd
Wrights Broadacre City (1932) from the air and no sooner
had the rst foundations been built and the rst batch of trees
than planted things began to go awry. Within the rst year,
a diehard fungus ravaged nearly 607 hectares (1,500 acres) of
Hevea trees, thriving in the crops monoculture.
7
It was quickly
concluded that LaRue, despite his expertise in Midwestern
plant life, had picked the wrong place.
8
The town was relocated
a couple of miles downriver to Belterra in the hope that a better
location would yield better crops, but it didnt.
The Taylorist perfection of Fordlandia was ill-equipped
to deal with the social and environmental demands of the
Amazon.
9
Paved roads, cement walks, comfortable homes,
electric lights, telephones this might be any Midwestern
town. But it is Belterra, buried deep in the jungle of Brazil
Yes, there is even a golf course a sporty 18 holes
Beautiful clubhouse, tropical foliage and 700 miles from
civilization.
10
Sure enough, shanties began to spread along
the river, clustered around the town, just past the 18th hole,
like blight on Hevea leaves, and the inviolability of Fords
private Eden was swiftly shattered. If anybody had any
property right where we were going to clear, claimed one of
Fords emissaries, their land would just be purchased and they
would be moved elsewhere.
11

Intra muros, the town was hardly the agro-industrial utopia
it was made to be. In a program reecting Fords back-to-the-
earth philosophy, workers were encouraged to grow their own
vegetables for a healthy and well-rounded diet, which included
banning the consumption of alcohol and replacing milk with
soya milk (because Ford hated cows, the crudest machine in the
world).
12
But there was only so much soya milk his employees
were willing to gulp down before they snapped. A ri ot broke out
when the company tried to install a cafeteria system in order to
shorten lunchtime breaks: As the workers led down the serving
line with trays for the rst time, one of them suddenly stopped
and shouted, Im a worker, not a waiter!
13
The nal stroke
came with the widespread commercialisation of synthetic rubber
in 1944, though by this time it was already clear that the project
was a total failure even if it was touted, like Maos Dazhai
Village in the 1960s, as a model to learn from and to follow.
What Fordlandia revealed, or rather reiterated, was not
only the inhospitable nature of the Amazon rainforest but also,
by attempting to reproduce an order that was by any measure
foreign to the Amazon and its inhabitants, it exposed several
aws (overlooked assumptions, really) in the Fordist model.
For one, a labourer is not always, under any circumstance a
consumer of his own labour. Fords Five Dollar Day initiative,
even if brought down to local standards (37 cents a day), was
a huge op in Amazonia. Most plantation workers would live
in Fordlandia for a couple of months, enough time to rake in
a years worth of income, and then head back to their homes,
miles away, sometimes not even in the Amazon, to live off their
earnings. The Fordist model, extricated from the American
context, lost its Samsonian brawn. It failed to provide a vertical
order to an otherwise horizontal, diffused reality. The land
was sold back to the Brazilian government at 3 per cent of its
estimated value. Ford never visited Fordlandia. A thousand
cattle now graze on its golf course.
14
Co ntinental Drifts
Today we have a string (though calling it a string may be too
generous; it is more like a puzzle of jagged edges assembled
in the dark by a group of drunk nine-year-olds with ADHD
and hammers) of infrastructural projects, social movements,
extractive operations, global investments, conservation efforts
and illegal activities that have transformed the Amazon into
one big steamy soup of speculation. One of the 500-plus
projects that the so-called Initiative for the Integration of
Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) comprises
72 72
projects that are meant to bolster and connect the continents
economy, Fitzcarraldo-style is a highway dubbed the Road
to China (ofcially, the Transoceanic Highway), which bisects
the Amazon, connecting Brazil to the Pacic seaboard.
The highway has not been yet completed and the Peruvian
Ministry of Energy and Mining is already spearheading
(reviving, really) an initiative to build a dam, the fourth
largest in the continent, over 110 kilometres (68.3 miles) of
unnished road.
15
Brazil needs hydropower. It also needs to
get its soya to China. The solution: ood your own roads.
Build a railway instead. Maybe an elevated highway. Or a soya
milk-powered hydroelectric plant with a oating cattle ranch
and a jungle theme park. Because that is what integration
means these days: do whatever you have to do to keep the
continent spit-stuck together, like a political Pangaea, and
make sure it doesnt drift too far into the left. God forbid.
Part of the problem lies in how scales are dened. The
local is only the local if there is a set of rules and conventions
that makes the category useful and practicable, and
differentiable from any other particular denition of scale.
But there is, of course, an inherent fuzziness in this procedure;
we cannot cleanly cut off any political action according to its
imagined structure (say, a national park), nor can we say that
something only occurs at a given scale. So in this sense, when
we are dealing with a territory like the Amazon that dees
easy categorisation or is really a patchwork of jurisdictions
and constituencies conicting with each other, it is hard to
use words like local, regional and global in a meaningful or
accurate way. When projects are locally deployed, they rarely
go beyond a half-baked environmental impact statement or a
ready-made commission to pocket outside funds. And when
the initiative does comes from the central government, as it
sometimes does, it comes as a far cry, a technocratic echo,
quickly dampened by the exactions of everyday life.
A major aw with Peruvian economist Hernando de Sotos
position regarding the Amazon (see pp 647) is precisely that
in an attempt to debunk certain myths that for him stand in
the way of progress, he reinforces such a disconnect, revealing,
by way of disguise, his own myths in the process. His
arguments in favour of land titles that is, that property titles
provide poor individuals access to credit and free enterprise
reinforce an idea that now seems dated: namely, that the
market is already there, that it is a latent attribute of collective
life, inescapable and omnipresent, natural, like ether, and
that we can, or rather should, allow it to express itself. This
is pure ideology as ideological as claiming that indigenous
communities are better off in voluntary isolation. Amazonian
communities are not poor because they do not have land titles.
Some of the poorest ones, in fact, do. They are poor trapped
in poverty, that is because they lack the conditions, the
framework, the territorial requirements that would even make
a land title useful. This does not imply, by extension, that
we should try to change such conditions to t the purported
usefulness of a land title, but rather, that we should see in what
ways the current fabric of these communities raise different,
more positive, approaches to development.
This has little to do with an indigenous peoples so-
called worldview. The whole armature of their subsistence
does not allow for an easy transition (a politically correct
way of saying they are pretty much hurled into the global
economy); that we can all agree upon. However, to think
that what facilitates the movement of capital in one setting,
namely property titles and legal institutions, can be readily
transposed to another, producing similar results (which are
not exactly golden) is a bit facile. Who is it, after all, that
seeks to have the upper hand here: the locals, who are mostly
migrants anyway (some cities, like Puerto Maldonado in
the Peruvian Amazon, see a 15-person-per-day migration
rate from the Andes), or the central state, whose policies
have time and again failed to include (involve, engage) the
Amazon in its nation-building/resource-extracting efforts?
16

And if it is the latter, why do we pretend otherwise?
Be sides, there is no such thing as an Amazonian
community. No sample is representative enough. De Soto
conjures up the Second Law of Thermodynamics along with
Charles Darwins warm little pond and Aristotles concept
of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation (mice come from
dirty hay, moths from the air pockets between sheets, and
so on) to make the point that indigenous communities have
to behave more like permeable membranes, in accordance
with natural laws, that is, if they are to survive the globalist
siege (he calls it the globalist tide).
17
This simply distracts us
from the main point: that the siege itself has to be addressed
as a totalising failure and one that is good (read: successful)
at sustaining itself. And while De Soto may say, with good
reason, that illegal activities such as small-scale mining and
informal logging account for some of the more insidious
threats the Amazon faces today, there is no reason to believe
that well-regulated large-scale operations will actually
produce, in toto, a rosier outcome.
Gary Leggett, P.A.I.D (Project in Assistance of International
Disasters), Jan Van Eyck Academie and Yale University, 2010
opposite: The sequence of image describes a proposal to transform
the Amazon into a giant virtual billboard. By overlaying a grid on
an area with overlapping jurisdictions and interests (oil blocks,
native communities, deforestation, national parks, and so on),
a zero-level value map is generated based on the number of
conicting claims in each cell. The resulting matrix serves as the
basis for an online initiative that allows users to buy and bid for
real-estate using aerial images of the Amazon as an interface. The
funds accrued by the initiative would subsidise conservation and
energy projects within the pixel area or elsewhere (even outside the
Amazon). Constant updates of aerial images would allow for a near
real-time follow-up on such investments.
73 73
74 74
What seems far more interesting is to ask what forms
of failure we are actually talking about. Who or what fails
exactly? Nature, technology, language? Is there anything not
failing that we should be paying more attention to? Are there
better ways of being destructive? Do all deforestation patterns
necessarily produce negative feedback effects? Apparently not.
A recent paper by a meteorologist at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign tries to reconcile the discrepancy between
the decrease in precipitation predicted by general circulation
models and the observed increase in precipitation due to
specic deforestation patterns, like shbone deforestation,
which [paradoxically] produce more clouds and rain over
the deforested patches.
18
But is there really a middle ground
between development and conservation or is this only a
useful myth that validates the debates polarity and hence its
bias towards development? T he danger here, David Harvey
writes, is of accepting, often without knowing it, concepts that
preclude radical critique. One of the most pervasive and difcult
to surmount barriers is that which insists on separating
out nature and society as coherent entities.
19
In the case of
De Soto, the danger his weakness lies in using one as the
metaphor for the advancement of the other.
Nature Morte
Consider the architectural rendering. Trees are cut, feathered
and pasted with such ease and condence that it makes nature
seem like an exercise in ornament. We spray-paint trees on our
facades, we vegetate our roofs and walls, we render a view, a
moment, a snapshot of a process of change that is, for lack of
a better word, natural, and we say to ourselves, apodictically:
Nature. Nature is what is natural.
But it is also dead. In his critique of Malthus, Harvey
addresses the question of natural limits: To say that scarcity
resides in nature and that natural limits exist is to ignore
how scarcity is socially produced [I would add, in the line
of Robert Nozick, that it is only socially produced insofar as
it is ostensibly tied to a market price] and how limits are a
social relation within nature (including human society) rather
than some externally imposed necessity.
20
Any view that
denes nature as a superstructure, framing and controlling
human activity, sustains the illusion that there is in fact
something inherently natural about it, some thing-in-itself
or Holy Ghost that draws necessary limits to our growth and
feeds, at once, our sense of progress.
Santiago del Hierro and Gary Leggett,
Planes of Violence, 2010
Sectional perspective depicting the layering
of conicting jurisdictions oil blocks,
native reserves, national parks on a
single patch of land.
75 75
The question of scale is inextricably linked to this
problem. Nature, as substance or essence or what-have-you,
is predicated on the assumption that there is in fact such
a thing as continuity between measurable phenomena.
Things happen there only if they also happen here.
Everything (as every thing) is only qualitatively different
if it is quantitatively variable. But this also glosses over
an important ontological distinction: the possibility that
certain phenomena become entirely different animals
when observed at different scales or, more precisely,
when described as occurring in distinct spaces (registers,
conventions) of representation.
Instead of assuming, then, that an economic
community is empowered and able to transcend itself,
to navigate between scales, simply by virtue of holding
legal tenancy over its land (the degree zero of capital
accumulation, lets say), it seems far more interesting to ask
how such titles could be spatially arranged or distributed to
ensure more radical results. We could imagine, for example,
that certain state incentives, like standpipes and power
lines, the infrastructural blueprint of a community, could be
laid out in predetermined areas (squat here!), producing
pardon the expression more efcient results than a single
damp 80-gram A4 document stamped a posteriori by a
man who could not care less what you do with your new-
found right. The point is that titles, in and of themselves,
do not guarantee anything if they do not, at once, dictate
and recongure the behaviour of the group that gives them
sense in the rst place.
If there is an underlying theme to the problems
discussed so far, it would therefore have to be this: whether
we think of nature, capital, culture, politics or any other
broad-brush category we use to describe processes that are
essentially formless, the problem lies in our assuming that
there is something intrinsically whole in the world simply
because it can be described. The Amazon is one example
among many albeit of an exceptional size where our
assumptions about human development, assumptions that
depend on such categorical wholeness, can hardly hold
their own. And if there is anything positive about the
failures we have encountered here it is precisely that, in an
effort to foist order on to the world, they have added a layer
of disjunction, distance and self-reference to the very chaos
they sought to tame. 1
Notes
1. Michael Goulding, Nigel JH Smith and Dennis J Mahar, Floods of Fortune:
Ecology and Economy Along the Amazon, Columbia University Press (New York),
1996, p 47.
2. Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Charles Scribners
Sons (New York), 1914.
3. As quoted in Hilgard OReilly Sternberg, Manifest Destiny and the Brazilian
Amazon: A Backdrop to Contemporary Security and Development Issues, CLAG
Yearbook 13, 1987, p 26. Lansford Warren Hastings, a fellow Southerner, did
follow up on Maurys ideas and founded a settlement of Confederate emigrants in
1867 in Santarm. Needless to say, it was a failure.
4. See Matthew Fontaine Maury, The Amazon, and the Atlantic Slopes of South
America: A Series of Letters Published in the National Intelligencer and Union
Newspapers, Under the Signature of Inca [1853], Cornell University Library,
Digital Collections, August 2010.
5. 8.1 million square kilometres corresponds to the denition of Greater
Amazonia according to three criteria: political, ecological and hydrographic
boundaries. See Geo-Amazonia: Perspectivas del Medio Ambiente en la
Amazona, The United Nations Environment Program, Organizacin del Tratado
de Cooperacin Amaznica, Centro de Investigacin de la Universidad del
Pacco, 2009, p 38.
6. In 1922 the British Stevenson Plan restricted Asian plantation rubber exports
by means of cooperation between British and French planters. Thus they created
an articial rubber shortage and inated the price of this commodity on the
international market. John Galey, Industrialist in the Wilderness: Henry Fords
Amazon Venture, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol
21, No 2, May 1979,7.Grown in their natural environment, rubber trees are
protected from the spread of the disease by the shelter of other plant life and the
distance between them. Ford, having planted the trees in rows on barren land,
could not stop the fungus once it started. Elizabeth Esch, Shades of Tarzan!:
Ford on the Amazon, Cabinet, Issue 7: Failure, Summer 2002.
8. The quote is by one Dr Emerick Szilagyi, a Henry Ford Hospital surgeon who
ran the Fordlandia plantation hospitals in Amazonia from 1942 to 1945, in
reference to the location chosen by Carl LaRue to build the town.
9. See Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Fords Forgotten
Jungle City, Picador (New York), 2009.
10. Esch, op cit.
11. Grandin, op cit, p 110.
12. Galey, op cit, p 268. For Fords low opinion of cows, see See Grandin, op cit,
p 60.
13. Galey, op cit, p 277.
14. Fordlandia and Belterra, valued at $8 million, were sold back to the Brazilian
government for $244,200 in 1945. Grandin, op cit, pp 350, 360.
15. The Inambari Dam Project. See Bank Information Center at www.bicusa.org/
en/Project.aspx?id=10078.
16. The statistic was gathered in an interview with the regional president of Madre
de Dios in November 2008. The National Statistics Institute (INEI) can only vouch
for annual population rates across the entire Peruvian basin, which it estimates
above the national population growth rate. See Geo-Amazonia, op cit, p 68.
17. Hernando de Soto, La Amazonia no es Avatar, El Comercio, 5 June 2010.
18. See Somnath Baidya Roy, Mesoscale Vegetation-Atmosphere Feedbacks in
Amazonia, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 114, D20111, 2009.
19. David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Blackwell
Publishers (Cambridge, MA), 1996, p 140.
20. Ibid, p 147.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 68-9, 73 Gary Leggett; p 60 The Henry
Ford Collection; p 74 Gary Leggett and Santiago del Hierro
76 76
URBAN RESPONSES
TO CLIMATE CHANGE
IN LATIN AMERICA
REASONS, CHALLENGES
AND OPPORTUNITIES
Patricia Romero-Lankao
The world currently faces a very dangerous
threat if strong action is not undertaken
to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) and
promote more sustainable patterns of
development. Urban areas in Latin America
play crucial roles in the climate change arena,
not only as key sources of greenhouse gases,
but also as hot spots of vulnerability to oods,
heat waves and other hazards that climate
change is expected to aggravate. These
roles create a unique opportunity for urban
mitigation and adaptation responses.
Urban GHG Emissions
Cities are key sources of GHGs. Yet just as
Latin American cities have followed unique
paths of development, they also follow
trajectories of emissions that are different
from, and often lower than, those prevailing
in other nations. For instance, carbon
emissions per capita in Austin, Texas, and the
District of Columbia are 6- to 20-fold those in
So Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City
Different factors account for the diverse
levels and sources of urban GHG emissions.
Cities such as Rio de Janeiro and So
Paulo have lower levels of emissions not
only because they are located towards the
tropics, thus requiring less energy for heating
purposes, but also because they depend
Cities in Latin America have a crucial role to
play in climate change. Urban areas are the main
emitters of greenhouse gases, while being vulnerable
to severe weather conditions such as oods, heat
waves and tropical storms that environmental
shifts are expected to trigger. Patricia Romero-
Lankao outlines the background to greenhouse gas
emissions and climate change, while highlighting
how development in Latin America presents
unique opportunities for mitigating potential
damage to the environment.
77 77
on hydropower as a key source of energy.
The lower level of economic development of
Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City lies behind
their relatively lower per capita emissions
compared to those of Los Angeles and
Denver. (The respective GDP per capita of
the four cities are US$12,087, US$13,470,
US$44,114 and US$40,031).
1
Equally
important factors, however, are urban form,
transportation layout, technologies and wider
governance settings.
The Urban Face of Climate Risks
Climate change has a variety of urban
implications. Changes are expected in the
frequency and intensity of heavy rains,
droughts, heat waves, wildres and other
extreme events. Higher risks are, therefore,
expected for urban areas that are already
exposed to these threats, such as to tropical
storms (the Caribbean and Central America)
or to water shortages (northern Chile, the
Brazilian northeast, northern Mexico)
2
as
the frequency and intensity of these events
increase with climate change.
This increase in severe weather will
create two distinct tales of water problems:
too much or too little. Large cities and
growing cities that are currently facing
serious problems obtaining sufcient
freshwater supplies will be especially
affected on the too little water side for
example, Quito in Ecuador and Huancayo
in Peru, which depend on water from the
glaciers in the Andes.
3
As illustrated by the December 1999
oods in Venezuela, excess of water is as
problematic as too little. Flash oods and
landslides killed nearly 30,000 in Caracas,
and higher than average and more extreme
rainfall events will be related to further ood
hazards, increased landslides and mudows.
Other effects of climate change are
increases in mean temperatures, decreases
in precipitation levels and increases in
sea level which will impact the energy
sector, will impair the draining capacities
of sewage systems and the viability of
low-lying coastal cities, where 7 per cent
of the regional total population is located.
Climate change is but one of multiple
societal and environmental stresses facing
cities. Heat stress and respiratory distress
from extreme temperatures coalesce with
a reduction in air quality to create higher
mortality in urban areas.
4

Adaptive capacity, the ability of the
urban population and economic activities
to attenuate climate stresses or cope with
their consequences, is as key a determinant
of climate impacts as exposure is. Latin
American cities have been struggling to
provide their populations with many of
the determinants of adaptive capacity. For
instance, 48 per cent of urban workers
in Latin American cities are employed in
the informal sector, thus lacking access to
sufcient and stable sources of income.
Under recent state reforms in Latin America,
public provision of infrastructure and services
was practically abandoned,
5
leaving urban
governments unable to provide these key
determinants of adaptive capacity to their
burgeoning populations.
The decits in adaptive capacity are
compounded by the completely lacking
infrastructures in many areas critical to
adaptive capacity. Many Latin American
cities have no all-weather roads. The
proportion of urban dwellers with no piped
water supplies ranges between 1.2 per cent
in Chile and 42 per cent in El Salvador; the
percentage with no drains ranges between
13 per cent in Chile and 77 per cent in
Paraguay. About 37 per cent of the housing
stock in Latin America is inappropriate
to afford protection against disaster and
disease. Many homes are situated on illegally
occupied or subdivided land which inhibits
any investment in more resilient buildings.
Santiago, Chile
opposite left: Under climate change, the
health impacts of air pollution and weather
extremes might be aggravated.
opposite right: Greenhouse gas emissions
per capita for selected cities.
Glacier Perito, Moreno
National Park, Argentina
above left: Glaciers like this will disappear
as a result of climate change.
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
above right: A colourful alley turned into a
river due to heavy rains.
78 78
Some of the low-income populations live
on risk-prone areas because these are the
only sites they can occupy within reach of
income-earning opportunities. It is, hence,
difcult to talk about adapting infrastructure
and buildings that are not there.
Linking Mitigation and Adaptation
Responses with Development
Although Latin American cities are not big
emitters, there are still good reasons for them
to pay attention to mitigation and choose
development paths with an eye towards wealthy
cities such as Stockholm and Barcelona that
have pretty low levels of emissions.
While still relatively low, emissions in
Latin American cities are growing and these
cities will need to address some of the causes
of this (urban sprawl, increased commuting
distances and the increasing use of private
vehicles). Buenos Aires, Santiago and Mexico
City, for instance, experienced a polycentric
urban expansion of localities sprawling
along major highways. A consequence of
this is increased commuting distances and
decreased speeds (for example, in Mexico
City from 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) and
16.8 kilometres (10.4 miles) an hour by
bus in 1987 to 5.6 kilometres (3.5 miles)
and 16.7 kilometres (10.3 miles) an hour in
2000).
6
A 1 per cent increase in the density
of urban areas relates to an approximately
0.7 per cent decline in CO
2
pollution at the
city level, with other factors held constant.
7
The second reason, equity and afuence,
can be illustrated with data on transportation.
The motorisation rate among high-income
households is 8.6-fold that of low-income
households.
8
In Mexico City, private cars
only contribute 18 per cent of the citys daily
trip segments, yet they account for 40.8 per
cent of CO
2
equivalent emissions. Conversely,
public transport accounts for 82 per cent
of those trip segments yet emits 25.9 per
cent of CO
2
equivalent emissions.
9
A key
determinant of GHG emissions, therefore,
is the consumption patterns of middle- and
high-income sectors a minority in the region
together with the production systems that
benet from that consumption.
Third, a set of governmental and non-
governmental policies and actions in some
cities illustrates the constraints but also the
opportunities available when responding
to climate change. Cities like Mexico City
have developed a rened framing of climate
change. Policy networks, political leaders
and research groups have been critical in
launching a climate agenda. Nevertheless,
this has not been enough to push effective
policies. Policy-making has been constrained
by two institutional factors: fragmentation
in local governance and lack of institutional
capacity; for example, nancial resources and
well-trained and permanent personnel.
Manizales in Colombia and Ilo in Peru
provide good examples of local governments
working together with grass-roots
organisations, communities and universities
to promote urban development and at
the same time reduce vulnerability. The
governments in these cities implemented
actions to avoid rapidly growing low-income
populations settling on dangerous sites.
Although not originally driven by climate-
change concerns, these initiatives illustrate
how pro-development and pro-poor policies
can enhance adaptive capacity.
10
Other cities
such as Curitiba in Brazil have been able to
integrate transportation and land use through
the transit-orientated development idea, and
thus to reduce emissions.
11

Many cases also exist of non-
governmental initiatives seeking to create
more sustainable urban places (for example,
river remediation in Morelia and Tuxtla
Gutirrez in Mexico, and land preservation in
the peri-urban area of Bogot). Although not
designed to respond to climate change, these
projects illustrate how pro-development
actions can improve the adaptive capacity
of poor populations (for instance, by the
creation of low-cost and space-efcient
Laboratrio de Ecincia Energtica em Edicaes (LabEEE) and the Universidade
Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Solar Heating and Rainwater Harvesting Tower, Brazil, 2009
above: About 44 per cent of the electricity consumed in Brazil is for the supply of buildings in general, and residential
housing demands around 22 per cent of that percentage. In the housing sector the main end uses for electric power
consumption nationally are: cooling (27 per cent corresponding to the use of refrigerators and freezers); heating
water (24 per cent corresponding mainly to the use of electric showers as a main current source of hot water in the
sector); air conditioning (around 20 per cent) and lighting (14 per cent). One promising solution for heating water
in single-family residences is the use of solar energy, a renewable source for which the technology is easily accessed
and relatively low cost. The main objective of LabEEEs tower proposal is to bring together within a single structure
solutions for energy efciency and the rational use of water for the improvement of low-income housing.
79 79
social housing in Mexico City). Development
actions may also reduce carbon emissions
through innovations such as treating solid
waste and the introduction of solar water
heating in new housing developments (for
example, in So Paulo).
12

To summarise, there are many reasons
why Latin American cities need to address
their multiple climate-change issues: like
other cities they concentrate on carbon-
emitting activities and entities such as
industry, transportation and households.
Yet these cities are often disproportionately
affected by the hazards that climate change
is expected to aggravate, and face existing
decits in adaptive capacity. Action therefore
needs to be taken to address these decits
and, by doing so, to enhance the adaptive
capacity of their urban populations. Although
Latin American cities have been faced with
many economic and institutional constraints
during recent decades, they have also been
the sources of many initiatives, policies and
actions aimed at mitigating emissions and
adapting to climate change.
Notes
1. P Romero-Lankao and D Gnatz, Introduction:
Urbanization and the Challenge of Climate Change in UN-
Habitat, 2011 UN-Habitat Report on Cities and Climate
Change, 2011, p 60. P Romero-Lankao, Are We Missing
the Point? Particularities of Urbanization, Sustainability
and Carbon Emissions in Latin American Cities,
Environment and Urbanization 19, 2007, pp 15975.
2. G Magrin, C Gay, DC Choque, JC Gimnez, A
Moreno and G Nagy, et al, Latin America, in Climate
Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.
Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press
(Cambridge), 2007, Chp 13.
3. Ibid.
4. Romero-Lankao, op cit.
5. M Wilder and P Romero-Lankao, Paradoxes
of Decentralization: Water Reform and its Social
Implications in Mexico, World Development 34(11),
2006, pp 197795.
6. Romero-Lankao, op cit.
7. P Romero-Lankao, JL Tribbia and D Nychka, Testing
Theories to Explore the Drivers of Cities Atmospheric
Emissions, Ambio 38, 2009, pp 23644.
8. MF Osses and R Fernandez, Transport and Air Quality
in Santiago, Chile, Advances in City Transport: Case
Studies, 2006, pp 79105.
9. Romero-Lankao, Are We Missing the Point?, op cit.
10. J Daz Palacios and L Miranda, Concertacion
(Reaching Agreement) and Planning for Sustainable
Development in Ilo, Peru, in S Bass, H Reid, D
Satterthwaite and P Steele (eds), Reducing Poverty and
Sustaining the Environment, EarthScan (London), 2005,
pp 25579.
11. UN-Habitat, Planning Sustainable Cities: Global
Report on Human Settlements 2009, Earthscan
(London), 2009.
12. See www.holcimfoundation.org. The mission of the
Holcim Foundation is to select and support initiatives
that combine sustainable construction solutions with
architectural excellence and enhanced quality of life
beyond technical solutions.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 76(b), 77
iStockphoto; p 76(t) Patricia Romero-Lankao; pp 78-9
LabEEE - Laboratrio de Ecincia Energtica em Edicaes.
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil
top: Tower prototype constructed using
laminated concrete, or ferrocement, on an
existing house in a low-income community
in Florianpolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
above left: The possibility of changing
the orientation of the solar collector or
panel depends on the houses orientation
in relation to the sun or to the north, and
on the collectors angle depending on the
local latitude.
above right: The tower structure can be
modular, adapting to different needs and
local situations.
80 80
FILLING THE VOIDS
WITH POPULAR
IMAGINARIES
In the last few years, the emergence of a burgeoning
middle class in Brazil has transformed the country into
one of the fastest growing consumer markets in the
world. For MMBB Arquitetos, based in So Paulo,
social mobility and the upgrading of urban infrastructure
represent a unique opportunity to develop the city.
Fernando de Mello Franco of MMBB describes the
practices strategy for urbanising much needed new
infrastructure. A canal with a public park can be inserted,
for instance, alongside a new drainage system, providing
necessary social adhesion in a fragile urban culture.
Fernando de Mello Franco
81 81
MMBB, Watery Voids, Pirajuara
Watershed, So Paulo, 2007
Schematic plan for the programming of the
Watery Voids on the Pirajuara watershed. The
aim is to offer the voids to the local population
to ll them with whatever they wish.
82 82
So Paulo is undergoing major transformations common to a
number of industrial cities around the world. The process of
productive restructuring
1
has released former industrial sites
(mainly uvial plains of the metropolis three main rivers: the
Tiet, Pinheiros and Tamanduatei) for redevelopment and
reuse. At the same time, the threat of climate change demands
renovation of the general modes of transport. Moreover, the rise
in urban land values is boosting growth on the periphery, in the
mode of favelas, while the central core of the city is emptying.
The context of an emerging economy also raises specic
issues. The upward social mobility of a large segment of the
population allows speculation that new demands and values
regarding the city will emerge. The challenge then becomes the
redening of objectives, strategies and project tools that are able
to act within this process.
Macroeconomic restructuring and social assistance
programmes, such as Bolsa Famlia,
2
implemented consistently by
recent government administrations, have lifted approximately 30
million people above Brazils poverty line. As a consequence, the
internal consumer market has expanded signicantly. The impact
of this new middle class on the city is the generation of values
that manifest themselves in the use of urban space.
3
Currently,
about 30 per cent of the population of So Paulo lives in informal
settlements. Assuming that the current growth rate continues, the
informal and formal cities will be mutually reshaped, suggesting a
breakdown of the dichotomies between them.
This transformation of the favelas in So Paulo has
been carried out by several public programmes such as the
Programa de Acelerao do Crescimento (PAC) and Plano
Municipal de Habitao (PMH) for the regeneration of
informal sectors, in terms of both housing and environmental
policy. Indeed, informal sectors often occupy the protected
areas of springs, rivers and streams of a catchment basin, and
their drainage system will be affected the most by climate
change. So Paulos location on a high plateau will protect it
from rises in sea level. Nevertheless, evidence shows that an
increase in the frequency and intensity of the rainfall cycle will
aggravate the risk of chronic ooding. The need to mitigate the
economic impacts of ooding is consensual among politicians
and the population. This presents an opportunity to develop
an integrated approach to tackle housing problems and water
resources management as both issues are strongly related.
The articulation of housing, sanitation, ooding and
water resources policies is already under way in So Paulo,
but despite such public transformation programmes much
more needs to be done. It is necessary to rethink the design
of the citys infrastructure in order to incorporate urban
values into what has been historically conceived only as a
technical and functional artefact. Infrastructure should play
a role in providing basic services and also in promoting the
improvement of the local urban tissues.
Urban infrastructure consists of xed elements that support
and structure the transformation of the city. These provide
the departure points for the proliferation of the multiple webs
that constitute the urban fabric. For a city with a fragile urban
culture, that lacks a socially constructed concept of landscape, it
is essential to urbanise its infrastructure.
In this context, MMBB Arquitetos hypothesis is that the
emergence of a new social class provides an opportunity to
investigate new demands for the citys urbanity. The practices
approach integrates two elds of this type of investigation:
rstly, rethinking the paradigm of infrastructure; secondly,
constructing forms of popular imaginary that can impact the
use of space for example, on to a web that embeds value in
urban space as a place for living.
MMBB is based in So Paulo and led by architects
Fernando de Mello Franco, Marta Moreira and Milton Braga.
The ofce has been working in informal areas since 2007
when it received the Best Entry Award at the 3rd International
Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam for its Watery Voids project.
Watery Voids, So Paulo
Watery Voids is a conceptual project that proposes strategies
to boost architects participation in the production of the
contemporary city. The key idea is to exploit the social capital
employed in the construction of large infrastructure projects in
order to obtain better results with the same resources.
The systemic character of such infrastructure works impacts
both at the local and at the whole-city scale. The solution to an
urban problem often cannot be found in the place one wishes to
benet. Rather, it must be sought in spatially discontinuous, yet
interrelated, spaces. This can require a more even distribution of
government investment than one would expect, particularly
when it occurs in the context of an imbalanced battle for public
resources in the uneven context of Brazilian society. This is the
case, for example, in the efforts to ght oods in So Paulo: a
signicant investment is planned for peripheral sites in order to
solve a problem that affects primarily the central areas of the city
where the main metropolitan transport infrastructure is located.
The solution proposed by the government is to build a
set of storm-water retention reservoirs, the main purpose of
which is to retain water and delay its onset into the citys main
rivers. There are currently about 27 of these facilities, and
once completed, this network of reservoirs will be capable of
opposite top left: Rainwater reservoir # 1
on the Pirajuara watershed. So Paulos
social housing and drainage issues are
totally connected.
opposite bottom: The construction of a
network of urban voids can be converted
into an opportunity for extending the
infrastructure on the periphery.
MMBB, Watery Voids, Pirajuara
Watershed, So Paulo, 2007
opposite top right: Schematic proposal for
the possible articulation of urban policies.
83 83
The solution proposed by
the government is to build a
set of storm-water retention
reservoirs, the main purpose
of which is to retain water
and delay its onset into the
citys main rivers.
84 84
MMBB, Antonico Creek Urban Project,
Favela Paraispolis, So Paulo, 2009
below left: Plan.
below right: The design of the main square
includes a surface canal that will also carry
ood water to encourage the interaction of
the local population with the water.
bottom left: Partial plan of the open-space
system. The dark areas correspond to
the spaces offered to the population for
new building fronts. The bike lane and
commercial activities are part of the
strategy to avoid future illegal occupation.
bottom right: Open space model.
opposite: Sectional diagrams of the
proposed hydraulic model.
The perennial waters will be carried by a surface canal, and
this will also collect the ooding waters that are compatible
with urban activities. The run-off from heavy rain ows will be
directed to an underground storm-water retention reservoir.
85 85
retaining 15.5 million cubic metres (547 million cubic feet)
of water. The reservoirs are distributed throughout all of the
metropolis sub-basins and most are located near informal
settlements. This means that tackling the metropolitan
dimension of the ooding problem requires the dispersion of
public investment in peripheral areas. The starting point of
MMBBs Watery Voids project is to reconcile the metropolitan
and the local scales of these interventions.
Spatially, these reservoirs consist of large excavations that are
temporarily lled during rainy periods. When not in use, they
are abandoned spaces. This network of urban voids, however,
might be an opportunity to develop a system to structure the
peripheries, if well articulated with other sectoral policies.
So Paulo has a decient potable water supply that demands
the remediation of its water resources. Once this process, already
under way, is nished, new uses for the reservoirs might be
envisioned that will allow the project to integrate these facilities
into the urban fabric, giving the population an opportunity to
interact with the water. Thus the network of voids might be
reprogrammed by the population according to its own values
of public realm. The idea is that the embodiment of signicant
images into the urban landscape will build a strong affection
and bond between the city and its inhabitants.
Antonico Creek Urban Project, So Paulo
The Antonico Creek Urban Project is part of the favelas
urbanisation programme undertaken by the municipal housing
secretary of So Paulo. The site is located in Paraispolis,
the citys second largest favela with an area of about 1 square
kilometre (0.386 square miles) and around 60,000 inhabitants,
which emerged from the failure of a previous urban project. The
creek cuts through an orthogonal grid that was irresponsibly
built on highly irregular topography. Currently, it is invisible
below the areas of informal building. The projects to be
developed by the municipal government will require the
demolition of settlements built on these non-buildable areas to
create the sites for the slums main network of public spaces.
The scope of the project is the design of the drainage system
and the reconguration of open spaces. However, the main
challenge is to create a means of appropriation that prevents
future illegal occupations. The proposed strategy is to respond
to the initial technical requirements through an articulation of
popular imaginary forms that govern the use of urban spaces.
Initially, the project investigates hydraulic models that, on
the one hand, foster the reconciliation of the slum and rivers and,
on the other, protect the fragile urban fabric from the negative
impacts of the heavy tropical rains. The proposal will separate
these ows. The perennial waters will be carried by a surface
canal, and this will also collect the ooding waters that are
compatible with urban activities. The run-off from heavy rain
ows will be directed to an underground storm-water retention
reservoir. The sanitation of the neighbourhood and water
cleaning remediation projects promised by the government will
allow the population contact with the new stream.
Running parallel to the canal will be a corridor of open
space of varying widths for cyclists and pedestrians. This
corridor sits on the sites gentlest slopes and will be the main
mobility axis for the neighbourhood. These intense human
ows will foster the dynamics that activate and safeguard places.
The opening of new building fronts along the corridor will be
encouraged, boosting the local service and commerce economies
that are usually found on a citys main circulation axis.
The project will create a linear centrality comprising a
sequence of public spaces, similar to one of the most powerful
spatial structures in Brazilian cities: the calado. This paved
corridor is often employed to make the transition between
a beach and the urban fabric. Its linear conguration, the
possibility of it being experienced in a processional way, and its
indeterminacy, give this border a porous character. In the case
of Antonico Creek, the presence of a body of water with which
one can interact suggests that using the imaginary of beach
culture might be successful. Beach culture provides an example
of a spontaneous use of space that culturally allows for an active
and desirable coexistence, though not totally devoid of conict.
4
Both the Watery Voids and Antonico Creek projects investigate
possible ways of negotiating the use of space through design
strategies. They urbanise infrastructure and expand its values:
they consider its role as a structuring system for the city and as
a service provider. However, they also open up infrastructure
to a variety of popular manifestations that have the ability to
transform a technical artefact into an inhabitable place. 1
Notes
1. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the
Origins of Cultural Change, Wiley-Blackwell (Oxford), 1990. The term
reestruturao produtiva is used to characterise the passage from the Fordist
(Henry Ford) productive process to the exible accumulation process that
brings new forms to the use of the territory and the city.
2. The Bolsa Famlia is a government programme that provides a monthly
stipend to allow families to send their children to school.
3. See A Souza and B Lamounier, A Classe mdia brasileira: ambies,
valores e projetos de sociedade, Elsevier Editora (Rio de Janeiro), 2010.
4. See Eduardo Aquino and Karen Shanski, Beachscape, in Complex Order:
Intrusions in Public Space, Plug In Editions (Winnipeg), 2009.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 80-1, 83(tr&b), 84-5 MMBB; p 83(tl)
Nelson Kon
86 86
CIVIC BUILDING
FORTE, GIMENES
& MARCONDES
FERRAZ
ARQUITETOS
(FGMF), SAO
PAULO
So Paulo-based practice Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz (FGMF) places particular
importance on developing relationships between architecture, its environment and the user.
This is apparent in its two projects featured here: the FDE Public School at Vrzea
Paulista, for which the rm created concrete brise-soleils; and the Edifcio Projeto Viver, a
community building at Morumbi, which it retained as a gateway for the favela it serves.
FGMF
~
87 87
FDE PUBLIC SCHOOL,
VRZEA PAULISTA, SO PAULO
A foundation for the development of
education (FDE), a public agency, regulates
the implementation of public schools in
the state of So Paulo. One of its recent
programmes was for a series of architect-
designed public schools to be built using
prefabricated and low-cost structures
and components.
For the Vrzea Paulista elementary
school, FGMF aimed to create a relationship
between the public and semi-public spaces
through a dialogue between indoors and
outdoors, and provide an interesting, though
low-cost, space for the children to study in.
The project consists of two large
volumes a blue one (made of concrete)
that houses a multipurpose indoor sports
court, and a brighter one that contains the
classrooms, supporting facilities and open
space for games and activities. The tension
and counterpoint between the volumes have
been worked out based on the opacity of
the one volume and the translucency of the
other. The schools entrance sits between
the two volumes, and at weekends when
the gates are open for the community to use
the building, indoors and outdoors connect
with one another.
The classroom spaces are reected in the
main facade, protected by premanufactured
concrete brise-soleils. The end result is
one large panel that hangs over the local
community. At the rear, sunlight is ltered
by the perforated metal roong that shelters
the recreation space, allowing it to be fully
illuminated during the day and intensifying
the sense of connection with the garden
(there are no gates or enclosures).
At night, the school is lit inside out,
and this impression of a lantern allied
to its site on one of the highest points in
the neighbourhood creates a referential
architectonic element that adds to its
signicance as a reference point for
the community.
FGMF, FDE Public School, Vrzea
Paulista, So Paulo, 2008
opposite: The school entrance is
designated by the contrast between its
two main volumes the heavier, blue-
painted volume of the sports court serves
as a counterpoint to the main volume of
classrooms, closed with concrete brise-
soleils: ethereal versus translucent.
above: The concrete brise-soleils have
the double effect of shading the interior
spaces of the school and allowing vistas
over the city.
88 88
FGMF, FDE Public School, Vrzea
Paulista, So Paulo, 2008
top: View of the neighbourhood from the
far side of the school.
above: At night, the school becomes a
lantern in the Vrzea Paulista landscape.
Its emblematic site, one of the highest in
the neighbourhood, allows the project to
read not only as a school but also, when its
role changes at weekends, as an important
amenity for the whole community.
opposite centre and bottom: The NGOs
headquarters has become an important
geographical reference point for the Jardim
Colombo community. This is partly due
to its role as a vehicular entrance to the
favela after part of the site was donated to
the community to allow the new access.
FGMF, Edifcio Projeto Viver, Morumbi,
So Paulo, 2005
opposite top: The opening day of the
new building served as an example of
the architects intention: that the project
and building, and formation of this semi-
public space, become a focal point for the
favela community.
89 89
EDIFCIO PROJETO VIVER,
MORUMBI, SO PAULO
Edifcio Projeto Viver was built in 2005
to serve the Jardim Colombo community,
a favela (shantytown) located in the
southern region of So Paulo, where more
than 10,000 inhabitants live within a
precarious urban context. The building is
the headquarters of the Associao Viver
em Famlia (Living in Family Association), a
Brazilian bank employees non-governmental
organisation (NGO) that represents the social
development and welfare of the community.
Located on one of the last remaining plots in
the area, it aims to establish a gateway to the
favela that also acts as a central node for the
inhabitants and their activities.
The site previously functioned as an
informal entrance to the community, for
both cars and pedestrians. In designing the
project, FGMF chose to retain this function,
adding a paved road for vehicular access
and creating an open, semi-public square
with stairways to form a pedestrian gateway.
The square also plays host to a number of
community events such as celebrations and
vaccination campaigns.
Inside, the building programme facilitates
a multitude of uses: ofces (medical, dental
and legal), computer classrooms, a library,
and an experimental kitchen for classes that
includes a small street-level store selling the
products made in class.
The square below, allied with the space
underneath the buildings columns and
terraced gardens, enables the headquarters to
integrate with the sites topography. 1
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 86-8 Forte,
Gimenes & Marcondes Ferrraz Arquitetos, photos Nelson Kon; p 89
Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferrraz Arquitetos, photos Editora Pini
90 90
A CITY
TALKS
LEARNING FROM BOGOTS
REVITALISATION
As the Mayor of Bogot (19982001), Enrique Pealosa
transformed Colombias capital from a city without hope to
one that is held up as an international example of best practice.
This was epitomised by his far-reaching transport policy and
the TransMilenio bus-based transit system. Pealosa describes
the ambitious urban revitalisation programme that his
administration undertook and how they were guided by the
fundamental aim of the construction of equality.
Enrique Pealosa
91 91
Bogot is a large Latin American city located at 2,600 metres
(8,530 feet) above sea level on a high green Andean plateau,
and has severe inequality and poverty problems. The new
administration came into ofce on an Independent Party ticket,
and during our three-year tenure (19982001), implemented
a very different urban model from that which had prevailed
for decades in our city and in most developing countries. Our
strategy contributed signicantly to changing the attitudes of
Bogots citizens from negativism and hopelessness to pride
and condence in the possibility of constructing a better future.
It gave a new legitimacy to the social order. And it inuenced
every city and town, not only in Colombia, but across Latin
America and even in countries further aeld.
The fundamental criterion guiding our work was the
construction of equality. There is a vast difference between
creating equality and simply giving aid to the poor: programmes
that dole out money or free food to the needy may be necessary
but they do not bring about equality.
That tugurios, favelas, bidonvilles and slums of every
conceivable type are found all over the developing world testies
that the problem does not stem from bad government: it is
systemic. The poor in developing world cities are forced to build
their often precarious housing in the wrong places without
public spaces, and at least initially, without basic utilities such
as water and sewerage. Almost 50 per cent of Bogot has
sprung up illegally, mainly on steep mountainsides that are
often at serious risk of soil erosion leading to potentially deadly
landslides, always difcult to access by bicycle and where the
provision of transportation and services is energy intensive and
thus costly. Yet Bogot is surrounded by hundreds of thousands
of hectares of perfectly level land very well suited to quality
urban development.
The city administration initiated massive slum legalisation
and improvements. But beyond that we created a municipal
land bank company which bought up land that was either sold
voluntarily or through the use of compulsory purchase orders.
The company, Metrovivienda, produced quality urbanism and
private developers built and sold homes within set price and
time constraints. The result was some of the best-quality urban
development in Colombia.
opposite: Besides cycle lanes and
pedestrian corridors, Pealosas
administration oversaw the creation of a
network of protected cycle paths along city
streets and roads that led to a signicant
increase in bicycle use.
above: Where JICA had proposed an eight-
lane highway through the city, Pealosas
administration created the 35-kilometre
(21.7-mile) long Juan Amarillo greenway
which links some of the poorest to some
of the richest neighbourhoods in the city,
and through which tens of thousands of
people now cycle to work daily.
92 92
Towards an Open City
If it works well, a city centre integrates people from all parts of
the city and all income brackets. Bogots centre was in a state
of collapse as illegal street traders had completely taken over
crucial public spaces, creating chaos and a fertile environment
for crime. Worse, a 24-hectare (59.3-acre) and growing area
called Cartucho located two blocks from the Presidential Palace,
Congress and the citys main square, was totally in the grip of
drug dealers and their clients amid unimaginable conditions
of degeneration. It was a no-go area as far as the police were
concerned and murder rates were the highest in the world.
Accompanied by massive social programmes and
relocations, more than 600 buildings were demolished in order
to open up a 23-hectare (56.8-acre) park in the heart of the
city, intended to foster a repopulation of the centre; public
spaces were reclaimed from the chaos of crime and neglect
and Jimenez Avenue, one of downtowns most important
thoroughfares, was pedestrianised. In many poverty-stricken,
squalid and crime-prone environments, quality architecture
attracted, comforted and dignied fragile humans desperately in
need of a more protective and beautiful city.
Only about 20 per cent of home-owners owned cars, but
they had the most economic and political power. A majority
of upper- and upper-middle-class citizens in developing cities
In many poverty-stricken, squalid and crime-
prone environments, quality architecture attracted,
comforted and dignied fragile humans desperately
in need of a more protective and beautiful city.
93 93
pull out of their garages in the morning and may go for weeks
without walking a block on a city street. They consider the
absolute priority for government to be the construction of
more and bigger roads. Which is why even in some very poor
African cities where most of the population does not even have
access to clean water, it is still possible to nd highways. Car
infrastructure absorbs most of the budget. There is a conict
for funds between the needs of the automobile and the needs
of the poor for such imperatives as schools, parks, housing or
public transport. And there is a conict for space between cars,
pedestrians, cyclists and buses.
It was clear to us that more or bigger road infrastructure may
be convenient, but that it would never solve trafc jams: more
than the number of cars, what creates trafc is the number of
trips and their length. We rejected the recommendations of the
Jap anese International Cooperation Agency ( JICA) study we
received on our arrival at City Hall, which advocated spending
billions of dollars on expressways that were to crisscross our city.
Instead, we restricted car use in several ways: by establishing a
restriction on driving whereby every car had to be off the street
for two peak hours in the morning and two in the afternoon,
two days a week; the administration also embarked on a crusade
to get cars off the sidewalks where they had been parking
unimpeded until then. By means of a referendum we established
a Car Free Day on the rst Thursday of February every year in
which all cars except taxis are off the streets; the city has worked
ne every Car Free Day with the majority of citizens enjoying
shorter travel times. A vision of an urban environment that
required restricted car use necessitated the creation of a high
-quality public transport system.
Buses in Bogot were a disaster, almost all individually
owned, old and in poor condition, crammed to the point where
people would hang out of the open doors; madly racing against
each other they were often the cause of fatal accidents, or mired
in trafc and hardly moving
Subways are the ultimate dream of car-owners in the
cities of developing countries: often not because they have the
slightest intention of using them, but because they imagine
traditional public transport and its users will disappear into
underground tunnels and this will somehow do away with
trafc jams. It is not very democratic to put public transport
users underground just in order to free up space for cars.
Most importantly, rail transit systems were unaffordable,
both in terms of investment costs and from the perspective of
operational costs, if we were to reach all sectors of a large city.
The administration thus created a bus-based transit system
copied from the Brazilian city of Curitiba, where articulated
buses operate in dedicated, physically isolated lanes.
opposite: A TransMilenio bus zooming past
private cars in its dedicated lane in a trafc
jam makes democracy more real and social
organisation more legitimate.
above: Alameda Porvenir, a 23-kilometre
(14.3-mile) long pedestrian-and-bicycle-
only promenade through very low-income
areas. In their formidable pedestrian space,
citizens feel they are important, their needs
respected despite their poverty.
94 94
We are pedestrians, animals that walk: we need to walk, not
in order to survive but to be happy. If there is a single piece of
infrastructure that distinguishes advanced from backward cities,
it is quality sidewalks. Lack of them, or the presence of parking
bays where there should be sidewalks, is a symbol of inequality,
lack of respect for human dignity and insufcient democracy. We
built hundreds of kilometres of high-standard sidewalks and put
up bollards along many others in order to keep cars off them. As
mayor, I was nevertheless almost impeached in the process: well-
nanced by irate shop-owners whose customers could no longer
park on the sidewalk, a campaign to collect signatures to proceed
with my impeachment almost succeeded.
Creating a Walkable City
We created or rebuilt hundreds of parks which had been mostly
neglected until then. We removed fences which middle-class
neighbourhoods had erected illegally in order to privatise public
parks, and recovered parkland in the middle of the city given
to professional soccer teams by a previous mayor. We waged a
difcult battle when we proposed that the countrys most exclusive
golf club, then situated in the middle of a dense city area, should
be converted into a public park. After a lengthy legal ght, nally
at least the polo elds gave way to a park for everyone.
We are pedestrians, animals
that walk: we need to walk,
not in order to survive but to be
happy. If there is a single piece of
infrastructure that distinguishes
advanced from backward cities, it
is quality sidewalks.
above: The Avenida Jimnez sustainable
pedestrian corridor in downtown Bogot
is also home to an important TransMilenio
interchange.
top and opposite: These library buildings
speak, expressing the fact that children
are important, something not obvious
in a society where one out of every four
children born is unwanted at the moment
of birth, and in neighbourhoods where
some 20 per cent of children do not know
who their father is.
95 95
Besides cycle lanes and pedestrian corridors, the
administration oversaw the creation of a 250-kilometre (155.3-
mile) long network of protected cycle paths along city streets
and roads that led to an increase in bicycle use from practically
nothing to nearly 5 per cent. As important as the safety a
protected cycle path affords cyclists is its symbolic power: it
enhances the cyclists social status, since a citizen on a $30
bicycle is as important as one in a $30,000 car.
Despite poverty, the creation of public pedestrian
space is not an irresponsible use of scarce funds in a
developing countrys cities. It is during leisure time that
income differentials are most keenly felt. During work
time a high-level executive and the lowest-paid company
employee may be equally satised or dissatised, relatively
speaking. But when they leave work the high-level executive
goes to a large home, has access to gardens, clubs, country
homes, vacations, restaurants, cultural activities; while the
low-income person and his or her children return to a very
small living space; and for recreation the only alternative
they have to television is public pedestrian space. The very
least a democracy can do for its citizens is to provide quality
sidewalks, parks, plazas and other spaces so that even the
poorest can enjoy their city.
Changing the Meaning of Access:
From Building Highways to Schools
The funds the administration did not expend on JICA-proposed
highways were instead spent on the construction of nearly 50 high-
quality schools in the poorest neighbourhoods, their buildings and
facilities as good as anything the most expensive private schools
in the country can boast; on three beautifully equipped libraries
designed by some of the countrys best architects, plus 12 small
ones; and on state-of-the-art nurseries and community centres.
Iconic, more beautiful than even the most elegant shopping
mall, they create value; their presence and form make statements
about the importance of education and knowledge, and showcase
culture for its own sake. For a child from a very poor neighbourhood
whose home may have a dirt oor or at best a rough cement
one, free access to a beautiful, almost luxurious library, where
admission is not dependent on wealth, educational attainment
or social status, but simply on their rights as a citizen, citizenship
acquires real meaning. A library in a poor neighbourhood
symbolises societys condence in the intelligence and capacity of
the young citizens around it; just as a free food programme,
despite its eventual necessity, expresses the opposite. 1
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images Photos by. Architect Carolina Hernndez
Galeano. Camera. Canon EOS 400D Digital
96 96
BOGOT AND MEDELLN
ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICS
In the last 15 years, Bogot and Medelln, Colombias two largest cities, have undergone
urban renaissances. These are a direct result of a political will to tackle the social, economic
and physical segregation caused by the large-scale urban migrations of the 1970s and 1980s,
which resulted in informal developments that were often isolated from central urban areas
with no infrastructure. Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverri describe the shared
experiences and distinct approaches of each city.
Lorenzo Castro
Alejandro Echeverri
97 97
Following global trends, the majority of Colombians today live
in cities. The republics ve largest cities are each home to over
one million inhabitants, and eight are home to more than half
a million.
1
So, unlike Chile with its capital Santiago, or the UK
with London, Colombia does not have one dominant city, but
like Germany a network of interconnected cities.
In recent years, its two largest cities, Bogot and Medelln,
have become exemplars of urban and social transformation
following their renaissance in the 1990s. Based on local
management, and driven by a succession of independent mayors
working along the margins of traditional politics, their famed
improvement has seen these two cities referenced by numerous
architects and city mayors around the world. Without the
political will to challenge mainstream ideas, their transformation
would have been impossible.
Both cities have made considerable strides towards creating
a more accessible and democratic urban environment. Common
in their approaches towards improvement were strategies to
mitigate the strong social, economic and physical segregation
typical of Latin American cities. Both have adopted a bus rapid
transit (BRT) system based on the model of Curitiba in Brazil.
In Bogot, the rst phase of the BRT has been operational since
1999 (84 kilometres/52.2 miles of a projected circuit of 250
kilometres/155.3 miles). In Medelln the system is currently being
implemented, and will deliver high-capacity and high-quality
mass transit at a fraction of the cost of a subway. In parallel to
providing access through public transport, both cities improved
access to public services through the formation of new parks,
libraries and other public amenities spread across the entire city
rather than concentrating them in formal middle- and upper-
class enclaves. This transformation led to Bogot receiving the
Golden Lion Cities Award at the 2006 Venice Architecture
Biennale. A decade before, however, the story was much different.
Bogot: An Urban Renaissance
Throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s, prior to its
transformation, Bogot was inhabited, but uninhabitable. In 1973,
the citys population was 2.85 million, in 1985 4.2 million, and by
1993 5.5 million,
2
reaching a scale that seemed impossible to plan
and give form to. Much of the citys growth came as the result
of informal construction, which today covers over 50 per cent of
TEP/ Departamento Administrativo
de Planeacin Distrital, Plaza de San
Victorino, Bogot, 2000
opposite: Located in the popular city centre,
the Plaza de San Victorino demonstrates
the possibility of transforming the city
through the recovery of public space.
Municipality of Bogot, Cycle
path network, 1999
below: At almost 400 kilometres (248.5
miles) in length, Bogots network of cycle
paths offers an alternative way to move
around the city.
Rogelio Salmona, Centro Cultural
Garca Mrquez, Bogot, 2008
bottom: The historic centre of Bogot
serves as a backdrop to this project, a
gift from the Mexican government to the
city as a vote of condence in its future
consolidation.
98 98
systems. In the case of the TransMilenio, an articulated BRT
system, a national public architectural competition was held to
dene those elements with a specic identity that were spread
across the entire system and the entire city. It was accompanied
by the development and construction of a network of bicycle
paths, aimed at mobilising 10 per cent of people through this
city-friendly transportation. This strategy helped in saving
energy, reducing fuel consumption, reducing both air and noise
pollution, and in providing a healthy, low-cost and democratic
means of private transportation. Under these conditions it was
possible to rethink the use and spatial qualities of the city, a
fundamental task for the architects involved.
In parallel to the design of cross-cutting urban elements, a
second form of democratisation came through the development
of a manual for the construction of public spaces which aimed to
achieve a consistency in the elements that make up such spaces,
from furnishings to paving and urban plantings.
3
These started
to be developed prior to Pealosas term as mayor, but it was not
until then that they were developed with the required signicant
technical details to be put into practice. Through repeated use
the manual can be employed to construct the materiality and the
specic image of the city, while allowing for local variations and
creating spaces in which all citizens feel welcome and treated
as equals. It has become a fundamental reference, used by each
project architect to produce a coherent image of the city through
a consistent standard of design, and has allowed for the recovery
of hundreds of kilometres of sidewalks previously occupied by
street pedlars and parked cars.
Despite the role of the public space, and in particular the
plaza as the place where we construct the identity and culture
of a society, for many years Bogot, despite its population
growth, generated no new spaces of this type and, what is more,
neglected those it already possessed. In response, a plan was
formulated for the recovery of existing public plazas and the
construction of new ones, such as Plaza de San Victorino, Plaza
Espaa, Plaza-Monumento a los Caidos, Plaza de La Rebeca
and Plaza de La Hoja. At the same time, a plan for parks and
green spaces was developed focusing on three different scales:
the metropolitan, the urban and the neighbourhood. The plan
saw to the improvement of over 700 parks through masterplans
or projects by more than 120 architects. Consideration of
the citys urban area. These settlements, while rich through their
intensity of urban activity, lack basic infrastructural services, suffer
from their unstructured form, and tend to be located in marginal
areas where poverty leads to segregation and violence.
Things began to change between 1995 and 1997 during
Antanas Mokus run as mayor of Bogot, during which he
implemented a programme of civic and cultural restructuring
that aimed to change the general behaviour of citizens through
promoting a culture of mutual respect. This paved the way to
reigniting civil society in the city, and improved its citizens
perception of their city and its public realm; moreover, it led
to a signicant drop in the level of violent crime. During the
previous period, Jaime Castro reorganised the citys nances,
making the bureaucracy run more efciently and allowing
taxation revenue to be used more productively.
Between 1998 and 2000, under the mayoralty of Enrique
Pealosa, there was a fundamental shift in terms of how
city-making occurred in Bogot and, one could argue, across
all of Latin America. At the time, Colombia was facing a
severe economic crisis that deeply affected architectural ofces
hitherto comfortably devoted to the development of projects for
real-estate speculation with an absolute disregard for the city.
Pealosa called on the best architects, aware of the importance of
their participation in the construction of a beautiful and dignied
environment and in achieving a more human-scaled city.
Beginning with quality architecture, a city can generate a
culture that permits a harmonious and inclusive urban existence
for an entire society. In Bogot, this quality civic architecture
was then overlapped with a network of public transport and
cycle routes, along with other specic projects, to generate a city
that is integrated, continuous, open and accessible to everyone,
inclusive, environmentally sustainable and capable of facilitating
a sense of civic pride and stewardship among its citizens. This,
in turn, helped to ensure the continuity of such programmes and
their adoption by different local authorities.
Given the size of Bogot, both in terms of population density
and surface area, and its physical and social fragmentation, the
intention was to create a complete and unique image of the city
that, rather than ignoring socioeconomic differences between
its territories, was capable of bridging these through the design
of a series of iconic urban elements associated with cross-city
99 99
parks as a system allowed for the recovery of the geographic
relationships between the Eastern Hills and the Bogot River
to the west, with a new primary ecological structure. While
the interventions were very basic, such as the design of trails,
urban boundaries, sports facilities, playgrounds, furnishings and
plantings, they restored the architects ability to propose areas
that dignify the lives of citizens, generating a signicant impact.
This approach worked to improve neighbourhoods through
a system of participative planning where communities developed
their own projects with technical assistance offered by over a
hundred young architects. The project led to the construction
of wells, stairs, neighbourhood access roads, sidewalks
and local parks as part of the Obras con Saldo Pedaggico
(Works for Educational Purposes) programme. Surveys were
made of conditions in different neighbourhoods, and the
neighbourhoods were then formalised through the development
of basic infrastructures.
As in the case of public infrastructure, the importance of
architectural design was carried across to the development of
public buildings in order to transmit civic values and to help
ensure their appropriation by the citys inhabitants. A network
of public libraries was created in metropolitan parks or in new
parks designed by architects. The libraries were intended as
cultural centres and strategically located to be accessible to poorer
neighbourhoods. Another plan saw the development of new schools
to serve 100 per cent of all school-age children, using international
standards and in many cases surpassing the architectural quality of
the citys existing private schools, fuelling childrens imagination
with architecture worthy to be upheld as the future of the city. Other
new constructions included centres for senior citizens, nurseries and
playgrounds, together with cultural centres.
Under the Pealosa mayoralty, many architects regained a
civic conscience, realising that they could play a fundamental role
in creating a city worth inhabiting. This opened up an important
space for the participation of architects in many cases as leaders or
participants in interdisciplinary groups working to dene systems,
or as designers of quality public buildings. The transformation
of Bogot over the last 15 years, and above all during Pealosas
period in ofce, resulted from a number of progressive policies and
projects. During this time a host of public competitions led to the
redesign and renewal of more than 1,300 parks and 57 schools.
Under the Pealosa
mayoralty, many architects
regained a civic conscience,
realising that they could play
a fundamental role in creating
a city worth inhabiting.
Daniel Bermudez, Biblioteca Pblica El
Tintal, Bogot, 2000
opposite: This library, located in the
southwest of the city, was envisioned on
a site where a former and unused garbage
collection plant used to be located. It forms
part of the network of libraries planned for
Bogot that have already been built.
Leonardo lvarez, Colegio Porrio Barba
Jacob, Bosa, Bogot, 2009
below: The Porrio Barba Jacob College is
part of a programme for the construction
of more than 70 public schools in different
parts of the city.
TEP/Departamento Administrativo de
Planeacin Distrital, Alameda de Bosa,
Bogot, 2000
bottom: This public space project, which
functions on two levels, was assisted by
the consolidation of the existing working-
class neighbourhoods along the Tintal
3 Canal. It also led to the creation of a
network of tree-lined promenades.
100 100
Medelln: Social Urbanism
As in the case of Bogot, metropolitan Medelln, home to some
3.5 million inhabitants, is plagued by profound physical, social
and economic segregation. The north and the highlands of the
eastern and western slopes are home to half the population, who
live in conditions of extreme poverty. This is contrasted by the
middle and upper classes in the centre and south of the valley,
who inhabit the at areas that make up the formal city.
During the 1990s, civil society began to organise itself,
initiating an important series of social and cultural projects as a
reaction to the violence in the city, and beginning a process of
urban renewal in the centre. In 2004, under the leadership of
Mayor Sergio Fajardo, the city began to implement structural
changes integrally combined with educational, cultural and
entrepreneurial programmes designed to change the skin of various
neighbourhoods located in the most critical areas of the city.
Today, Medellns is a tale of two cities and two opposite
realities. Social urbanism was proposed as a tool to mitigate
these serious problems of inequality and segregation, and
to connect, integrate and coordinate the city through an
instrument of physical and social inclusion. Architecture
and urbanism were the primary tools for working with the
community to implement a process for the recovery of the
citys neighbourhoods. Through multidisciplinary teams, these
projects sought the best-quality designs, and improved the
relationship of design with its context through combining
actions at the large scale, such as public transport infrastructures
and facilities, with actions at the small scale, such as trails,
pedestrian bridges and neighbourhood parks.
In order to precisely identify the areas in which to intervene
and to dene an order of priorities, designs evolved from a
deep understanding of the territory in its broadest and most
complex sense, and of the relationship between natural,
cultural and urban conditions. Each project was required to
start with a holistic vision to form a connecting strategy to
physical, programmatic and social interventions. Physical
continuity was sought between different interventions to ensure
complementarity. Through adding programme, the city sought
to build new networks of public facilities for low-income
neighbourhoods strategically located throughout the territory.
From a social perspective, the goal was to identify processes
and dynamics that emerge from the community and from
different stakeholders, working to foster local participation and
appropriation before, during and after the interventions.
The interventions, in turn, were dened through strategic
urban projects, each with its own project manager responsible
for opening up channels of communication and coordinating
relations between the different actors and institutions involved.
These projects were developed by a decentralised public
institution that formed part of the organic structure of the city
and which offered special dedicated multidisciplinary technical
teams. Since 2004, the city has developed architectural and
urban projects including libraries, educational facilities, social
housing in risk areas, and a number of parks.
At the local scale, Medelln looked to construct the best
possible buildings in some of the citys poorest neighbourhoods,
claiming the symbolic value of architecture as a physical
expression of new public policies for education and culture.
Border regions of exclusion were converted into permeable
places for integration. The new facilities, awarded through public
tenders, focused on the creation of spaces of encounter that serve
as urban landmarks and gathering spaces for the community. The
rst phase of the programme included ve library parks: Belen,
Espaa, La Ladera, La Quintana and San Javier, catering for
72 of the citys districts, creating 21,393 square metres (230,272
square feet) of built space, including playgrounds, internet access
and reading rooms, and 71,643 square metres (771,158 square
feet) of public space. The project also included 10 new public
schools and the renovation of 132 existing schools that are part
of the Open School programme, beneting 418,000 students,
and generating 65,000 square metres (699,654 square feet) of
built space and 189,300 square metres (2,037,608 square feet)
of public space. Educational programmes were developed to
activate and manage these new spaces, such as entrepreneurship,
sustainability and art programmes.
At the urban scale, integrated urban projects (IUPs) were
executed in areas of elevated marginalisation and violence,
identifying and prioritising a set of neighbourhoods as early
intervention models, framed within a six-year programme. The
Northeastern zone of Medelln was selected as the rst stage for
the implementation of the pilot project in ve areas. This sector
presented the lowest quality of life and human development
Lorenzo Castro and Ana Elvira Velez,
Jardin Botanico, 2008
right: The Jardin Botanico (Botanical
Gardens) are located in a strategic
renewal sector, together with projects
destined to be part of a system of facilities
along the metropolitan fringes of the
Medelln River. The urban redevelopment
of the surrounding sector involves the
margins, once dened by high walls that
dened enclosures, obscuring visibility
by 100 per cent.
La Quintana Library Park, 2008
opposite top: The library connects two
districts with the linear park creek
La Quintana.
Carlos Pardo, Public School, Santo
Domingo Savio, Medelln, 2009
opposite bottom: The school redenes the
urbanity and public services of this
hillside neighbourhood.
101 101
Architecture and urbanism were the primary tools for
working with the community to implement a process
for the recovery of the citys neighbourhoods.
102 102
The intention was to
provide the city with a
network of public spaces
that improved pedestrian
mobility, allowing people to
meet and move through a
quality public realm.
EDU Design Workshop, Medelln, 2008
below: The citys urban development
institute created this pedestrian bridge
connecting the neighbourhoods of
Andaluca and La Francia.
EDU Housing Workshop,
Northeastern Integrated Urban Project
(IUP), Medelln, 2008
bottom: Interventions focused on mitigating
risks and improving environmental
conditions, the construction of new
four- and ve-storey residential buildings
in the valley for relocated families, and
improvements to dwellings that were not in
a critical condition.
Alejandro Echeverri, Explora Science
and Technology Park and the Carabobo
Promenade, Medelln, 2008
opposite: One of the agship projects is
the Carabobo Urban Promenade in the
city centre; 3.5 kilometres (2.17 miles)
in length, it connects the traditional city
centre with the New North.
103 103
index (HDI) in the city. The area was chosen for the creation of
the rst public gondola lift system integrated with the subway.
The new base stations were essential in dening the overall
strategy of physical intervention.
With the aim of enabling a physically and socially
sustainable model of implementation for a city in which the
majority of slopes and valleys are occupied by marginal housing,
the rst pilot housing project was developed along the Juan
Bobo stream. Such natural environments, including hills and
streams that have been invaded by informal settlements, are
referred to as invaded urban ecosystems. The intervention in
this area increased the quantity of public space from 0.5 square
metres (5.3 square feet) per person to 6 square metres (64.5
square feet) per person, and succeeded in legalising 100 per cent
of housing, 80 per cent of which was informally constructed.
The intention was to provide the city with a network of
public spaces that improved pedestrian mobility, allowing people
to meet and move through a quality public realm. For those
neighbourhoods located on the slopes, inhabited by populations
with the lowest incomes in the city, a gondola lift system and an
articulated BRT were developed, both of which were integrated
with the existing subway network and aimed to improve the
quality of life and accessibility in these communities.
All of the strategies mentioned above were part of a
broader policy of social urbanism that sought to generate a
qualitative leap forward from the traditional understanding
of neighbourhood improvement. The policy employed such
tools as IUPs to bring structural changes to strategic sectors
of poorly consolidated neighbourhoods, and the design of
habitats within fragile natural systems to achieve the denitive
integration of marginalised communities. Currently, these
programmes continue to develop under the political leadership
of Mayor Alonso Salazar.
Conclusion
New strategies for intervention ourished through the processes
of independent political leadership beginning rst in Bogot
(inspired by the revitalisation of Barcelonas neighbourhoods in
the 1980s and 1990s) and thereafter Medelln (largely inspired
by the Favela-Barrio project in Rio de Janeiro that began in
1993). Today, Sergio Fajardo, Antanas Mokus and Enrique
Pealosa belong to the green party, but all were rst elected
as independents. The technical teams, including architects
and urban designers, were similar in both cities; however, it is
important to note that architecture and urban interventions
were not an end in themselves, but were tools to express the
political intention of municipal programmes.
In Medelln there was a greater focus on specic territories
with a singular architecture, or protagonism in pieces and its
connections. Integral urban projects and punctual interventions
sought to improve public spaces and housing, and to generate
a new image of the city through providing new symbolic
references. In particular, interventions improved frontier
areas, converting them into permeable and more desirable
neighbourhoods. This approach differed from that of Bogot,
where the focus was more on systems or networks and included
cross-cutting systems of transport, like the TransMilenio,
pedestrian corridors and cycle routes, always emphasising the
quality of the new civic buildings and public spaces that act as
icons in the reinvention of the citys image.
Despite their different approaches, the end result was similar
in both cities. In the past 15 years, both have played host to
a dramatic democratisation through enabling a level of social
integration. In both cases, providing quality urban infrastructure
and amenities in the poorest and most violent neighbourhoods
has provided those residents with a sense of equality and a feeling
of stewardship within their own city. This change in residents
image of their city, and their new-found sense of belonging, have
transformed Bogot and Medelln from being uninhabitable to
today being the hip and trendy belles of the ball. 1
Notes
1. Bogot 8,840,000; Medelln 3,370,000; Cali 2,730,000; Barranquilla 1,950,000;
Cartagena 1,200,000; Ccuta 920,000; Bucaramanga 566,000; Ibaqu 518,000.
2. See www.banrep.gov.co/blaavirtual/revistas/credencial/enero2001/colmundo.htm.
3. The Manual de diseo y ubiacin de elementos en el espacio pblico (Manual for
design and location for elements in the public space) was developed in 2000, during
Enrique Pealosas term as mayor, and was composed of three parts: 1) Cartilla de
Andenes (streetscape design); 2) Cartilla de Mobiliario Urbano (urban furniture); and
3) Cartilla Manual Verde (green landscape).
The authors would like to thank Juan Sebastian Bustamante and Natalia
Castao for their collaboration on this text.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 96, 97(b) Enrique Guzmn Garca;
pp 97(t), 99(b), 100 Lorenzo Castro; p 98 Diana Moreno; p 99(t) Carlos Naranjo;
p 100(t) Luis Adriano Ramrez; p 100(b) Alcalda de Medelln; p 102 Oscar
Santana; p 103 Andrea Gonzlez
104 104
FROM
PRODUCT TO
PROCESS
BUILDING ON
URBAN-THINK TANKS
APPROACH TO THE
INFORMAL CITY
Adriana Navarro-Sertich interviews a
pioneer of the informal in architecture, co-
founder and co-director of Urban-Think
Tank (U-TT) Alfredo Brillembourg.
Brillembourg explains how U-TTs work
seeks to connect informal settlements with
the formal city, enabling inhabitants to
access services and infrastructure. U-TT
is now taking the lessons it has learnt in
working in Latin American cities, such as
Caracas and So Paulo, elsewhere in the
world with the aim of working globally
and acting locally.
Adriana Navarro-Sertich
105 105
Social and cultural responsibility is returning to the forefront of
contemporary architecture. We are now witnessing spectacular
libraries in depressed neighbourhoods, cable-car systems in
marginalised areas and museums in informal settlements.
Through interventions that acknowledge and legitimise the
potentials of urban informality, designers have begun to adopt
the informal city as a new paradigm. Alongside the increasing
traction of this paradigm, analyses of key issues and questions,
as well as short- and long-term outcomes of such interventions,
are critical. One pioneer in this eld is co-founder and co-
director of Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) Alfredo Brillembourg.
Starting out as an NGO (Caracas Think Tank) conducting
research in the barrios (informal settlements) of Caracas,
founders Brillembourg (a Venezuelan architect educated at
Columbia University) and Hubert Klumpner (an Austrian
architect also educated at Columbia) soon started making
proposals for the city, in the process transforming their practice
into the architecture rm Urban-Think Tank in 1998. With
work including a series of Vertical Gymnasiums, the rst of
which was constructed in 2004 in Bello Campo (Caracas), the
Metro Cable in Caracas (2010), the FAVA autistic childrens
school and the community centre proposal for Paraispolis
(So Paulo) projected for 2012, they view themselves as
contemporary architects working in conict zones. Although
many of these interventions are relatively new, exploring the
approach, methodology and impact is essential to further both
the discourse and practice.
Brillembourg began by explaining that U-TTs projects seek
to connect the formal and informal city. The main objective
is to give the inhabitants of the local communities better
accessibility and services, and to bring some of the infrastructure
from the formal city into the informal city.
We have developed an In Your Face methodology because
cities in the developing world are legitimately in a crisis. We
can be working in Jordan, where we are doing a project in
Rusaifah, a Palestinian refugee camp; it could be in a Moroccan
community in Utrecht, in Kibera where we have been doing
some work, or in So Paulo Those places and people are very
much on the edge, so you really have to engage the informal
systems in these big metropolises.
Working in Caracas, So Paulo, Rusaifah and Kibera,
among other places, U-TT has been clear in its push to
establish a global practice, working globally and acting locally.
In doing so, Brillembourg states that the aim is to develop
best practices of typologies that can be repeated in different
areas of the world, but which get adapted locally. In an article
entitled Slum Lifting,
1
U-TT hinted at these best practices,
listing a number of challenges within slums followed by a set
U-TT, Vertical Gymnasium Petare,
Caracas, 200711
This Vertical Gym has a ground-oor
com mercial base level with small shops for
informal vendors.
106 106
of solutions. For example, for transportation and infrastructure,
U-TT suggests decentralised public service systems, modular
stairs and cable-car systems; or for the socioeconomic wellbeing
of dwellers, encourages sustainable development, urban
agriculture, prefabrication and modular design. Working in what
he terms territories of speed and need, Brillembourg claries
that U-TT creates a framework, hands it over to municipalities,
and welcomes re-adaptations from local communities. We dont
pretend to control the project up to the last screw, he afrms.
The idea of establishing best practices highlights the
importance of transferring knowledge and supporting
transnational analyses in research and urban practice. It also
raises questions about the transferability of projects. When
asked about the differences and similarities in U-TTs approach
to the multiple projects and contexts, Brillembourg says: We
try to start our projects from an ethical position, but there are
different cultural frameworks depending on the context
Culture greatly modies what type of technology or design
we attempt to make. Generally, we engage the community
profoundly in discussions and meetings, and we bring this
community development practice to each place, though often
with different methods of implementation.
Declaring that the idea of transferring knowledge from the
comfortable distance of a New York ofce is a big problem,
Brillembourg stresses the importance of being on the ground
and engaging with the social, political and economic aspects
of the local community. For this reason, U-TT has established
ofces in Caracas, New York, So Paulo and Zrich. He adds:
Architecture is much more interesting if you attack it from
the grass-roots community perspective because sustainability
really means focusing on the user and his or her connection to a
building. Thus it is not about the formal aspects, but about the
way it works, the programme.
Cultural specicities, in addition to the politics of place
with its particular socioeconomic dynamics, set up very different
conditions and value systems that are embedded within the
urban fabric. Although physical challenges might be similar
from place to place, the manner in which these challenges are
addressed needs to be very specic to the context. Will projects
be received and used in the same manner in different areas and
situations? When we speak of use, we also speak of associated
socioeconomic outcomes. For example, will the impact of a
metro cable in Caracas or Medelln be the same in other places?
Can projects in So Paulos favelas be relevant solutions for
Johannesburgs townships?
Contingent on this, in speaking about connecting the
informal to the formal, we need to understand that the
informal city is not disconnected from the formal city. Quite
the opposite: informality is not a product but a process,
constantly in the making, shifting and redening relationships
Working in what he terms territories of
speed and need, Brillembourg claries
that U-TT creates a framework, hands
it over to municipalities, and welcomes
re-adaptations from local communities.
We dont pretend to control the project
up to the last screw, he afrms.
107 107
with the formal.
2
As such, when considering the informal, we
need to acknowledge multiple dynamics, including income
levels and employment, the value of real-estate, tenure and
legality. By looking at informality as a product, or as merely an
issue of form and morphological conditions, physical design
interventions ignore critical factors related to the process. The
importance of linking design to policy is testimony to the
signicance of these factors.
One of the biggest obstacles for many of the practices and
projects dealing with informality is a failure to integrate with
the policies of government agencies. When asked his opinion on
the latter, Brillembourg replied that a large amount of U-TTs
time and attention is dedicated to engaging cities mayors within
the process and communicating the power of design in bringing
visibility and awareness: The engineering of practical quick
xes is necessary, but if innovative design is not integrated then
we lose the opportunity to create a sense of pride. If there is no
pride, the community wont feel integrated with the building,
and over time the project loses its potential and gets sucked
back into the informal fabric.
Moreover, reinforcing the idea of best practices,
Brillembourg afrms that the purpose of paring back
architecture to its elements, and making it simple and
repeatable, is to convince mayors, who are only in ofce for
three to ve years, to implement a project. The only way that
you can convince them is if they can cut a ribbon, because they
are looking for political capital, he explains.
In addition to getting politicians onside is the need to directly
engage with city policy and planning. For these projects to be
effective, they need to be part of the larger city plan, thereby
becoming integral to strategies of social inclusion, mobility, security
and environmental protection. They will become instrumental
in restitching the city, providing the necessary opportunities for
economic growth and sustainable development. Currently, some
of the more striking interventions have been manifestations of
continuous and integral government policies and planning strategies,
with some private-sector support. Clear examples are Medellns
Social Urbanism, Guayaquils Malecn 2000 urban regeneration
projects, or Rio de Janeiros well-known Favela-Barrio programme.
3

In contrast, the delicate political climate and centralised government
structure in U-TTs home country, Venezuela, have impeded the
implementation of similar strategies there, with the result that the
1990s Physical Habilitation of the Barrios Program culminated in
punctuated and disconnected projects.
Despite the difculties in Venezuela, U-TT continues
to look for new ways of reconguring the city, pushing for
experimentation and redening the role of the architect: Hubert
and I identify with the role of lm producers, activists or even
social entrepreneurs. We attempt to put together communities,
design ideas and urban actors on the ground who are the
U-TT and Guy Battle, Baruta Vertical
Gymnasium #2, Santa Cruz del Este,
Caracas, 200711
opposite:This second version of the
Vertical Gymnasium incorporates the
use of recyclable materials, wind towers,
solar panels and rainwater collection as
part of the design complying with the
Kyoto Protocol.
U-TT, Metro Cable Station and Vertical
Gymnasium, San Agustin, Caracas, 2010
below left: Integrated within the La
Ceiba metro cable station, this Vertical
Gymnasium is made of prefabri cated
bolted channel steel.
below right: Rendering and diagram of
La Ceiba metro cable station and
Vertical Gymnasium.
108 108
In the world of the informal
city, where choices are limited
and informality is sometimes
the only option for survival or
resistance, these interventions
and design-centred
approaches are opportunities
for the local people to gain
recognition and to claim their
rights to the city.
U-TT, Metro Cable, San Agustin, Caracas, 2010
below left: The metro cable is located in
the San Agustin barrio, adjacent to Caracas
city centre. The design of the station
incorporates, at the base of the buildings,
programmes for social, cultural and sports
activities. Currently, due to lack of funding,
the building bases are walled off and the
stations only function for the cable-car system.
below right: Transportation systems, such
as the metro cable in San Agustin, have
the possibility of becoming a catalyst
for urban and social change if they are
well integrated with the transportation
infrastructure of the city and are
accompanied by programmes focusing on
socioeconomic factors.
San Agustins cable-car system is so new
that its real impact and sustainability are
yet be seen. The painted houses (using the
colours of the Venezuelan ag yellow,
blue and red are the work of the Misin
Tricolor, the national initiative for barrio
development.
109 109
stakeholders in order to produce high-quality architecture
We look at bringing together different people, different
disciplines and coming up with new products.
In this experimentation, it is also critical to look to the
past. An important lesson learnt from previous projects,
practitioners and theorists is that we cannot de-politicise the
question of informality, solely focusing on packages of physical
transformations. As practices like U-TT reect, dependence on
time and space makes the concept of best practices obsolete if it
is disengaged from a more holistic approach which engages the
local community, and acknowledges internal hierarchies, cultures,
values, race, gender, local aesthetics and functional standards, as
well as working directly with sociologists and anthropologists, and
becoming more ethnographic in its approach.
This is the paradoxical problem of todays designers how
to address contemporary crises with future-oriented solutions.
But unlike the paradigms of last centurys architects, we must
not seek one solitary answer to our complex problems. Instead
we must embrace the idea that good products and processes
will only arise when the discourse that births them consists of
both words and actions.
In the world of the informal city, where choices are limited
and informality is sometimes the only option for survival or
resistance, these interventions and design-centred approaches
are opportunities for the local people to gain recognition and
to claim their rights to the city. As we continue to follow
and perhaps mirror work such as that of U-TT, we need to
understand and evaluate the impact and use value of our
strategies and interventions to avoid falling into the trap of
adopting an image of social good instead of addressing the
social and economic realities of everyday life. 1
Notes
1. A Brillemburg and H Klumpner, Slum Lifting, in Sustainable Living
Urban Model Laboratory (S.L.U.M. Lab), SPAE So Paulo Edition, Columbia
University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (New
York City), 2010, pp 1213.
2. Manuel Castells and Alejandro Portes, World Underneath: The Origins,
Dynamics and Effects of the Informal Economy, in The Informal Economy,
Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1989, pp 1137.
3. To give some background on the examples cited: Medellns Social Urbanism,
part of former mayor Fajardos Medelln la ms educada (Medelln the most
educated), has resulted in an extensive network of libraries and public spaces
(proyectos urbanos integrales) in depressed areas of the city. Guayaquils urban
regeneration projects, such as Las Peas and El Malecn Salado, are part
of a larger beautication scheme for the city that began with the downtown
waterfront renovation project, Malecn 2000. The interventions are designed,
constructed and maintained by a private organisation that works directly
with the municipality, the Fundacin Malecn 2000. Finally, Rio de Janeiros
Favela-Barrio programme, with the nancial support of the IDB, focused on
infrastructure and public space interventions in medium-sized favelas. Today,
through the national PAC, or Growth Acceleration Programme, a similar strategy
to the Favela-Barrio is being implemented in Rios larger favelas.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 104(t)-105, 106-7, 108(b), 109
Urban-Think Tank; p 104(b) Joost Bataille; p 108(t) Adriana Navarro-Sertich
U-TT, Rusaifah Community Centre Vertical
Gymnasium #5, Amman, Jordan, 201012
opposite bottom: Designed as a network of
youth centres for the city, the design includes
a Vertical Gymnasium and social centre that
are to be modied depending on the site.
U-TT, Vertical Gymnasium Chacao,
Caracas, 2004
below left: The Chacao gym was developed
with U-TT associate partners M Pinto and
consists of welded pieces with square
steel-tube sections.
U-TT Sport Spot, Hoograven, Utrecht,
The Netherlands, 200810
below right: The Hoograven Sport Spot is
integrated with the Dutch Rowing Club.
110 110
LATIN
AMERICAN
MEANDER
IN SEARCH OF
A NEW CIVIC
IMAGINATION
Teddy Cruz reviews the shifting political
landscape of the last two decades in
Latin America. Breaking from US
dependency, the continent has charted
an alternative course as municipalities
have reconnected public policy, social
justice and civic imagination. In order
to address inequality, new models of
urban development have been produced
on sites of scarcity, and city mayors and
administrations have been prepared to
learn from each other through
best practice.
Teddy Cruz
I lived the rst 20 years of my life in Guatemala City, until early
1982 when I migrated to the US to continue my architectural
studies. During those convoluted years in Latin America
Guatemala being one of its epicentres of social injustice I
never imagined that the oppressive regimes consolidated by
military dictatorships, rooted oligarchy and US Cold War
interventionism that atrophied social and economic progress
throughout this continent would transform so rapidly. Latin
America has in fact radically recongured itself sociopolitically
and economically in the last years, becoming one of the main
sectors in the world, breaking away from US-style globalisation,
charting instead its own idea of social and economic progress.
The institutional transformations that have been taking place
in many South American capitals, including La Paz, Brasilia,
Caracas, Lima and La Asuncin have been altering the previous
established protocols of control and inuence that had traditionally
aligned many of these countries with Washington DC, pointing at
a very different political landscape that was hard to imagine barely
15 years ago. It has been surreal, for example, during this time to
see the ascension to power of counter-establishment civic gures
such as ex-union leader Igncio de Lula in Brazil, who just ended
a successful two-term presidency in this country, and Bolivian Evo
Morales who, in an unprecedented way, opened the possibility
for the under-represented aboriginal class of Bolivia to claim the
presidency of that country.
In the context of the history of US-Latin American
relations, I have found that this transformational process
produced a strange cultural reversal: the institutional deciency
and corruption, the chronic illegality and infrastructural
precariousness that generally shaped the US perception of
Latin America have now mutated to Washington DC and
Wall Street. In other words, the consolidation of the US-led
neoliberal, freemarket policies that culminated in the recent
global economic collapse have been, at their very base, dened by
unprecedented illegality (the unchecked abuses of Wall Street are
well documented by now, and continue to be emblematised by the
mortgage crisis that drove millions of people to lose their homes)
and uneven development (in the US, recent years have been
dened by an abandonment and de-funding of public institutions
and infrastructure, as seen with the Katrina disaster in New
Orleans and the polarisation between enclaves of economic power
and the sectors of precariousness that surround them).
Furthermore, the instalment of this institutionalised, greedy
individualism that has widened the gap between wealth and
poverty so dramatically today also yielded hyper-nationalist
protectionist strategies which, fuelled by politics of fear and
paranoia, dened a radically conservative social agenda that
has had a fundamental impact on urban planning policy and
legislation, yielding the incremental privatisation and erosion of
public culture in the US. It is somehow against this US-driven
sociocultural closure of the last years, polarising the individual
and the collective, that Latin America, generally speaking, has
begun to chart a very different course, an alternative future:
Latin American governments, from Brazil to Colombia, have
111 111
produced a paradigm shift in matters of urban development,
seeking like no other place in the world to reconnect public
policy, social justice and civic imagination.
New Sites of Experimentation:
An Urbanism Beyond the Property Line
While the worlds architecture intelligentsia supported by
the glamorous economy of the last years ocked en masse to
the Arab Emirates and China to help build the dream castles
that would catapult these enclaves of wealth to being global
epicentres of urban development, many of these high-prole
projects have in fact only perpetuated the exhausted recipes
of an oil-hungry, US-style globalisation, camouaging with
hyper-aesthetics an architecture of exclusion based in many
cases on urbanities of surveillance and control. Other than a few
isolated protagonist architectural interventions whose images
have been disseminated widely, no major ideas were advanced
here to transform existing paradigms of housing, infrastructure
and density, and resolve the major problems of urbanisation
today which are grounded in the inability of institutions of
urban development to engage with informality, socioeconomic
inequity and lack of affordable housing and infrastructure.
While the attention of the world had been focused on those
enclaves of abundance, the most radical ideas advancing new
models of urban development were produced on sites of scarcity,
across Latin American cities. Challenging entrenched neoliberal
urban logics of development founded on top-down privatisation,
homogeneity and exclusion, visionary mayors in cities such as
Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Bogot and Medelln began to enable
new institutional protocols by producing new interfaces with
publics and unorthodox cross-institutional collaborations,
rethinking the very meaning of infrastructure, housing and
density, and mediating top-down development and bottom-up
social organisation. I cannot think of any other continental region
in the world where we can nd this type of collective effort led
by municipal and federal governments seeking a new brand of
progressive politics to produce an urbanism of inclusion.
Different to the other epicentres of development in the world
that in recent years relied on conventional planning approaches
from above, sponsoring stand-alone experimental architectural
gestures supported by large capital and corporate branding,
many of these Latin American cities were experimenting, in
fact, by reconguring socioeconomic relations rst, uncovering
the potential of informal systems and social networks to rethink
urbanisation, negotiating formal and informal economies
and large and small scales of development. Much of this
experimentation began a few years ago with unorthodox public
policies and economics, which have already become mythical.
These experiments ranged, for example, from the decision by
the municipality of Porto Alegre in Brazil to enact participatory
budgets, enabling communities to decide the distribution of
municipal budgets; to Brazilian president Igncio de Lulas
economic policy awarding property titles to thousands of slum
dwellers in Rio de Janeiro and declaring the intervention into
slums as a vital part of his urban development agenda, not by
erasure but by retrot; to the announcement by President Evo
Morales that he would insert illegal coca production into the
Bolivian national economy to subsidise social housing; to Bogots
ex-mayor Antanas Mockus mobilisation of a civic culture
founded on a massive urban pedagogical project that paved the
way for one of the most successful public transportation systems
in the world, Colombias TransMilenio project; to Mayor Sergio
Fajardos decision that he would transform his violence-ridden
city by building an infrastructure of public library parks in the
slums of Medelln; and also even to Venezuelan Hugo Chvezs
demagogic proclamations promising to give huge oil revenues to
the poor of his country towards the formation of the new socialist
city. All have become paradigmatic gestures during recent years.
Even though much has been written about these important
realised projects in Latin America, there is still a lot of missing
information. Most of the descriptions behind these projects
focus on the achievements themselves, as nal products, but
very seldom, if not at all, can we nd specic narrations that
convey the sociopolitical and economic processes behind many
of the transactions, exchanges and negotiations that took place
across institutions and with the public to make these projects
happen. In other words, beyond the images emerging from
these success stories I have been seeking to understand the
main sociopolitical and economic procedures behind many of
these emblematic projects. While these processes of negotiation
across institutions are natural to the institutions of planning,
the stories behind these projects are much more complex, as
these depended on generating new socioeconomic protocols that
would in turn produce a new public domain.
There is not the space here to elaborate on the specicity of
such procedures an essential part of my research practice is in
fact the retroactive mapping of the processes emerging from the
global South, translating not their images, but their operative
procedures so that those urban operations can enable public policy
and activism in the US. But it is important to mention a couple
of revelations that in my mind emerged from some of these
projects and have been inspirational to my practice as an architect
working on the border between Latin America and the US. The
revelations have to do primarily with identifying a couple of
major conceptual strands that framed these models of possibility:
an investment in urban pedagogy the transfer of knowledge
across governments and publics and the pursuit of a civic culture
and social justice as the basis for an inclusive urbanisation.
One major idea that is seldom discussed about these projects
is the way in which they informed each other, from Brazil
to Colombia. The exchange of knowledge across successive
governments, from federal to municipal, learning from one
another and in so doing rening the tactics and strategies of the
other. It is impossible, for example, to think of the success story
of Enrique Pealosas TransMilenio bus rapid transit system in
Bogot without the lessons transferred from ex-Mayor Jamie
Lerners experiments with public transportation in Curitiba,
whereby retrotted existing roads were retrotted to eliminate
112 112
cars, allowing an uninterrupted ow of buses that would operate
as a metro system on the surface, by also producing elevated bus
stations so as to increase the accessibility and time frequency of
the system. Pealosa took these urban logics to another level of
renement and complexity in TransMilenio by layering it with
other infrastructural categories, enabling a system of transfers to
move across different scales of mobility, from pedestrian to bicycle
to bus, and interconnecting a network of public spaces, libraries
and housing projects, between the centre and the periphery of
the city, between enclaves of wealth and sectors of informality.
In turn, this experience ended up informing ex-Mayor Sergio
Fajardo in the creation of Library-Parks, a unique typology of
public space he injected into the slums around Medelln, as an
antidote to ght violence with education.
Another major aspect behind this transfer of knowledge
that ultimately enabled critical interfaces between governments,
from the top down, and social activism, from the bottom up,
is the fact that all of these projects began with a committed
investment in education at the scale of the metropolitan: an
urban pedagogy that would close the gap between institutions
and publics. The success of the Participatory Budgets policy in
Porto Alegre depended on the formation of a civic culture, where
the dissemination of information across community activists
would enable a citizen-led political will that intensied public
participation in the distribution of economic resources at the
scale of communities. The visualisation and democratisation
of information became the tool to enable this public policy.
Similarly, Jamie Lerner in Curitiba famously rallied the
elementary schools of the city to lead a pedagogical project
towards environmental sustainability, which would be guided by
children putting pressure on their parents to become accountable
for recycling. Learning from many of these precedents, one of
the most effective campaigns elaborating on the relationship
between urban pedagogy and the formation of a civic culture
that would enable a very different idea of public spending and
infrastructure occurred years later in Bogot.
Former mayor of Bogot Antanas Mockus led one of the most
comprehensive public policies to promote a civic imagination, by
enacting idiosyncratic public legislature inclusive of social activism.
A fundamental reorganisation of social systems occurred here that
capitalised on the creative intelligence of communities and activists,
mobilising mutual support and volunteerism in the shape of
citizen-led collaborations to face the most pressing urban problems
in the contemporary city, including violence, political apathy, social
indifference, environmental degradation and lack of economic
resources. This massive mobilisation of the citizenry allowed
the most intangible of factors in the shaping of the next urban
revolution to enter the collective imaginary: that communities
themselves can, in fact, be participants in the shaping of the city
of the future; and that the identity of this city is based not on
the dominance of private development alone and its exorbitant
budgets to sponsor the image of progress, but it can also emerge
from the value of social capital and incremental layering of urban
development, enabling a more inclusive idea of ownership.
So successful did this campaign of strengthening a civil
society in order to reduce urban violence become that it
prompted the willing participation of particular socioeconomic
sectors in pay-as-you-want capital contributions that would
increase the citys tax base for enabling urban infrastructural
improvements. It is very seldom discussed, but it is this
fundamental reframing of sociopolitical and economic protocols
that enabled the materialisation of Pealosas vision in shaping
the TransMilenio project. Similarly, Antanas Mockus built
upon the intelligent work of previous administrations that
by the early 1980s had begun to shape a comprehensive
progressive political document, a conceptual scaffold for dealing
with Colombias anticipated urban growth, called POT, the
Territorial Organizing Plan. This document was founded
conceptually on issues pertaining to complexity theory sprinkled
with progressive politics, aspiring to a civic humanism based
on the Rights to the City movement. This document and its
subsequent iterations have framed many of these achievements,
moving from the large scale of the territory all the way to the
scale of neighbourhoods and communities, connecting the
abstraction of large-planning logics with the specicity of
everyday practices within communities.
Sergio Fajardo enabled this level of specicity when designing
a policy that would redene the conventional idea of public space
at the scale of community. His famous Library-Parks in Medelln
opened the critique that our conception of public space is too
abstract and neutral: the naive idea that if we simply design a nice
looking plaza we would magically assure socialisation. Instead, he
proposed levels of specicity by injecting tactical programming
into open space. Each park or public space in this city would be
plugged with pedagogical support systems hybridising social space
with knowledge. This was a powerful message, in my mind, that
moved the discussion from the neutrality of public infrastructure
to the specicity of urban rights: the radical democratisation
of space by enabling access and concrete civic rights to diverse
publics and communities.
The translation of these processes into new urban paradigms
that can be replicated at other scales and even with different
sociopolitical actors is an essential point of departure for my
work. The conceptual legacy of these projects and the sense of
possibility they engender to produce a different approach to a
more democratic form of urban development, away from the
selsh recipes of urbanisation that have permeated the world
in the last two decades, have inspired the transformation of my
practice in recent years, as I have been researching the impact
of the Latin American immigrants in the transformation of
many US neighbourhoods, using the US Mexico border as a
laboratory to rethink affordable housing and infrastructure.
Seeking expanded models of architecture practice and a new
role for the arts and humanities in shaping new public policy is
the primary effort we need to engage in these times of crises. In
this context, it is very telling that many of the visionary mayors
in Latin America discussed briey here have, in fact, come
from the arts and the humanities, such as Mockus and Fajardo,
for example, who are both philosophers and mathematicians,
and Lerner is an architect. When asked about their move from
pedagogy into politics they usually respond that their incursion
into the political arena sprang from a necessity to engage a new
brand of progressive politics. Here they suggest that to engage the
political is not to be a politician but to enact a course of action. 1
113
An Urbanism of Retrot
The multicoloured confetti of a trans-
border migrant urbanism deposits itself in
many older California neighbourhoods
pixelating the large with the small. Mono-
use parcels are transformed into complex,
micro socioeconomic systems. While
the global city becomes the privileged
site of consumption and display, the
immigrant local neighbourhood remains
a site of production, of new cultural and
socioeconomic relations.
114
115
1. The Neighbourhood as a Site of Production
Designing political and economic processes
2. An Urbanism of Coexistence
Redening density as the number of social
exchanges per acre
Redening housing as a system of economic
and cultural interactions
116 116
1 2
9
(1) Casa Familiar acquired a large parcel with an old church and then subdivided it into smaller slivers, anticipating a ner pixelation of property and circulation. (2) The church is
retrotted into an incubator of cultural production where Casa Familiar will generate new categories of socioeconomic programming. For Casa Familiar, housing is not sustainable
as units only. It needs to be plugged with economic and cultural support systems. (3) Open frames, conceived as social rooms, are equipped with electricity, collective kitchens and
movable urban furniture. Casa Familiar injects them with specic cultural and economic programming. The church, social rooms, collective kitchens and community gardens are
the small infrastructure for housing. (4) Here, the void is more than open space for private housing growth; it is the site made available for injecting specic collective programming
to support informal economies and social organisation. Such tactical programming enables new interfaces with the public, across time (Thursdays: new community workshops;
Saturdays: framing Informal markets; every day: collective kitchens) supporting entrepreneurship. (56) Housing type 1: Young couples, single mothers with children. More than
just renting or owning units, dwellers are participants in co-managing socioeconomic programmes. (7) Housing type 2: Livework duplex for artists. The exchange of rent for social
CASA FAMILIAR: THE PERFORMANCE OF A SMALL PARCEL
Located in the border neighbourhood of San Ysidro, community-based NGO Casa
Familiar has evolved from a social service provider into an alternative developer of
affordable housing. Estudio Teddy Cruzs collaboration with Casa Familiar has conceived
the neighbourhood as a producer of new housing policy and economy, focusing on
designing parcels as small infrastructures that mobilise social entrepreneurship into new
spaces for housing, cultural production and political participation.
10
5 6
117 117
3 4
7 8
11
service: artists and Casa Familiar choreograph pedagogical interfaces with children and families, plugging education and other resources. (8) Integrating artists within new models
of nancing, social contracts and unconventional mixed uses. Artists engage urban pedagogy as well as partner with dwellers as co-producers. (9) Housing type 3: Large families
with grandmothers. Housing equipped with shared kitchens to support two small extended families. Casa Familiar partners with families, promoting economic entrepreneurship (10)
Housing type 4: Accessory buildings as alternative housing. Small sheds become exible spaces for extended families. For example, a nephew studies at a local community college,
and rents studio and living space; a niece, recently married, rents a studio temporarily and uses a small shed for ofce space; and Casa Familiar subsidises a room for the gardener
who collaborates with dwellers to maintain vegetable beds. (11) Density and housing are no longer sustainable as an amount of objects per acre: 1. Redening density as an amount
of social exchanges per acre. 2. Redening housing as a system of economic and cultural interactions. (12) Casa Familiar: The performance of a small parcel. A social infrastructure
of small buildings and spaces produces a gradation of housing economies and social interactions, activating small plots into economic and social systems.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images 2010 Estudio Teddy Cruz
12
118
Supersudaca
(AKA AT HOME IN THE FIRST, SECOND,
SUPERSUDACAS
The architecture network Supersudaca is best known for its research
projects on Latin America and the Caribbean. Here they describe their
experiences as they shifted their focus to Asia and the Middle East
in a super-tour that took in Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Dubai, Mumbai,
Dhaka, Phnom Penh, Singapore and China.
119
THIRD, FOURTH AND FIFTH WORLDS)
ASIA STORIES
After two centuries of unalloyed, aggressive
global domination by the West, Asia is
getting back its throne. Should Latin
America embrace the new Asian throne?
120
Invitations to the collective to run workshops started in
familiar territory Buenos Aires, Talca, Lima cities
where we dealt with the usual daily round of problems and
possibilities: illegality and irresponsibility; opportunity and
ingenuity. Gradually we moved into an area in which we
have become almost specialists: the Caribbean. Over the
past few years collective members have organised several
workshops, competitions and research projects in that part
of the world, where the most beautiful places have become
all-inclusive package destinations for mass tourism.
But cant these single-subject Latinos deal with
somewhere else? Perennial local crises seem to predicate
our xation with the local, while we appear content merely
to read about the rest of the world in someone elses
magazine or website. Yet, strangely enough, a new period for
Supersudaca has recently dawned and, almost by accident,
has seen our increasing involvement in Asia.
Let Asian Stories begin.
Kuala Lumpur Fix
Malaysia truly Asia, that CNN tune went round and
round in our heads for the entire duration of the 30-hour
ight from Buenos Aires until our landing at Metabolist
Kurokawas airport, when the gentle voice of the ight
attendant announced: 32 degrees Celsius. Death
penalty for drug trafcking and please enjoy your stay .
Malaysia where its all about standards, rules and quotas.
X% Malay, Y% Chinese and Z% Indian. This non-
melting pot strangely enforces its diversity but discourages
mixing. On every level positive discrimination ensures
x%, y% and z% for university grants, jobs, political
representation. The same goes for the city where a
futuristic monorail public transport system hovers above
streets without sidewalks that run alongside open sewers.
No in-between. Seems like renovation doesnt exist as a
concept. 1+1 will always be 1+1 and never 2. For instance,
the government decision to create a better city resulted in
a new city somewhere else: Putra Yaya. A brand new
town with all the government buildings and amenities.
The architecture there is X% Islamic, y% Tuscan, z%
High Tech diversity, but no mix.
Tokyo Bittersweet
We were asked to go to Tokyo on a very strange mission: to
help save the lively arty neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa.
Save it not from greedy developers as we initially thought,
but from the highly efcient Japanese government
planning department that, according to its uncontested
50-year-old plan, contemplates building a road through
it. To save it, to beat the heavy planning machinery at its
own game, we thought the neighbourhood should become
a legend in its own right, insulate its aura so completely
that it becomes a gizmo. Fetishism seemed the only deadly
bullet capable of piercing the hermetically sealed Japanese
dogged perseverance. September 2010, and Shimokitazawa
is still standing.
Dubai Boat
Dont be fooled. Dubai isnt really a city, its simply the
largest, most extraordinary, best, rst-class cruise ship
on earth yes, instead of the sea it sails the desert. Dont
make a claim for public space because theres nothing
public about it; its all private, its owned not governed. Its
where credit cards could easily replace passports. Nothing
is produced in Dubai. Everything is carefully selected and
brought on board: from Swiss cheese to German cars,
from Italian suits to Russian escorts. It all ends here. And,
unbelievably, it all seems to work.
Marketing? Outside 40C; inside, malls with ski slopes.
Check. Engineering? Articial islands with every extravagant
shape imaginable palm trees, world map. Check. Planning?
Airport to highway, to hotel, to marina, to highest tower; the
future ows. Check. Branding? Interior and graphic design
as ultra-efcient atmosphere reinforcements producing a
just-in-time palimpsest of familiar occidental brands, even
those with which you are unfamiliar. Check.
What about architecture? Anything interesting? Whats
cool? Nothing. So many buildings, erected at such speed,
so much hype and yet not a single remarkable architectural
experience. Despite our Latin frivolity/tolerance, our
Learning from Las Vegas training and trademark Supersudaca
open-mindedness, we couldnt believe to what extent we
were both fascinated by this consummate achievement in
121
human entrepreneurship and simultaneously repelled in
the face of such a coherent assemblage of perverse fakeness
at such social, economic and environmental cost. Dubai is
Baywatch pending season 12. Hot and hollow. Maybe the
global nancial crisis is to Dubai what the iceberg was to
the Titanic but maybe just Dubai is a real city with the
capacity to reinvent itself before sinks.
Love and Hate in Mumbai
Invited as guest professors to participate in a workshop, we
once again felt the collective had much to learn rather than
anything to impart. We were immediately suspicious of the
grass-roots, NGO, poverty-glorifying approach. No more
surveys. In order to be good you have to be evil was to be
our take on what must surely be the most densely inhabited
slum in Mumbai in India in the world.
What if a trumped-up top-down approach has a better
chance of succeeding than a genuine bottom-up one? Can
research targets be explored with ctional tools?
Although Supersudaca embraces bottom-up strategies,
we felt that politeness from all sides (curious architects
versus humble inhabitants) would cloud the issue, masking
any real wishes or needs on either side. In the rst place,
what were we actually doing there?
An article found on the ight in The Economist entitled
Rising Slum helped orient us. It described Dharavis
complexity, mega congestion and how people are incredibly
busy recycling Mumbais garbage. Yet what impressed us
even more was the discovery that the speculators price
tag for the slum starts at U$9 billion! Our task was to
disguise ourselves as developers with the aim of seducing
the inhabitants with the promise of high-rise apartment
life post-slum. At the end no one was nostalgic for his or
her picturesque neighbourhood; instead they were curious
about the renders illustrated in our spurious brochures. In
any case the slum dwellers should know they are sitting
on top of a gold mine that only looks like garbage. Private
initiatives seemed more effective than well-intended state
interventions. Change is certain and fast, and everybody
wants to be a part of it its got all the dynamism of
Bollywood choreography.
opposite: View from the articial beach
at the tip of Dubais articial Palm Island
towards the articial skyline. Dont be
fooled. Dubai isnt really a city. Its a cruise
ship sailing in the desert.
top: Shovels of the world, unite! There
are as many ways to dig as there are
countries. Still, such local customisation
comes from the global factory, China (in
its showroom: Yiwu).
centre: An architectural masterclass.
The imposing geniality of Louis Kahns
parliament building in Dhaka doesnt reside
in its celebrated tectonics but rather in its
ability to create a monument and in that
process the notion of a nation.
bottom: Billboards advertising enormous
new developments have started to
invade Phnom Penhs prime locations at
a time when Cambodias obsession with
its tragic past obscures any collective
vision for the future.
Dont be fooled. Dubai isnt really a city,
its simply the largest, most extraordinary,
best, rst-class cruise ship on earth yes,
instead of the sea it sails the desert.
Bangladesh is the most
densely inhabited country on
earth. When one imagines
density one thinks of
congested urban realms;
however, hyperdensity here
in countrywide terms means
rural density.
122
Dhaka Kahn
Bangladesh is the most densely inhabited country on earth.
When one imagines density one thinks of congested urban
realms; however, hyperdensity here in countrywide terms means
rural density. Even though Dhaka the fastest-growing megacity
in the world is super-chaotic and dense, it is similar to other
third world cities that expand at random. What makes the impact
is when one travels through the country; when one experiences
the sheer number of people everywhere one goes. Nowhere
is there nobody. And programmatical mix per hectare is
astonishingly high; rice paddies, shponds, villages, brick factories
with their tall chimneys, more villages, more rice paddies. Land is
an ever-scarcer commodity after every monsoon season within
such a context we were reconciled with an old master, Louis
Kahns parliament building. A magnicent contrast that makes
so much sense in its isolation and boldness. The masterstroke we
learned? The grand gesture is the way forward in an incredibly
unstable, heavily fragmented environment.
Cambodiasyndrome
When we got to Cambodia, its complex history of wars,
revolution and genocide nally became more comprehensible:
not just Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge, but Americans (Kissinger;
Nixon), Vietnamese, Chinese. The country was in the wrong
place at the wrong time (viz the Vietnam War) just at what
should have been its brightest moment (King Sihanouk and
modernisation). Dragged from its rural Marxist utopia, its
people were forced to abandon Phnom Penh in a hurry. When
the city was reoccupied, incomers settled in the abandoned
buildings regardless of their former uses, so temples, schools,
cinemas, etc turned into micro neighbourhoods. Formerly
private corridors and stairways became public streets.
Architecture became urbanism.
A tuk-tuk (motorised rickshaw) culture had emerged: a
city made out of small reversible elements set against a hard
background. But so too a new wealthy class of triumphant
generals emerged: the Lexus culture of big cars and beautiful
young escorts again. Speculation on a vast scale, ballooning
real-estate prices, corruption that ties land concessions to private
below: Putra Yaya Malaysias newly built
government city strangely plays host to
the most diverse collection anywhere of
streetlamps per hectare. To each block
its own lamp design; likewise every
government building has its architectural
style. Malaysia is truly Asia.
bottom: Phnom Penh is emptied out in
1977. A few years later people slowly
return. Only some have houses to go back
to, most take anonymous apartments; the
weakest take the last option cultural
buildings such as churches or pagodas.
The worst dwelling proposition has to be a
cinema: a favela with a dark roof becomes
the living space for dozens of people. The
tragedy continues 33 years later.
opposite left: Exact (yes, exact!) scale
replica of Singapore at the Urban
Redevelopment Center. The ultimate
urbanism theme park.
opposite right: Promotional material from
the Supersudaca workshop in Dharavi.
When slum dwellers became aware of the
enormous value of their land, they happily
gave in to imagining the same kind of
future as your local eco-developer.
Home of one of the great archaeological wonders of the world (the temple
of Angkor Wat) with 400 kilometres (248.5 miles) of coastline and coral
reefs. Yet its turbulent past still exerts a powerful break on the countrys
future. The real horror for Cambodia lies in ignoring its potential.
123
capital; the countrys geography is being transformed (lakes
drying up, land reclaimed from the river).
Yet the outside world only knows about this place when
they wear a T-shirt. The reality of our Made in Cambodia
clothing is to be found in the textile factories that proliferate on
the outskirts of Phnom Penh attracting enormous numbers of
female workers who arrive by the truckload. History in reverse.
Cambodia is perhaps too conveniently located in the heart of
Southeast Asia, neighbour of booming Vietnam, Thailand and
Malaysia. Home of one of the great archaeological wonders
of the world (the temple of Angkor Wat) with 400 kilometres
(248.5 miles) of coastline and coral reefs. Yet its turbulent past
still exerts a powerful break on the countrys future. The real
horror for Cambodia lies in ignoring its potential.
Singapore Amnesia
From Kuala Lumpur we arrived at Singapore. Somehow
it seems hard to recall any street or name from Singapore,
probably because the English toponym confuses it all, or maybe
because theres a strange scale disorientation effect: a country,
a city, a neighbourhood, a building compressed into a single
visual experience. Like a big scale model. And of course in
this ideal Lego city it is forbidden to leave any trace of mess,
so no chewing gum, no smoking, no jaywalking. Here, where
supposedly hybrid programming projects were nally realised,
there is an awkward and seductive feeling of stability. Our
invitation was to the Urban Redevelopment Center, a place
where planning actually works and is proudly demonstrated
even in amazing interactive games for school kids.
Planning meets Pixar. It seems to work like this: some urban
concern is raised, a competition might be opened to the best
qualied professionals and the winning scheme triumphantly
publicised. Then it is painstakingly built and ofcially
inaugurated. In the Centers centre theres a huge model of the
city; it bears a quite shocking resemblance to the real thing. Just
so you can see for yourself, theyve even installed a periscope
so you can check with the outside how similar they are. But
wait! There are buildings missing or pieces. Those are the
upcoming projects to be nished in a perfect cadence of timing.
A unique, strangely anonymous experience; one impossible to
forget but just like the models: the streets have no names.
China tu madre! China Your Mother
We arrived in China with little background knowledge but a wish
list that included playing ping pong with Chinese masters, having
a foot massage, and nding out where everything is actually made;
we wanted to see if you can really feel the 300 million people.
We were directed by our hosts to the epicentre of our every
wish and, particularly in two cases, we caught a glimpse of what
we can already see happening in our part of the world. Yiwu
and Thames Town were examples of contrast and power. Yiwu
is the biggest market in the world, hosting 100,000 shops that
sell quite literally everything from around the world. The most
important alongside the most trivial items, from Christmas
decorations to surveillance cameras. Everything that you have in
your house comes from Yiwu.
Thames Town, or James Town as we called it, is the
epicentre of a brand new 970,000-inhabitant city just nished
and half empty. James Town is English style and could be part
of any London area with its red telephone boxes, brick houses
and old-style traditional pubs. We couldnt stop imagining the
contrast between a Latin American politician proudly opening a
new library and a Chinese one opening just another brand new
1-million-inhabitant city.
Shortcuts
Nowadays there are endless combinations of nation groups
G-2, G-7, G-8, G-20 but the one which is really missing is
G-ALL minus the 7. Maybe if we could circumvent the usual
triangle where Europe and the US play the central role, Latin
America, Africa and Asia could learn and prot from each other
in several and surprising new ways.
An insider joke is that Supersudaca is slowly becoming
a travel agency. The most frequent question we are asked
after lectures is: How can I become a Supersudaca? It seems
everyone wants to join the tour. 1
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images Supersudaca
124 124
WHEN
CITIES
BECOME
STRATEGIC
The 1980s saw the rise of cities as
strategic economic spaces. This was driven
by the emergence of intermediate services,
such as IT and nance, which tend to be
located in cities regardless of whether or
not they serve the manufacturing sector.
Saskia Sassen describes both the direct
result that cities becoming strategic had
on built form and how the growth in the
informal economy was in fact a response
to this shift in late capitalism.
Saskia Sassen
Hilary Koob-Sassen,
Endless City, 2008
125 125
126 126
For much of the mid-20th century, cities were above all centres for
administration, small-scale manufacturing, and commerce.
1
While
the major cities in each country have their own particular histories,
these trends are shared by much of the Americas and Europe. There
are important exceptions, notably Bogot, given a militarised conict,
and the period of South Americas military dictatorships. But,
generally, cities were mainly spaces for rather routine activities. The
strategic spaces where major innovations were taking place were the
government (the making of social contracts, such as the welfare
state) and mass manufacturing, including the mass construction of
suburban regions and national transportation infrastructures.
This contrasted with the previous century and the early part
of the 20th century when cities were cauldrons within which new
economies were made, where populations were hybridised, and
where struggles for social justice often succeeded. In the 1980s,
cities once again became strategic, and thereby a lens into the larger
economic and political struggles of an emergent new global epoch.
The Territorial Moment of Global Capital
The most common and most basic answers as to why cities became
strategic in a global corporate economy are the ongoing need for
face-to-face communications and for creative classes and inputs.
But these are surface conditions that cannot fully explain the
new phase. The rise of cities as strategic economic spaces is the
consequence of a much deeper structural transformation evident
in all developed economies. It affects cities at multiple levels,
from the provincial to the global. And at the heart of this deep
structural trend is the fact that rms in even the most material
and non-urban economic sectors (mines, factories, transport
systems, hospitals) are today buying more insurance, accounting,
legal, nancial, consulting, software programming and other such
services. These so-called intermediate services tend to be produced
in cities, no matter the non-urban location of the mine or the steel
plant that is being serviced.
Thus even an economy centred on manufacturing or mining
will feed the urban corporate services economy. Firms operating
in more subnational markets increasingly buy these service inputs
from more local or regional cities, which explains the growth of
a professional class and associated built environments in cities
that are not global. The difference for global cities is that they are
able to handle the more complex needs of rms and exchanges
operating globally. It is only in its most extreme forms that this
transformation feeds into the growth of global cities and cuts across
the nationalglobal binary.
The outcomes of this structural condition get wired into
urban space, and sooner or later become evident in all major
South American cities. The growth of a high-income professional
class and high-prot corporate service rms becomes legible in
urban space through the growing demand for state-of-the-art
ofce buildings and all the key components of the residential
and consumption sphere. The growing demands for both kinds
of space has generated massive and visible displacements of the
more modest-income households and more modest prot-making
rms, no matter how healthy these may be from the perspective of
the economy and market demand. In this remaking, urban space
becomes one of the actors producing the outcome, and it becomes
the lens through which we can see this remaking.
2
In this mix of conditions lies a politics: the politics of the new
city-users, a politics built in stone. But also the politics of claiming
rights to the city by the expelled, who are often the long-term residents.
This remaking of urban space partly explains why architecture,
urban design and urban planning have each played such critical
and often new roles in this period, even as an anti-government and
anti-planning ethos was part of the neoliberal shift. Beginning in
the 1980s we see the partial rebuilding of cities as platforms for
a rapidly growing range of globalised activities and ows, from
economic to cultural and political. Further, it explains why global
cities become an object of investment, beyond being a place for
investing in building an ofce for ones rm, and why the number
and types of cities that became such objects expanded rapidly with
globalisation in the 1990s and onwards.
The visual order that emerges from these dynamics suggests
a much greater autonomy of the new glamour zone in the larger
city and its more modest spaces than is in fact the case. This is
especially the case with the new so-called intelligent cities.
3

Beneath the clash of extremely unequal spaces and their distinct
visual orders there are multiple articulations. This obscuring, and
even camouaging, of articulations between the glamour zone
and the rest of the city is also a potential source for a politics of
reclamation especially by the displaced and those workers who
matter to the glamour zone but are never recognised as mattering.
Fragmented Topographies and Underlying Connections
The topographies of global cities obscure the multiple
connections between advanced and so-called backward sectors
that are assumed not to belong in an advanced urban economy
and which are thus seen as an anachronism. But many of these
sectors are in fact servicing the advanced economic sectors
and their high-income employees. Parts of the traditional
small-enterprise sector, and of the informal economy, service
particular components of a citys advanced sectors. The visual
orders and topographies of global cities do not help make visible
these articulations. The state-of-the-art glamour zone speaks
the language of disconnection with poverty zones. In its most
extreme format, each global city has a global slum, either on its
outskirts or in its centre. However, no matter how different the
urban spaces within which they are located, there are multiple
articulations between backward and advanced sectors.
The novel spatial and social inequalities mentioned earlier
take concrete and specic formats, two of which are discussed
below: rst, a generally overlooked sector we refer to as urban
manufacturing, and second, the more general and by now familiar
subject of the informal economy.
Urban Manufacturing
Urban manufacturing is very much part of todays urban service
economies, including the most advanced ones. It is geared
to design sectors of all types: customised jewellery, designer
furniture, architecture, interior decoration, cultural industries
(theatres and opera houses need sets and costumes, museums and
galleries need display settings for their collections, and so on);
building trades (customised woodwork and metalwork) and their
sectors are very much part of advanced service-based economies
(the staging in luxury shops and restaurants, displays in corporate
headquarters, and so on). A very advanced and rapidly growing
type of urban manufacturing is emerging out of the diversity of
projects to green our economies.
Urban manufacturing has several characteristics: 1) it
needs an urban location because it is deeply networked and
operates in contracting and subcontracting chains; 2) it is often
127 127
fairly customised and hence needs to be in close proximity to
its customers and to a diverse pool of rst-rate craftworkers;
3) it inverts the historical relationship between services and
manufacturing in that it serves service industries (services originally
developed to serve the needs of manufacturers).
The Informal Economy
A new type of informal economy is emerging in global cities, one
linked to advanced capitalism. This is highly visible in cities of
the global north, but less so in the global south, where the new
informal economy is submerged beneath the vastness of the older
informal economy.
Three trends signal that much of todays growing
informalisation is actually linked to key features of advanced urban
capitalism. One is the sharp emergence and growth of informal
economies in the major global cities of the north in North
America, Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, Japan. We also
see this new type of informal economy in global cities of the south,
from Latin America to Asia; these coexist with the traditional
long-term informal economies of these cities.
A second trend is the mostly overlooked proliferation of an
informal economy of creative professionals artists, architects,
designers, software developers, event choreographers, working
in these cities. This new creative professional informal economy
greatly expands opportunities and networking potentials for
these artists and professionals, even if this is mostly a partial
informality. It allows them to function in the interstices of urban
and organisational spaces often dominated by large corporate
actors, and to escape the corporatising of creative work. In this
process they contribute a very specic feature of the new urban
economy: its innovativeness and a certain type of frontier spirit.
Conditions akin to those in global cities of the north may also be
producing a new type of informal economy in global cities of the
south, including a professional creative informal economy. Their
emergence may be far less visible than in the north because they are
partly submerged under the old informal economies that continue
to operate in the global south, and are still more a result of poverty
and survival than of the needs of advanced economic sectors.
A third trend is that the new types of informalisation
of work actually function as the informal equivalent of the
formal deregulation in the new advanced sectors nance,
telecommunications and most other advanced economic sectors
pursued in the name of exibility and innovation. The difference
is that while formal deregulation was costly, and was paid through
tax revenue as well as private capital, informalisation is low cost and
sits largely on the backs of workers and informal rms themselves.
4
In brief, the same politico-economic restructuring that
led to the new urban economy emerging in the late 1980s
also contributed to the formation of new informal economies
and the demand for urban manufacturing. The decline of the
manufacturing-dominated industrial complex that prevailed over
most of the 20th century, and the rise of a new, service-dominated
economic complex, provide the general context within which
informalisation and urban manufacturing need to be placed; this is
critical to take the analysis beyond a mere description of instances
of informal work and manufacturing that services design industries.
These trends raise a number of questions about what is and
what is not part of todays advanced urban economies. One way
of capturing these somewhat invisible dynamics is to think of
the urban economy as traversed by multiple specialised circuits.
Thus an analysis of the diverse circuits that connect a given sector
to various urban activities shows us that even nance, when
disaggregated into such circuits, is linked to urban manufacturing
suppliers, often through the design and building trades; an
example is the installation of advanced security devices in
corporate ofce buildings.
Conclusion
The rebuilding of central areas in all of these cities, whether
downtown, at the edges or in both, is part of the urbanising of
more and more economic activities. Rebuilding key parts of these
cities as platforms for a rapidly growing range of global activities
and ows, from economic to cultural and political, also explains
why architecture, urban design and urban planning have all become
more important and more visible in the last two decades. This
rebuilding, in turn, has generated a clash of visual orders and
topographies in cities the glamour zone and the poverty zone
which obscures the multiple articulations of the advanced economy
with poorer economies in the city. It also explains the growing
competition for space in these cities and the emergence of a new
type of politics, one centred on the right.
Whether all of this is good or bad for the larger social fabric
of cities and their countries is a complex matter, and the subject
of many debates. But the fact that global rms need cities, and
indeed groups of cities, should enable political, corporate and civic
leaderships to negotiate for more benets for their cities from
global rms. This could lead to overall positive outcomes if the
governing classes can see that these global economic functions will
grow better in a context of a strong and prosperous middle class
rather than the sharp inequality and polarity we see today.
The newly emerging global cities of the south are experiencing
the now familiar trends of the north: growing numbers of the very
rich and of the very poor, along with the impoverishment of the
old middle classes. What there will be less of in these cities are the
modest middle classes and the modest prot-making economic
sectors that once dominated these cities. But these are critical to
the urban economy because they are most likely to recirculate their
incomes in the citys economy. Their presence is a built-in resistance
to the spatial and social reshaping of cities along extreme class lines.
This is a whole new urban era with its share of positive
potentials and its share of miseries. What are usually referred to as
our global governance challenges become concrete and urgent in
cities. But existing modes of urban governance mostly do not help
us change these dynamics and their negative outcomes. There is
much work to be done. 1
Notes
1. For detailed information on the issues discussed in this article, see Saskia
Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, Sage/Pine Forge Press (Thousand Oaks, CA),
4th edn, 2011.
2. The most pessimistic scenario is that conict is now wired into urban space
itself, partly due to gentrication and displacement and the resulting politics of
competition for space, and partly because of asymmetric war, see Sassen, When
the City Itself Becomes a Technology of War, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol
27(6), 2010, pp 3350.
3. On intelligent cities see: http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/cities/talking-
back-to-your-intelligent-city.
4. For one of the most detailed accounts on four favelas in So Paulo and
how they are connected to the new economic trends, see Simone Buechler,
Deciphering the Local in a Global Neoliberal Age: Three Favelas in So Paulo,
Brazil, in Sassen (ed), Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces, and Subjects,
Routledge (New York), 2007, pp 95112.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image Hilary Sassen. Original publication in Ricky
Burdett and Deyan Sudjic (eds), The Endless City, Phaidon Press, 2008
128 128
ORGANISING
COMMUNITIES FOR
INTERDEPENDENT
GROWTH
Recognising interdependence provides
unique opportunities for small
businesses to grow and communities
to ourish. Enrique Martin-Moreno
urges architects, as they are presented
with opportunities in Latin America,
to participate in the building of social
projects to understand the potency of
trust and shared self-reliance.
Enrique Martin-Moreno
Imagine the world without trust? It does
not even seem human; we would not be
able to carry out the simplest tasks if they
required someone else. How have we evolved
and generated so much value in the world
collectively? Other species cannot even be
around unfamiliar members of the same
species without an outbreak of violence. We
have certainly come a long way from that
reality. Yet, picture a group of owners of small
restaurants from the same district of a large
Latin American city. Invited by an NGO, they
get together to plan a joint strategy for the
improvement of their individual businesses.
They understand economies of scale, but fail
to implement the most basic plan for buying
their supplies in bulk, bypassing several
intermediaries that could result in great
savings for all, due to a lack of trust among
them. Or imagine a large mining consortium
having to build and operate its own rail lines
to ensure its minerals reach the market. This
particular rail system will not grow beyond
the specic needs of the mining company,
and the region will not fully prot from this
enormous investment, but the corporation
feels it cannot trust anyone else to reliably
transport its goods.
Trust is built through relationships of
fair exchange. It has allowed for the division
of labour, specialisation and the constant
increase in our standards of living. Fair and
honest exchange teaches us to recognise
that enlightened self-interest lies in seeking
cooperation. It helps us to develop a culture
of fairness and respect for individuals that
helps us to develop that uniquely human
attribute of being able to deal with strangers,
even our enemies, in a civil fashion.
1

129 129
Latin America is indeed the land of
opportunities, some of which lie in its
social structure. In analysing the public
(government and bureaucracies) and private
(corporations, business enterprises, a market
culture) sectors of society, we nd that
there is also a robust and cohesive social
sector (people, when they are acting as
citizens and not as part of the other sectors).
As governments and private developers
struggled to cope with the demands of rural
to urban migrations and of the demographic
explosion of the 20th century, the social
sector organised and began to ll the
voids, creating strategies and emergent
systems of urbanity. But we have not
developed the proper instruments (legal and
nancial) to help unleash the social sectors
entrepreneurial potential and to create uid,
upper-social and economic mobility.
2

Corruption, unsuccessful public policies
and government bureaucracies have
diminished the power of the state and left
governments disenfranchised; and in recent
decades this void in the power structure has
often been lled by organised crime cartels
that in some countries occupy and control
entire territories, challenge the hegemony
of the state and render the countries in
a state of war. Organised crime extorts
money from the rich and lures labour from
the poor,
3
contributing to a culture of fear,
dehumanisation and lack of trust that results
in a more dangerous polarisation of society,
in which violence almost inevitably grows.
The result in most cases is a divided city,
fragmented well beyond the binary divisions
of rich and poor, formal and informal. A
polarising us versus them mentality divides
Rodrigo Alcocer, Mara Als, Gustavo Artigas, Torolab/
Ral Crdenas, Teddy Cruz, Minerva Cuevas, Ivn
Hernndez, Jonathan Hernndez, Homeless, Moris,
Tercerunquinto, Wakal, and Taro Zorrilla, Vacos
Urbanos, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2007
above: The Mexican contribution to the Lisbon
Architecture Triennale consisted of diverse urban tactics
distributed throughout Lisbon tactics that do not make
a unit, but remain interconnected. It is in the so-called
urban voids where incidentally unrelated parts of the
city coexist in a never-ending interplay of differences.
Alberto Kalach, FARO de Oriente, Mexico City, 2000
opposite: The Fbrica de Artes y Ocios + de Oriente
(Arts and Trades Factory of the East) urban development
project began by rescuing an abandoned government
building and transforming it into a new public focal point
with cultural production as its priority. Conceived by
Alejandro Aura, the FARO de Oriente opened its doors
in June 2000 in an area with the highest crime rate and
the lowest level of infrastructure and urban development
in Mexico City. It developed into a workshop for artistic
creativity that also offers cultural events such as concerts
and multimedia performances.
It helps us to develop a culture of fairness
and respect for individuals that helps us to
develop that uniquely human attribute of
being able to deal with strangers, even our
enemies, in a civil fashion.
130 130
society into all sorts of petty groups based
on religion, race, ancestry, socioeconomic
level, class, political views, gender, sexual
preferences or even something as simple
as soccer-team afliation. Dehumanisation
occurs when one stops seeing the other as
human.
4
The result is a self-destructive, fear-
based society. This is our struggle.
In examining which sector has the most
power, we would nd that almost across
the board the private sector and the market
have the most ability to act, and the capacity
to direct or inuence the behaviour of
others or the course of events. National and
multinational corporations (legal or illegal)
push governments around, and certainly
have more power than people. In turn, the
public sector has more power over the social
sector. Their powers are dependent on the
very fragmentation of society. The problem
is not the very few at the very top or the
very bottom of the ethical/moral scale, but a
mass of atomised, terried individuals who
are easily manipulated and pushed around.
Through consumption or taxes, every dollar
we spend gives a vote for that business or
government to exist. The power, then, is ours,
if we choose to seize it.
After eight years of trial and error through
academic projects,
5
private practice and
involvement in the Inlakech movement
in Mexico, where communities are being
organised to reduce fear and violence through
participation, expression and community
work,
6
it has become apparent that the
greatest adversaries we face are our fear,
entitlement and lack of trust. They represent
the most limiting conditions to our continuous
growth and to greater complexity and the
Ines Linke and Louise Ganz, Empty Lots
Occupation Project, Belo Horizonte, Minas
Gerais, Brazil, 2006
above: In this experimental occupation
project, vacant sites were used as
provisional public spaces with cows,
swimming pools, living rooms, owering
elds for picnics and spaces to rest and
read. The use of vacant lots makes it
possible to produce, and live in, a sphere
other than speculation, fear or segregation.
Giacomo Castagnola/Germen estudio,
Banca Ambulante, Tijuana, 2006
opposite top: Felipe Zuiga from
Consultorio de Cultura Pblica describes
Banca Ambulante as a project that arises
from a simple and genuine inquiry: the
possibility of being in a place being as
opposed to occupying a space or making
it ones own. It suggests a brief stay, an
experiential occupation of space, and
responds to a seemingly simple gesture,
that of hospitality.
Ral Crdenas/Torolab, Coma, Puebla,
Mexico, 20067
opposite bottom: Coma culminated in
creating a new food product, a type of
bread containing all the nutrients absent
in a typical Mexican diet. For the project,
Torolab collaborated with local gastronomy
students, musicians and artists, creating
a system of distribution with the design of
a transformable vehicle that is basically a
moving oven.
Community is an emergent property
of the system. It requires participation
and empathy. It has to be carefully
planted in each of us and diligently
cared for in order to grow.
131 131
production of value. There is a tension
between the objective world as it is and the
subjective world as it should be
7
that by
denition is unreal. Yet, we seem determined
for the world to be as we want it to be.
Through phrases like the government
should take care of that, or it is not our
job to , we make ourselves victims
and continuously nd someone to blame
to evade our responsibility for our own
participation in the system. We might agree
that the particular genius of the city is its
ability to provide high standards of living
through public facilities and public spaces.
However, a city whose citizens are afraid of
each other will not be able to strive towards
that common good. We need to recognise
that things do not operate linearly in neat
binary choices in order to begin to see our
participation in, and effect on, the system.
Building community humanising ourselves
is the rst step towards interdependent
growth and the full potential of our society.
Community is an emergent property of the
system. It requires participation and empathy.
It has to be carefully planted in each of us
and diligently cared for in order to grow. It
is futile to try to achieve it by imposing a
centralised, static, top-down path.
The projects illustrated here demonstrate
innovative ways of involving the various
players (the public, private and social
sectors) and redening their roles and
levels of inclusion. To evaluate urban
interventions at any scale it is important to
assess factors such as their sustainability
(environmental, social and economic) for
example, whether they are self-sustaining
or dependent on external endowments in
132 132
A refurbished factory complex
that houses theatres, gymnasiums,
a swimming pool, library, leisure
areas, restaurants, galleries,
workshops and other services,
it offers sports, cultural, health
and environment education
programmes, as well as special
programmes for children and
senior citizens.
Lina Bo Bardi, SESC Pompia, So Paulo, 1986
right: The SESC Pompia proves that a
social enterprise can be economically
sustainable through excellent facilities
and content.
Pedro Reyes, Leverage, 2006
opposite: In this variation on a see-saw
there is a clear asymmetric relationship;
one person equals in power a group of nine
others. However, the single player needs
the group to wield his or her inuence. At
rst this seems a materialisation of the
hierarchies and power inequities found in
almost all human organisations.
The oppressor against the oppressed.
Another interpretation could shift problems
into opportunities a potential social
leverage, or the power of an individual to
transform his or her group. If you change
your own habits you are multiplying your
efforts by one. If you manage to introduce
a change within a group, the effect is
multiplied by 10, by 100, by 1,000.
133 133
the long run and their understanding of
local culture. Also important is their agency
(top-down or bottom-up, centrally planned
versus organisational or community-based),
the degree of participation of the community
and resulting ownership of the project by
the respective communities, as well as
replicability and scalability potential, and
sense of entrepreneurship. Do these projects
generate value and exchange for it? This way
we can measure how successful they are in
creating a new balance in society.
Lina Bo Bardis large-scale intervention,
the SESC Pompia community, cultural and
sports centre (197786) in So Paulo, is a
good example of a private institution created
by a non-prot organisation formed by the
citys business owners. A refurbished factory
complex that houses theatres, gymnasiums,
a swimming pool, library, leisure areas,
restaurants, galleries, workshops and other
services, it offers sports, cultural, health
and environment education programmes, as
well as special programmes for children and
senior citizens. There are now more than 30
SESC centres in the state of So Paulo, and
each is responsible, through user fees, for its
own management and upkeep, though the
unique political and economic conditions at
the time of the founding of the SESC render it
almost impossible to replicate today.
However, current conditions in Latin
America also present great opportunities
for the development of new tools for
architects and artists to participate in the
building and organising of communities
while designing the built environment.
Recent projects have included microscale
interventions of a bottom-up nature from
the temporary transformation of private
property into public spaces, to an adaptation
of a childrens playground attraction that
reveals the leverage we have as individuals.
Here, the architects (or their collectives)
become the leaders, enrolling the people,
local governments and institutions to create
stronger communities.
There is an old Chinese proverb: If we
continue the way we are going, we might
get where we are headed. As Latin America
celebrates the bicentennial of the beginning
of its quest for independence, it is presented
with a true opportunity for transformation:
to own its struggle and to grow from it,
to become the rst true civilisation of the
world civilised by its people and not its
governments. But this change has to begin
with each and every one of us. 1
Notes
1. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity
Evolves, HarperCollins (New York), 2010.
2. Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible
Revolution in the Third World, HarperCollins (New York),
1989, and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism
Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Basic
Books (New York), 2000.
3. Keith Raniere, Oportunidades de Negocio, Conocimiento,
Coordinacin de Ciencia y Tecnologa de Nuevo Len
(Monterrey), No 108, September 2010, p 85.
4. Alain Finkielkraut, In the Name of Humanity:
Reections on the Twentieth Century, Columbia
University Press (New York), 2000.
5. Enrique Martin-Moreno, It Takes Three: The People,
Businessmen, and Government Ofcials, Harvard Design
Magazine, No 28, Spring/Summer 2008, p 41.
6. See www.inlakech.org.mx.
7. Michael Gecan, Going Public: An Organizers Guide to
Citizen Action, Anchor Books (New York), 2004.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 128 images by
Alejandra Carlock and Arturo Alanis; p 129 Image by Mariana
Musi; p 130 Louise Marie Cardoso Ganz; p 131(t) Giacomo
Castagnola; p 131(b) Ral Crdenas Osuna; p 132 SESC Sao
Paulo, photo Nilton Silva; p 133 Courtesy of Yvon Lambert Gallery
134 134
UNIVERSITIES
THE CASES OF BUENOS AIRES,
Stepping into the vacuum left by state and public services, architecture departments in universities
have become key players in the development of their regions. As guest-editor of this issue, Mariana
Legua explains how this has led to a new teaching and research model, where universities act as
mediators between government, private investors, NGOs and local communities. She looks at the
activities of institutions in Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Brazil that are proactive in this eld.
Mariana Legua
Javier Fernndez Castro, Villa 31/Barrio 31 Carlos
Mugica, Buenos Aires, 2002
above: Work on the existing infrastructure identied
a plaza as the main entrance to the neighbourhood
from the bus terminal. The proposed lateral esplanade
contemplates the regeneration of the existing rail tracks.
The main services for the neighbourhood were thus
distributed throughout the plaza, taking advantage of the
space underneath the elevated road.
(Y)ncluye (Maya Balln and Mariana Legua), New
Methodologies in Ica, Peru, 2004
opposite: Perspective of the community centre.
135 135
AS MEDIATORS
LIMA, MEXICO AND SO PAULO
Latin Americas major cities have grown dramatically since
1950
1
when upon arrival, ruralurban migrants were faced
with innumerable barriers preventing them from entering into
formal employment.
2
This is reected in the growth of Latin
Americas shadow economy, increasing from 30 per cent to 40
per cent of the overall economy between 1990 and 2003 alone.
3

This growth has weakened Latin American governments who
are faced with increasing infrastructural costs with a smaller
proportion of ofcial income from which to draw taxes.
The resulting inability of some Latin American nation-
states to provide basic services and housing for all its citizens,
along with perceived corruption, means many communities
have little faith in government institutions (as discussed in the
previous article, see pp 12833). In the absence of the state,
communities rely on themselves for many basic services,
4
leading
to the replacement of public services with private services.
5

Privately operated informal public transport, private police
or neighbourhood security are common in Latin America,
as well as what De Soto calls extralegal agreements, where
informal property titles are recognised within communities,
but not within ofcial government registries.
Exploding urban populations in Latin America have
led to multipolar cities and fractal segregation, increasing
both densication and urban sprawl. While extremely
challenging, these factors have created the role for
universities to become key players in the development of
the region, allowing for a reinterpretation of pedagogy
where universities act as mediators between government,
private investors, NGOs and local communities.
Responding to the challenge, many universities have
been developing new methodologies to work within these
informal areas of the city.
136 136
The use of communication-type games and easily
approachable visual imagery are just two of the tools common
in this new decision-making process where architects
encourage the participation of citizens in design. Integrating
the users within the process is not a novelty. The innovation
consists in articulating possible worlds and social relations
that are materialised in a project, through its fabrication and
its performance over time. The main difference between past
examples of socially engaged practices and the ones being used
today is that now it is not about grand projects and utopias, but
about modelling possible worlds and the small-scale utopias of
everyday life. These quotidian spaces are not codied through
built form, but within the pure state of usage and the relations
carried within the idea of the project.
6
M any projects exemplify the mediation of universities and
NGOs in Latin America. The ve brief case studies included
here cover Buenos Aires, So Paulo, Lima and Mexico. All
illustrate universities where faculty members and students work
together as practitioners, developing alternative methods for
community engagement in excluded sectors of their cities, and
have in common the following concepts and approaches:
taking into account local and existent users and
involving them in the decision-making process;
consideration of the informal urban fabric along with its
respective social and spatial networks;
development of new methodologies for communication
and interaction to obtain an understanding of the
communitys perception and subjective experience of
place, and more accurate spatial information; and
a focus on public space; strong independent
communities consolidate when they are represented as a
common entity within their public realm.
Asociacao Escola da Cidade (School of the City Association),
Audutora Rio Claro (Park of Integration), So Paulo
In 1996, a group of liberal professionals from the areas of
architectural research and multidisciplinary teaching decided
to create an architectural programme with a new pedagogical
and administrative structure that could also meet the Brazilian
137 137
national requirements. The objective of Asociacao Escola
de Cidade, or School of the City, was to give rise to a new
generation of architects and city planners with a commitment
towards the improvement of their society and city. The
school operates with various funding generated through
private and public grants, and payments for specic projects
it is commissioned to undertake. NGOs, foundations,
governments and associations all provide work in critical areas
of the city and across the country, and the pupils learn from
real projects while receiving a free education in return for
their service to the community.
7

In December of 2001, the School of the City was invited
by the government of the state of So Paulo to participate
in a programme of workshops for the improvement of areas
of the city where violence was particularly widespread. The
allocated site was a 7.5-kilometre (4.6-mile) strip (varying
in width), a remnant of urban growth, in the Sapopemba
district, an unattractive, neglected and unused space home
to drug use and serious crime. As this linear space cuts
through diverse urbanised areas with differing physical
and social characteristics, a consultation process with the
local communities of each sector was required to unveil the
activities, desires and needs of each. The proposal for the Park
of Integration was thus organised as a sequence of spaces for
different uses (for example, sports facilities, community centres
and childrens playgrounds) in relation to the surrounding
zoning and neighbourhood, acting as an organiser for different
types of event. The participation process was important in
order to integrate the community, involving them from the
inception of the project, and making them the most important
element for the denition, assembly and direction of the park.
The aim of the project was both to promote community
participation through an inclusive programme and to
generate self-sustained use of the park. At the same
time it is an exemplar of academic and practical work in
which architects and students acted as mediators between
government agencies and the local communities for the
democratisation and redistribution of leisure areas and
facilities in the city, converting an urban void, or margin, into
an active area of integration.
Asociacao Escola da Cidade (School of
the City Association), Audutora Rio Claro
(Park of Integration), So Paulo, 2002
opposite top and centre: The
architectural, urban and landscape
aspects of the Audutora Rio Claro, or Park
of Integration, were structured by way of
activity nodes, pedestrian passages, cycle
routes, the planting of trees and greenery,
public squares, and facilities for sports
and leisure activities for different social
groups. The total area is approximately
224,000 square metres (2.41 million
square feet) and the park is now used by
320,000 people daily.
Flavio Janches/Blinder Janches & Co,
Intervention strategy for Villa Tranquila,
Buenos Aires, 2008
opposite bottom: The ideas for this
project evolved from weekly meetings
between students and faculty members,
municipality representatives and the local
community. The design of the public
spaces is congured through a modular kit
of parts that can be adapted in terms of
dimensions and materials as well as the
activities within the existent conditions of
each case scenario.
below: Proposals dened through the
meetings and discussions included small
parks, an amphitheatre for music and
theatre, play areas, sports areas, daycare
centres, education centres and libraries.
bottom: A Dutch foundation with
representation in Buenos Aires gives
funding for the construction of playgrounds
for children living in marginal areas. The
opening of the rst of such playspaces
in Villa Tranquila shows strong interaction
between community and place, identifying
the space as a part of daily life, as if it had
always been there.
138 138
Flavio Janches/Blinder Janches & Co, Intervention strategy
for Villa Tranquila, Buenos Aires
Flavio Janches and his ofce, Blinder Janches & Co architects,
have been working in the villas miserias (shantytowns) of
Argentina since 2000 along with students from the faculty of
architecture and urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires
where Janches currently teaches.
8
The project team has been focusing on supporting the
networks and interactions found within these local informal
neighbourhoods by reinforcing the role of public spaces as areas
for education and social gathering. Its latest work (ongoing
since 2008), located in the Villa Tranquila settlement next to
the river on the southern edge of Buenos Aires, summarises its
activities and interests.
The methodology consisted of studying and mapping
the site, and conducting interviews and workshops with the
community at different stages of the project. The workshops
revealed the community networks operating informally within
the villa, which were otherwise not formally recorded by the
municipality. Instead of approaching the site as a tabula rasa,
analysis and urban regeneration instead took into account the
self-generating capacity of these areas, which could create the
potential for their reinsertion within the formal city.
9
To do so,
it was rst necessary to locate the places and programmes at the
edge of the slum that could break the barrier between the formal
city and the non-formal city. At a smaller scale, it was important
to look at ways to distribute, throughout the neighbourhood,
programmes that could break the barriers between existing
internal fragmentations. In addition, a network of very small
public spaces was developed for small groups or families to help
them build their own community.
The proposal consolidated the sites pre-existing
networks and activities, and is described by the architect as a
materialisation of the values of the community, representing
the reality of its experience. Even during the construction, it
was important to involve the local residents to actually build
the projects that resulted from the workshops. This has helped
in developing relationships between the community and the
architects, builders or local institutions funding the projects
throughout the ongoing process, and also ensured that the
community is committed to the long-term maintenance of
their improved neighbourhood.
Javier Fernndez Castro, Villa 31/Barrio 31 Carlos Mugica,
Buenos Aires
Villa 31, now called Barrio 31 Carlos Mugica,
10
began as an
urban research project in 2002, and continues its development
today as a built project thanks to the collective work of
students from the architecture department (Facultad de
Arquitectura, Diseo y Urbanismo, Universidad de Buenos
Aires FADU) at the University of Buenos Aires, and faculty
members led by professor of architecture and urbanism Javier
Fernndez Castro.
The sites location in the centre of the city next to two of
the wealthiest neighbourhoods, Recoleta and Barrio Norte,
makes Barrio 31 Carlos Mugica one of the most emblematic
informal areas in Buenos Aires. It covers 39 hectares (96.3
acres) and houses 35,000 people (11,000 families). Working
with the community for eight years, surviving only on
scholarships and private sponsorship,
11
FADU successfully
lobbied the state to turn this theoretical project into a reality.
In 2010, the project was ofcially adopted by the government
and renamed Plan de urbanizacin de las villas 31 y 31 bis by
the Comisin de Vivienda, the government agency that deals
with housing issues.
Prior to Fernndez Castros initiative, the city had planned
to demolish the villa. Following the Favela-Barrio project,
the teams approach was to identify how existing social and
spatial capital could be maintained or repaired. This approach
represented considerable savings in government spending
on the regeneration of the area. As in the other case studies
illustrated here, part of the methodology was constant and
regular contact with the local people to understand the
dynamics of the site.
12
The teams work resulted in the renovation of 60 per cent
of the areas existing homes, and 40 per cent new homes. It also
provided an opportunity for the integration of other services and
infrastructures within the formal and informal areas of the city.
The sites location in the centre of
the city next to two of the wealthiest
neighbourhoods, Recoleta and
Barrio Norte, makes Barrio 31
Carlos Mugica one of the most
emblematic informal areas in
Buenos Aires.
139 139
below: Throughout the consultation
process, the usual tools for urban analysis
were complemented by a series of
workshops created to explore the collective
subjectivity of the community. Students
were able to interpret the demands of
locals and project this into an integrated
urban regeneration masterplan.
Javier Fernndez Castro, Villa 31/Barrio
31 Carlos Mugica, Buenos Aires, 2002
opposite: The proposal included three
intervention scales: the macroscale,
integrating the neighbourhood with the
immediate context and city, adding a
new programme and housing along
the border; the intermediary scale,
working within the different parts of
the neighbourhood to make the area
more permeable; and the microscale,
nding the right location to open up new
functions through punctual interventions.
Working with the community
for eight years, surviving only
on scholarships and private
sponsorship, FADU successfully
lobbied the state to turn this
theoretical project into a reality.
140 140
(Y)ncluye, New Methodologies in Ica, Peru
In 2004, faculty members of the Catholic University of Peru
and architects Mariana Legua and Maya Balln of (Y)ncluye
13

were commissioned to design a local community centre in Pisco,
a city 200 kilometres (124.2 miles) south of Lima. The site was
located in a self-built neighbourhood, next to an area planned
for a 2,000-square-metre (21,527-square-foot) public park and
a new public school. At the time, only some of the surrounding
plots were delineated with walls, but more than 60 per cent of
the area was still vacant.
The architects main aim was to turn the site into a theatre
for community activities, exploring with the locals new ways of
designing using participatory methods. Together with students
they worked on site, looking at how they could facilitate the local
people in making important decisions about the projects design.
The participatory process involved four clear stages. The
rst was the recollection of the sites existing spatial data and
precedents. The second was the generation of new information
through questionnaires for adults and exercises for local
children in which they were asked, among other things, to
make drawings (mental maps) of the area. These exercises were
developed in conjunction with a sociologist and a psychologist
who helped in extracting conclusions from the material. The
third stage included a number of workshops to dene the
programmatic conditions and to dene what a community
centre was for the residents. This exercise was repeated several
times via various encounters.
Lastly, the group developed a game in which players were
asked to place blocks representing the programme within a grid
structure. In this way, the community was able to participate in,
and help design, even the nal stage of the project, in which the
arrangement of the building and the programmatic conditions
in relation to the public space at the site were conveyed.
Unfortunately, the 2007 Peru earthquake, with Pisco as
its epicentre, devastated the region and led to the cancellation
of the projects funding. Since then, the relief effort has
highlighted a further need for universities and young practices
to work with the community, rethinking conventional
approaches in a city that needed to be rebuilt.
opposite top: Local participation in the
main square.
(Y)ncluye (Maya Balln and Mariana
Legua), Community Centre, Pisco, Peru,
2004
bottom: The role of the architect was
to act as a mediator and to create
structures of interaction to extract relevant
information in order to develop the right
programmatic set of tools for the project. In
this way, the project was able to generate
meaning within the community.
Maya Balln, Mariana Legua and Claudia
Amico, Architecture and Participation
Workshop, Chincha, Peru, 2007
below: Interventions included a new
playground for children and the
reconguration of an old public toilet
building located on a key site (at the
entrance) into a welcoming living mural
and bus stop.
Espacio Expresin, Cmo transformar
la ciudad? (How to transform the city?),
Lima, 2009
opposite bottom: The aim of the Cmo
transformar la ciudad? international event
organised by Espacio Expresin in August
2009 was to generate proposals for the
urban development of Pisco, to attract
private-sector nancing for a strategic
programme for the site.
141 141
In response to this new challenge, in February 2008
(Y)ncluye, together with architect Claudia Amico, developed a
summer course at the Catholic University for international and
local students entitled Architecture and Participation, aimed
at engaging students in a participatory design process with the
community of Chincha, an area next to Pisco, which was also
severely affected by the earthquake. After a series of workshops
and analysis of the area, the students were asked to come up
with new strategies of communication in order to establish not
only the aims and desires of the community, but also new ways
of recording the peoples imaginaries
14
of the place. With a
small budget donated by an NGO, the group developed three
minor interventions which it was hoped would have a major
positive impact on the area, consolidating certain of the towns
programmes at the urban scale for example, a corner that was
informally used as a bus stop and a garden was transformed into
a childrens playground.
15
Claudia Amico continues to work with students in
developing participatory methodologies to engage with the
Pisco community through her NGO, Espacio Expresion.
16
Arturo Ortiz Struck, Chimalhuacn Community Project, Mexico
Since 2005, architect Arturo Ortiz Struck has been working
in the informal settlements within the municipality of
Chimalhuacn, a suburb of Mexico City. During this time he
has developed several projects in conjunction with the voluntary
social service programme of various Mexican universities, and
in particular with the faculty of architecture and urbanism at the
Ibero-American University where he currently teaches.
One of his most recent projects consisted of a series
of workshops with residents of Chimalhuacn to develop
individual housing projects. He describes this ongoing
experience with families in irregular settlements as working
with the possibility of developing an architectural project
dened by the feelings and imaginaries of each family.
17
In this way, the architects involved explain to residents the
best way to take advantage of the available technical resources.
On realising that the houses designed by the residents were too
hot, poorly ventilated and expensive to construct, Ortiz Struck
The architects main aim was to turn the
site into a theatre for community activities,
exploring with the locals new ways of
designing using participatory methods.
Together with students they worked on
site, looking at how they could facilitate
the local people in making important
decisions about the projects design.
142 142
The importance of each project was
in the process of designing together;
the key was to design the tools to
facilitate participation towards a
common goal.
143 143
initiated a new project with them to facilitate better living
conditions through the use of natural lighting and ventilation,
and through rethinking the structural elements. For example,
the perimeter wall is typically the rst thing residents build.
With this knowledge, a central strategy for the architect
was to dene this as a service wall effectively dening the
organisation of the house for future development by placing
services for the bathroom and kitchen along the outside wall.
The importance of each project was in the process
of designing together; the key was to design the tools to
facilitate participation towards a common goal. Thus a
crucial role for the architect and his team was to prompt
families in Chimalhuacn to ensure their imagination is
included in, and will construct, the language transmitted
by the built fabric. He continues to work in the area, in his
words working at the point of origin of aesthetics: building
thoughts that come from feelings.
18

Conclusion
The case studies here have demonstrated various
methodologies towards a common goal of linking
architectural practice with pedagogy. In this context,
architects play new roles as mediators, facilitators and
enablers, working to understand the community and
its interaction with the city as integral parts of the
design process.
In this sense, the role of pedagogy in Latin America
is twofold. Firstly, it serves to guide students towards
ethically and socially responsive practice. Secondly, it
provides a mediator between national and international
institutions and local communities, offering the possibility
of establishing new models to support the natural diversity
of the informal sector, and to search for alternative
methodologies in response to some of the most serious
problems facing Latin America today. Common in their
approach is the recording and interpreting of collective
imaginaries as part of resolving issues of housing, public
buildings or the public realm. Implicit in this new approach
is the personal encounter between the user and the architect,
who designs a project based on the subjective pluralities
offered through a diverse reading of dissimilar experiences
pointing towards a common end: the imagined city,
constructed from the imaginaries of its residents. 1
Notes
1. The combined population of todays four mega-cities (Mexico City, So
Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro) increased from around 13 million
in 1950 to around 60 million in 1990. See Alan Gilbert, The Mega-City in
Latin America, United Nations University Press (New York), 1996.
2. See Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital, Basic Books (New York),
2000, p 17.
3. Rising Informality: Reversing the Tide, World Bank, August 2005. See
http://rru.worldbank.org/PublicPolicyJournal.
4. In The Mystery of Capital, De Soto states that people in informal
settlements are spontaneously organizing themselves into separate, extralegal
groups until government can provide. De Soto, op cit, p 73. In an interview,
some of which is included on pages 647 of this issue, he expands further
on this, stating: At the time, the context was solidarity. I mean seeing these
people get organised. One guy helps the other guy do his wall, and the other
guy helps him pour his roof, all of that is wonderful, but its expensive.
5. C Basombro, Inseguridad ciudadana y delito comn, Lima Instituto
defensa Legal (Peru), 2003.
6. Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Adriana Noble (Buenos
Aires), 2006. Referenced in Maya Balln, To Make Space, Leaving Space,
Universidad Ricardo Palma (Lima), July 2007.
7. All information, gures and quotes in this text on the Asociacao Escola
de Cidade are from the authors conversations with Ciro Pirondi and the text
provided by him, entitled: A experiencia da Escola de cidade na cidade de
Sao Paulo, 2009.
8. The project connected local students with international students from TU
Delft in the Netherlands, and later with Max Rohm and John Beardsley in a
studio hosted by Harvard University.
9. All information, gures and quotes in this text on the Villa Tranquila project
are from the authors conversations with Janches Flavio and the text provided
by him, entitled: How to intervene in peripheral conditions?, 23 June 2009.
10. Carlos Mugica was a priest who worked and was murdered in the area in
the 1970s. The locals wanted to name the neighbourhood after him.
11. The proposal centred on replicating the experience of the Favela-Barrio
programme in Brazil (a government programme that started in 1993 in
Rio de Janeiro, aiming to improve informal areas with the participation of
multidisciplinary teams and local communities) within the villas of Buenos Aires.
It won rst prize at the Ibero-American Architecture Biennale in Chile in 2002.
12. All information, gures and quotes in this text on Barrio 31 Carlos Mugica
are from the authors interview with Javier Fernndez Castro in June 2010,
and the text provided by him, entitled: Barrio 31 Carlos Mugica.
13. Founded in 2002, the Peru-based group (Y)incluye (wwww.yncluye.com)
consists of architects Mariana Legua, Nelson Munares and Maya Balln.
14. The term imaginaries, when referring to the urban realm, involves
a feeling of attachment to, or rejection of, the representation of a place,
acquired over time due to certain events or ways in which it is or can be used,
not necessarily related to the function that it was designed for.
15. A collective group of artists called Brigada Muralista assisted with this
project: see http://brigadamuralista.blogspot.com/.
16. www.espacioexpresion.org/.
17. Arturo Ortiz Struck, fragment of lecture at the Blok Conference, Belgrade,
Serbia, 2010.
18. All information, gures and quotes in this text on the Mexico community
projects are from the authors correspondence and interview with Arturo Ortiz
Struck in Mexico City in July 2010.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 134 Javier Fernandez Castro; pp 135,
140, 141(t) Maya Ballen, Mariana Leguia; p 136(t&c) Ciro Pirondi; pp 136(b), 137
Flavio Janches; pp 138-9 Javier Fernandez Castro; p 141(b) Claudia Amico; pp
1423 Arturo Ortiz Struck
Arturo Ortiz Struck, Chimalhuacn
Community Project, Mexico, 2005
opposite, top and left: The methodology
for this project created a set of tools to
develop interaction and communication
between the architect and the future
owners of the houses. The parameters of
the workshop focused on issues including
lighting, ventilation, access, relation to
the street and the sustainable use of
resources such as water, construction
materials and electricity.
opposite, centre and bottom: Different
models and plans for the housing.
It is all too easy to be optimistic about
the economic and social future of Latin
America. Daniela Fabricius, the author
of 100% Favela: The Informal Geographies
of Rio de Janeiro (forthcoming), calls into
question architects working within the
realpolitik of a globalised, post-nationalist
world. Could an all too ready acceptance
of existing conditions and the adoption
of informality leave inhabitants short-
changed? For to live informally is also
to live precariously no substitute for
secure and prosperous living.
Daniela Fabricius
The great mass of built urban space produced
in the last decades whether in the form
of slums or real-estate development has
presented architects with a new set of
questions concerning their role in shaping the
city. A recent New York Times article claims
that architects arent ready for an urbanized
planet.
1
The article shows particular concern
for the estimated one billion slum dwellers in
the world today, pointing out that only 5 per
cent of the building work under way in the
worlds expanding cities is actually planned.
COUNTERPOINT
Perhaps more than ever, the relevance of
architecture has been placed under scrutiny.
This was not always the case. In the
postwar decades international Modernism
changed the nature of cities around the
world. Few regions embraced and dened
the optimism of this era like Latin America.
The exemplary projects of the period
dened what it meant to be a modern state
and culture. But more signicantly, they
also demonstrated that a multiplicity of
Modernisms could challenge Eurocentric
notions of progress. These national
Modernisms were no longer derived from
the architecture of the northern hemisphere,
but from a complex set of regional
conditions. The Modernist architecture
of Latin America was among the most
progressive and original in the world.
By the 1960s Latin American cities paid
dearly for the price of utopia, often quite
literally in the form of foreign debt. What
followed was a decidedly post-utopian and
postmodern era. During this period Latin
American cities saw the effects of rapid
urbanisation, dictatorship, violence, political
instability and neglect, which have only
recently subsided. The relative improvement
of urban conditions and the attainability of
goals on a small scale have since given rise
to a new, albeit cautious, optimism. The
consensus today is that utopian schemes are
no longer possible, and that we should work
within the realpolitik of a globalised, post-
nationalist world.
Whose Optimism?
The new optimism around Latin America
does not take place only within architectural
circles. Economists have noted that the
curbing of ination, the reduction of national
debts and political stability have made much
of Latin America an investor-friendly zone.
Some of this has been the result of years of
globalisation. In the 1990s a controversial
series of macroeconomic policies known
as the Washington Consensus were
implemented in Latin America. Measures
included the privatisation of public utilities,
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LOOKING BEYOND
INFORMALITY
trade liberalisation and deregulation. These
and similar market-based policies became
the object of criticism of the anti-globalisation
and popular leftist movements in Latin
America. Critics argued that the liberalisation
of these economies made them more
vulnerable to global instabilities, and indeed
several countries, like Ecuador and Argentina,
experienced major crises. In recent years,
however, there has been a trend towards
stability and steady growth. Economists claim
that these years have been Latin Americas
strongest since the 1960s.
2

One of the most prominent examples
has been Brazil, which has been identied
as one of the global BRICs (Brazil, Russia,
India and China), a term referring to
growing economies that are on the way to
becoming global leaders.
3
Brazil has been
especially visible as the country prepares for
the World Cup in 2014, and the Olympic
and Paralympic Games in 2016. Brazils
economy has been strong, but wealth is not
the biggest concern for most Brazilians
distribution of wealth is.
The same problem can be extended to
much of the region. Historically, per capita
wealth in Latin America has remained
relatively low even in prosperous times. The
region has been and remains one of the most
economically divided parts of the world. It
is also diverse, and includes smaller and
less powerful countries that are frequently
overlooked because they have not fully
embraced globalisation. As investor interest
grows, so does the danger that the region will
once again become vulnerable to speculation
and too rapid growth.
I ask whose optimism because it is all
too easy to conate two forms of optimism
that surrounding economic performance
and that surrounding social progress. While
the two can be mutually benecial they are
more often at odds. Latin America today is
characterised by an unlikely combination of
nationalist leftist governments and economies
open to privatisation and foreign investment,
both of which seem to inspire optimism. This
creates conict in some places, and confusion
in others. How do we separate optimism from
opportunism? Shouldnt political and social
stability be an end in itself, and not at the
service of economic attractiveness?
Informality Embraced
One source of optimism for architects lies
in informal communities. Once viewed as
the scourge of Latin American cities, these
neighbourhoods are now seen as viable
components of post-utopian planning. Many
of the new projects in these neighbourhoods
are now compatible with investor dollars and
government interests.
4
This was not always
the case. In the 1960s, Latin American
architects who were active in communities
of the urban poor were usually so without
ofcial support. During this period their
European colleagues also took an interest in
the unplanned architecture found in urban
slums around the world. Informality was seen
as a way to move beyond the exhaustion and
failures of the modern movement, and a way
to critique the ideology of state-controlled
planning.
5
The rhetoric of informality
exibility, spontaneity, desire, choice was
used to design utopian spaces in cities like
Unplanned occupation of the Billings
Reservoir area, which supplies water to the
city of So Paulo.
London and Amsterdam. Today this counter-
Modernist approach to design has returned
as a set of strategies applied in low-income
districts. More and more, in Latin America
especially, informality is no longer viewed
as a problem to be solved through design so
much as a condition that offers its own set of
solutions. And indeed, after decades of razing
and destroying communities to make way for
Modernist housing, or of simply neglecting
informal areas, the practice of investing in
these communities has become mainstream.
Architects were not the only ones who
discovered informality. The term informal
entered public vocabulary in the early 1970s
largely through the work of economist Keith
Hart. Hart derived the concept while doing
eld research in Ghana, where he observed
that contrary to unemployment statistics
most Ghanians had work, only it was not
ofcially documented.
6
The term quickly
came to be used to designate all unregulated
activity of the global poor. After a series of
global crises in the 1970s that led to a
retreat from planned economies, the notion
of the informal economy was embraced as a
solution to developing the so-called third
145
146
world. An undocumented worker, once
called unemployed, then 10 years later
illegally employed, had by the 1980s
become an entrepreneur. Rather than
resisting informality, this new approach
allowed it to become a defensible and
self-sustaining concept.
It seems that informality is no longer
an exceptional or radical condition in
cities in fact, it is arguably the dening
quality of many major metropolises today.
Furthermore, the defence of informality has
strayed far from the activists of the 1960s
who protected slums from the bulldozers
of state planners and developers. Today,
the tolerance of informality is becoming an
object of consensus.
What does this mean for architects?
Those architects who chose to work with,
and not against, informal architecture
were the rst to consider the desires and
choice of the urban poor in designing their
environments. However, 50 years later this
notion, like large-scale planning before it,
can be looked at less idealistically. To be
sure, architects are in a difcult spot. Those
who are committed to the improvement of
the lives of the urban poor have little choice
but to work within the informal paradigm,
and there is no doubt that the projects of
upgrading informal communities are almost
always immediately benecial to residents.
These projects, and the dedicated work of
their architects, deserve the recognition they
have received. But just as architects were
once critical of the Modernist paradigm
that had been handed to them, should
there not be a similar consideration of the
consequences of informality?
The Aporia of the Informal
In recent years the public image of informal
urbanism has received a much-needed
makeover, especially in Latin America.
Infrastructural improvements and public
art projects have helped to ease the stigma
or even total blindness towards these
urban areas and their residents. But in this
acceptance of informality it is all too easy
to forget that to live informally is to live
precariously. Informality does not represent
a solution or an end, but a new set of
conditions and challenges. This is especially
evident when it comes to employment.
The wageless life of an informal worker
has no more solved previous problems of
unemployment than slums have solved the
question of housing. The International Labour
Organization (ILO) all but supported informal
employment as a solution to unemployment
in the 1970s. But it has since changed its
position. According to the ILO, the informal
economy has grown beyond the expectations
of economists,
7
and cannot provide the
protection and security of formal employment
or decent work conditions.
8
The same questions can be applied at the
level of housing. Have we also put too much
faith in informality? Both at the level of the
individual home and of the community the
disadvantages of informal life are clear.
Admittedly the situation in Latin America is
better now than it has been for example,
today the majority of residents in the favelas
in large cities in Brazil have adequate
infrastructural services, which was not the
case only 30 years ago. But communities still
suffer from drug and police violence, from
being located in places that are difcult to
commute from, from poor health and
educational facilities, and from a social
stigma. Studies have also documented the
environmental and health impact when
communities spread into natural areas and
urban water reservoirs, when there is ooding
or inadequate sewage, and the toxic exposure
of living close to industrial areas not
otherwise considered t for human habitation.
Informality is perhaps one of the most
visible aspects of todays risk society as
identied by Ulrich Beck.
9
According to Beck,
modernisation has both produced risk (in
areas like national security, health and the
environment) and invented measures for
managing it. In a world risk society informal
populations have been made the most
vulnerable and yet they receive the least
amount of protection. In a society that is
based on the self as the primary agent it is
the poor who have the least amount of agency.
One could argue that alternative
structures of support for informal residents
do exist. National and foreign NGOs make
informal life manageable. However, they
provide to urban residents only what should
be theirs by right as citizens, but in the form
of charity. This is reminiscent of the situation
of stateless people that Hannah Arendt once
described as the aporia of human rights.
10

According to Arendt, rights are neither
natural nor inalienable, but are dependent
on participation in a sovereign political
organisation. People without rights are
those who have lost their distinctive political
qualities and have become human beings
opposite right: Favelas alongside the
highway in So Paulo.
and nothing else.
11
NGOs compensate for the
needs of informal populations by recognising
their humanity, but this cannot compensate
for political participation.
Residents of informal communities defend
their neighbourhoods and the right to live
in them. The houses are their property and
their investment and should not be taken
away; they have built the communities
themselves, often against great odds. It is
true that the forms of solidarity found in
informal neighbourhoods are rarely present
in masterplanned housing projects. But must
this solidarity come at such a high price?
Have we placed too great a burden on the
communities themselves?
Micro-Macro
The problems associated with large-scale
urban planning have also created new
interest in the small-scale project. Recent
urban interventions in Latin America and
elsewhere have favoured the approach
of urban acupuncture.
12
The notion of
acupuncture suggests an alternative to the
invasive urban surgery made famous by
Le Corbusier. Instead of viewing the urban
body as composed of parts or organs, urban
acupuncture treats it as a continuous nervous
system that need only be manipulated
opposite left: Concrete house in the
Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro.
below: A commuter train passes by the
Favela Do Moinho in So Paulo. The favela,
which residents claim is home to 700
families, is tucked away between a highway
and railway line and includes a former
factory building that is occupied by squatters.
locally in order to release energy that has
global effects. This approach has been most
famously theorised by former Curitiba mayor
Jaime Lerner.
13
Curitiba became a model
city in the 1960s due to the success of its
light bus-based transportation network.
This system, however, was not a small,
localised intervention but a highly planned
infrastructure for controlled yet exible growth
as part of the citys 1965 Master Plan. The
success of the system can more accurately
be attributed to the consideration of both the
macro and the micro scale. Lerners more
recent initiative-based programmes target
environmental and social problems through
citizen participation. Encouraging urban
residents to recycle garbage or tend trees
planted by the city does not ask them to
depend on their own resources or the market,
but to actively participate in the improvement
of the city as a whole. The implementation
of these micro-structural programmes is only
possible through a planned and centralised
urban government initiative.
14
Micro-urban interventions and similar
approaches like micro-nancing
15
search
for alternatives to large-scale, centralised
planning, and are based on the belief that
self-organising processes will be sparked
by minimal, local interventions. The micro-
147
148
intervention, however, is a gamble. There is
no guarantee that it will have more than a
minimal effect, and serve in the end as only
a symbolic substitution for real investment in
poor areas. Where the micro-intervention is
perhaps most effective is when it is combined
with an organised macro-scale plan.
Large-scale, centralised planning or
urban surgery is certainly not over in Latin
America. In Brazil, Rio de Janeiro is preparing
for the 2016 Olympics by proposing major
architectural and infrastructural investments
with an estimated budget of $14.4 billion.
While the planning committee promises that
the project will have benets for all citizens,
including residents in favelas, these benets
are indirect and cannot be guaranteed. One
wonders why this type of large-scale planning
and investment takes place for an event like
the Olympics, and not for the everyday lives
of residents. Why, when it comes to the
question of the urban poor, is the emphasis
on the micro, and when it comes to the global
nancial elite and tourism, is it on the macro?
below: Aerial view of the Heliopolis favela
in So Paulo. Heliopolis is the largest
favela in So Paulo and is home to more
than 125,000 residents.
Beyond Informality
For architects working in informal
communities, Latin America does indeed
offer a unique set of conditions. In most
regions in the world, urban slums resemble
those found in Latin America decades
ago, with houses built from wood, mud
or corrugated metal, problems with
disease, and lack of basic infrastructures.
By contrast, the favelas in Brazil and
many other countries have changed
dramatically, with improved access to
utilities and multistorey concrete buildings
that often resemble ordinary working-class
neighbourhoods. Life in these communities
is viable and often thriving, especially
when the problem of drug-related violence
can be controlled. We can celebrate the
resilience and power of these communities,
and support the investments residents have
made in building their environment against
many odds. However, there is only so much
that an individual resident can do. Many
favela residents invest in the inside of their
opposite: Police patrol the Alemo
favela complex in Rio de Janeiro after its
occupation by the military.
houses, leaving the outside unnished;
this is symbolic of the limited reach and
resources of residents in shaping their
communities. Construction is slow, difcult
and costly to residents. Public spaces and
streets become congested as residents
focus only on expanding their own property.
Beyond their own house or perhaps a
small business, residents have little power
to shape their communities as a whole,
or to provide much-needed services like
transportation, education and health care.
The most successful projects in
informal communities like the much-
acclaimed interventions in Medelln,
Colombia seem to be the ones that help
to integrate these neighbourhoods into the
city and provide residents with services
comparable to those in the formal city.
In other words, these interventions do
not insist on preserving informality, but
work towards regularising and formalising
these neighbourhoods. Holding on to the
belief that favelas succeed because of their
singular quality namely their informality
reinforces their segregation and the belief
that these are other spaces.
Informality presents a dilemma
because it suggests both creative and
resourceful solutions, and a loss of security
and protection. It is too easy to forget that
informality is a substitution for secure and
prosperous living and working conditions,
disempowering those who could
potentially levy unemployment or lack of
housing for a political voice. We have now
recognised informal populations, which
was a crucial step following the violence
against these residents in Latin America
in the 1960s and 1970s. And indeed that
moment did seem like one of hope and
optimism. How can architects now look
beyond informality to address the new
challenges that arose from it?
Latent Utopias
In conclusion I would like to comment
once more on the question of utopia. How
post-utopian is Latin America really? Some
have called favelas partial utopias.
16

Leftist politics in Latin America following
the Cold War have been described as a
utopia unarmed.
17
I would argue that
utopian thought still drives architecture in
Latin America, whether it is the utopia of a
radical pragmatism, of Rio de Janeiro as
an Olympic city, or the utopia of community.
The ongoing effort to distance ourselves from
the Modernist past has made us blind to
what persists from that era and what has
been too quickly dismissed. New projects
in Latin America are no less fraught with
idealism and ideology than their Modernist
predecessors were. However, they also open
the path for new possibilities. Perhaps the
important question is not so much whether
these projects are utopian, but rather what
vision of utopia they are proposing. We
should not be afraid of utopian thought
that goes beyond the status quo beyond
the demands of the market and social
pragmatism towards a more expanded role
for architects in an urbanised world. 1
Notes
1. Amelia Gentleman, Architects Arent Ready for an
Urbanized Planet, Letter From India, The New York
Times, 20 August 2007.
2. The ve years to 2008 were Latin Americas best
since the 1960s, with economic growth averaging
5.5% a year and ination generally in single digits.
Michael Reid, A Special Report on Latin America, The
Economist, 9 September 2001; see www.economist.
com/node/16964114. Last accessed 3 January 2011.
3. Jim ONeil, Building Better Global Economic BRICs,
Global Economics Paper No 66, Goldman Sachs
Economic Research Group, 2001. That enthusiasm
around Brazil has been especially palpable can be
attributed in no small part to its relatively neutral
diplomatic position in relationship to Europe and the US
(especially when compared to Russia and China).
4. In Brazil especially, the favelas have had an
ambiguous status, both representing the vitality of
the country its source of hope and energy and its
shortcomings. Publicity for the Olympic Games is already
revealing this familiar pattern.
5. Even Le Corbusier, who is better known for his
critiques of the urban slum, praised Rios favelas as early
as 1929. An informal aesthetic was later developed by
Team X members like the Smithsons and Aldo van Eyck
in the 1960s, while in the 1970s architects took an
interest in squatters, whether they be in London or in Lima.
6. Keith Hart, Informal Income Opportunities and Urban
Employment in Ghana, Journal of Modern African
Studies, Vol 11, No 1, March 1973, pp 628.
7. Informal labour currently makes up 58 per cent of
employment in Latin America, where it also accounts
for over 80 per cent of new jobs. International Labour
Organization, Decent Work and the Informal Economy,
International Labour Conference, 90th Session,
International Labour Ofce (Geneva), 2002.
8. The insecurities faced by informal workers include a
lack of legal protection or ability to enforce contracts,
difculty organising for representation, irregular and often
low incomes, dependence on informal institutions for
credit or training, limited access to public benets, having
to pay bribes and difculties with public authorities.
Decent Work and the Informal Economy, op cit.
9. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity,
Sage Publications (London), 1992.
10. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich (New York), 1973, pp
290302.
11. Ibid, p 302.
12. Jaime Lerner, Acupunctura Urbana, Editora Record
(Rio de Janeiro), 2003.
13. Ibid.
14. It is also useful to remember that Curitiba is a
moderately sized city with a population of just under
2 million.
15. Micro-nance is a system of loans made to the
poor in order to support entrepreneurial activities. This
practice has received mixed reviews. While it does
provide convenient access to funds and often immediate
relief from poverty, there are problems like predatory
interest rates, debt burdens and funds being used for
needs like food or health care rather than income-
producing activities. Furthermore, micro-loans once again
place the burden on the poor to generate income, rather
than encourage medium and large-scale businesses that
could provide wages and greater security. In Nicaragua
there has been an enormous backlash against micro-
lenders: the No Pago (No Pay) movement, accusing
lenders of usury, has organised violent protests outside
micro-lending ofces and encourages followers to refuse
repayment.
16. See Jean-Franois Lejeune, Dreams of Order: Utopia,
Cruelty, and Modernity, Cruelty and Utopia: Cities and
Landscapes of Latin America, Princeton Architectural
Press (New York), 2005, p 48.
17. Jorge Castaeda, Utopia Unarmed: the Latin
American Left After the Cold War, Random House (New
York), 1993.
Text 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 144 Daniela
Fabricius; pp 145, 146(r) Nelson Kon; p 146(l) Andres
Cypriano; pp 147-8 Noah Addis/Corbis; p 149 Joedson
Alves/dpa/Corbis
149
150
Alejandro Aravena graduated from the Catholic
University of Chile, where he is currently Elemental-
Copec Professor. He established Alejandro Aravena
Architects in 1994. He was a visiting professor at
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) from 2000
to 2005. He is a member of the Pritzker Prize jury
and has been named International Fellow of the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Professional
work includes educational facilities, institutional,
corporate and public buildings, museums and housing.
Awards include the Silver Lion at the XI Venice
Biennale, the Marcus Prize 2010, the Avonni Prize
for Innovator of the Year and the Erich Schelling
Architecture Medal 2006 (Germany). His work has
been widely published and exhibited in lectures and
exhibitions in more than 30 countries. Since 2006 he
has been an executive director of Elemental SA, a for-
prot company with a social conscience that works on
infrastructure, transportation, public space and housing
projects in partnership with the Catholic University and
the Chilean oil company COPEC.
Ricky Burdett is a professor of urban studies and of
political science at the London School of Economics
(LSE) and a director of the LSE Cities and the Urban
Age programme. He is also a global distinguished
professor at the Institute of Public Knowledge at New
York University. He is chief adviser on architecture
and urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics and the
Olympic Park Legacy Company, and was architectural
adviser to the mayor of London from 2001 to 2006.
He has curated numerous exhibitions including Global
Cities at Tate Modern (2007), was director of the
2006 Architecture Biennale in Venice and chairman
of the jury for the 2007 Mies van der Rohe Prize. He
is architectural adviser to the City of Genoa and a
member of the Milan Expo 2015 steering committee.
He is a council member of the Royal College of Art and
sits on the mayor of Londons Promote London Board.
Fernanda Canales graduated from the Ibero-American
University in Mexico City (1997), where she went on
to become a professor of design and urbanism, and has
an MA from the Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya
(UPC) in Barcelona (2001). She is currently completing
a PhD at the Escuela Tcnica Superior de Arquitectura
de Madrid. Her independent practice of architecture
and research is based in Mexico City. Her ofce is
currently engaged in both public and private projects,
for which she has won several competitions, including
the new CEDIM Campus in Monterrey as well as the
competition for a theatre complex in Guadalajara. Her
work has been shown internationally, including at the
2004 Rotterdam Biennale, 2005 Bienal de Arquitectura
de So Paulo and the 2006 Venice Biennale. In 2010
she received an Honoric Distinction as best young
architect from the Colegio de Arquitectos de Mxico.
Lorenzo Castro holds a degree in architecture from the
Javeriana University in Bogot (1988). Between 1998
and 2001, during the mayoralty of Enrique Pealosa,
he was the director of the citys Taller Profesional del
Espacio Pblico (Professional Studio of Public Space).
Through Bogots Spatial Plan (2000), he proposed
a strategy for public plazas, a plan for pedestrian
avenues, and gave denition to the TransMilenio bus
rapid transit (BRT) project, as well as tracing the
citys network of cycle routes, and participating as a
member of its Committee for District Parks. Since
1990 he has lectured at various universities within
Colombia including Javeriana, the National University
of Colombia, Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Ponticia
Bolivariana, and currently lectures at the University
of the Andes. He has also been a guest lecturer for
landscape and architecture masters students within
the National University of Cuenca, Ecuador. He has
taken part in a number of international conferences and
events in Mexico, the US, Bolivia, Venezuela, the Dutch
Antilles, Puerto Rico, Germany, Spain and the UK.
He has twice been awarded the National Karl Brunner
Prize, and the Pan-American Prize for Architecture
(both 2004 and 2010).
Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala City. He obtained
a masters in design studies from Harvard University
in 1997 and established his research-based architecture
practice in San Diego, California, in 2000. He has been
recognised internationally for his urban research on the
TijuanaSan Diego border, received the prestigious
Rome Prize in Architecture, and in 2005 was the rst
recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the
City Prize. His work has been proled in publications
including the New York Times, Domus and Harvard
Design Magazine. In 2008 he represented the US at the
Venice Architecture Biennale, and this year his work
was included in MoMAs Small Scale, Big Change
exhibition. He is currently a professor in public culture
and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at the
University of California, San Diego, where he co-
founded the Center for Urban Ecologies (CUE).
Derek Dellekamp founded Dellekamp Arquitectos
in 1999, where he continues to be the creative mind
behind each of the ofces projects. He also co-founded
MXDF, a Mexico City-based urban research workshop,
in 2004. From 2004 to 2005 he lectured as an adjunct
professor in Mexican universities, and is currently a
visiting professor at the Rice School of Architecture.
Dellekamp Arquitectos is dedicated to the development
and supervision of architectural projects regardless
of scale or programme type with a rigorous research
methodology. It aims to nd unique solutions to the
specic conditions of each project in order to maximise
its intended budget, image, use, context and spirit. The
coordination and collaboration with various disciplines
such as engineering, graphic design, industrial design,
environmental engineering and landscape architecture
makes up a great part of its activities. The practice is
also involved in ongoing architectural research and is
constantly a part of the academic and teaching realms,
as well as research studies, lectures, publications,
biennales and exhibitions.
Alejandro Echeverri has been a professor and was
the director of the Study Group in Architecture at
the Universidad Ponticia Bolivariana of Medelln
(20023), and was an invited professor of urbanism at
the ETSAB, Barcelona, from 1999 to 2000. His work
received the National Architectural Design Award,
given by the Colombian Architectural Association, in
1996, and he won the National Urban Planning Award
given by the Colombian Architectural Association in
2008, the Urban Design Award from the Pan American
Biennale, Quito, in 2008, and the Curry Stone Prize
CONTRIBUTORS
2009. He was general manager of the Empresa de
Desarrollo Urbano (EDU), of the municipality of
Medelln from 2004 to 2005, and the director of urban
projects for the municipality of Medelln from 2005
to 2008. In addition to his private practice, he is also a
director of urbamMedelln, the University of EAFIT
urban research centre.
Daniela Fabricius researches and writes on issues
relating to the contemporary city, and is the editor and
author of the book 100% Favela (Actar, forthcoming),
which focuses on the favelas of Brazil and their urban
context. She holds a BA in visual art and comparative
literature from Brown University in Providence, Rhode
Island, and an MArch from Columbia University, and
has taught at the Pratt Institute and the University
of Pennsylvania. She is currently a PhD candidate at
Princeton Universitys School of Architecture.
Created in 1999 by fellow students (Fernando Forte,
Loureno Gimenes and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz)
from the faculty of architecture and urbanism at the
University of So Paulo, Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes
Ferraz (FGMF) produces contemporary architecture
without any restraints regarding the use of material
and building techniques, seeking to explore the
connection between architecture, environment and
humankind. No matter what the project, it prioritises
the interdependence between the built object, its
environment and the end user.
EquipoArquitectura is a team founded in 2003 by the
Chileans Fernando Garca-Huidobro and Nicols
Tugas, and Peruvian Diego Torres Torriti, all of them
architects from the Ponticia Universidad Catlica de
Chile. Garca-Huidobro and Torres Torriti are also part
of the Elemental team, a do-tank devoted to developing
projects of social interest and public impact in Chile
and, more recently, abroad. Tugas currently works at
CCRS Arquitectes in Barcelona, which focuses on
different scales of urbanism.
Jorge Mario Juregui is an architect-urbanist based
in Rio de Janeiro. He graduated from the National
University of Rosrio, Argentina, and from the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro. He has been researching
and working with the sociospatial division between
Rios favelas and the rest of the city since the 1990s.
He is also coordinator of the Architectural and
Urban Studies Center of Rio de Janeiro, associate
researcher at the Laboratory of Morphology SICyT-
FADU/UBA Buenos Aires, and a member of the
Art and Psychoanalysis Cartel of the psychoanalytic
Letra Freudiana Institution in Rio de Janeiro. He
is responsible for more than 20 projects of the
Favela-Barrio (Slum-to-Neighbourhood) programme
implemented by the Rio city government beginning
in the 1990s. Since 2007 he has been working on
two large-scale urban redevelopment projects in the
communities of Complexo do Alemo and Complexo
de Manguinhos for President Lulas PAC (Growth
Acceleration Programme), which were opened in
2010. Current projects under development include
site works related to the 2014 World Cup and 2016
Olympic Games. He was the recipient of the Sixth
Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design, from
Harvard GSD, in 2000.
151
Adam Kaasa is the communications and outreach
manager for LSE Cities. He is also a PhD candidate
at the LSE Cities programme, focusing on ideas about
architecture and urbanism in relation to political
authority, media and circulation. He is the London
coordinator for the NYLON seminars and conferences,
a transatlantic intellectual working group between
universities in and around London and New York, and
teaches in the sociology department at the LSE.
Sharif S Kahatt is an architect and urban designer,
founder of K+M Arquitectura y Urbanismo and
professor in the Faculty of Architecture at the Catholic
University of Peru. A graduate from Ricardo Palma
University in Lima, he holds a Master of Architecture
in Urban Design from Harvard GSD. He has taught
studios and courses, published articles, given lectures
and worked on projects in Peru, Spain, Mexico and the
US. He is currently nishing his doctoral dissertation at
the ETSAB, Barcelona, and works in Lima.
Angus Laurie co-founded LLAMA Urban
Design in July 2007. He is based in Lima and his
current project in the north of Peru aims to make
communities more sustainable through densifying
town centres to support amenities such as schools
and hospitals, by improving connections between
disparate communities, and by diversifying the
economy to help the towns move away from their
dependence on mining. He is a professor of urban
design in the Faculty of Architecture of the Catholic
University of Peru. Before this, he worked in London
on a number of major urban projects including the
Covent Garden masterplan with Kohn Pederson Fox,
co-authored the Public Realm Strategy for Greater
London, and provided advice for CABEs upcoming
public realm guidance as well as for the London
Olympics project High Street 2012 while working
with Alan Baxter and Associates.
Gary Leggett is a designer currently based in
New Haven, Connecticut. He received his BA in
architecture from Princeton University and a masters
in urban planning from the Harvard GSD. In 2008
he received the Druker Traveling Fellowship and
travelled extensively in the Amazon, documenting
his travels through lm and photography. He is a
former researcher of the Jan Van Eyck Academy in
Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Enrique Martin-Moreno is an architect and planner,
and principal of Martin-Moreno architects. His
professional practice focuses on expanding the tools
of architecture to participate in the different urban
dynamics at play. He co-curated the Urban Voids
exhibition at the Museum of Mexico City, and
was curator of the Mexican Pavilion at the Lisbon
Architecture Triennale in 2007. He also participated in
the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, and the 2005
Rotterdam International Biennale of Architecture.
Since 2003 he has been a faculty member at the
Ibero-American University of Mexico City where
he teaches urban studies and architectural design.
He has also led research-based architecture studios
at the Southern California Institute of Architecture
(Sci_Arc) and the Arizona State University (ASU). He
received his professional degree in architecture from
the Ibero-American University in 1999, and a masters
in architecture from Harvard GSD in 2002.
Fernando de Mello Franco obtained his PhD from the
Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University
of So Paulo. He is principal at MMBB Arquitetos
and a professor at So Judas Tadeu University, and was
previously a visiting professor at Harvard GSD. His
Watery Voids (2007) project received the Best Entry
Award at the 3rd International Architecture Biennale
Rotterdam (IABR). He is currently a co-curator of the
5th IABR (2012).
Adriana Navarro-Sertich is a graduate student in
architecture at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she is also pursuing a masters degree in city and
regional planning. Born and raised in Colombia, she
received a BS Arch (Honours) from the University of
Virginia in 2004. As a 2010 John K Branner Fellow,
she has been travelling the world, focusing her research
on sociocultural aspects of design, and specically
analysing the relationship between architecture,
planning and informality.
Enrique Pealosa has lectured internationally in
numerous environmental, governmental, urban
design and policy and university forums, and has
advised governments in Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin
America and the US. His vision and proposals have
signicantly inuenced policies in numerous cities
throughout the world. He is currently president of
the board of the Institute for Transportation and
Development Policy (ITDP) of New York. He is
a consultant on urban vision, strategy and policy.
As mayor of Bogot, he profoundly transformed
the city, turning it from one with neither bearings,
self-esteem or hope into an international example
for improvements in quality of life, mobility and
equity in developing world cities. He created the
TransMilenio bus-based transit system; a network
of bicycle paths; slum improvement projects; a land
bank to provide low-income housing with quality
urbanism; greenways and pedestrian promenades for
low-income neighborhoods; radical improvements
to the city centre; daily car-use restrictions during
peak hours and an annual Car Free Day; formidable
libraries and parks; and dozens of high-quality public
schools, nurseries and community centres. He holds a
BA in economics and history from Duke University,
a masters degree in government from the National
School of Adminstration (IIAP) in Paris, and a
DESS in public administration from the
University of Paris II.
Patricio del Real is a PhD candidate in architectural
history and theory at Columbia Universitys
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and
Preservation (GSAPP). His current research focuses
on the construction of a Latin American imaginary
through modern architecture during the early
years of the Cold War. His second area of research
engages contemporary vernacular practices, focusing
on Havana, where he has also participated in the
construction of informal structures. He has taught
architecture since 1991 in the US and Latin America.
He was previously the director of the Clemson
University Architecture Center in Barcelona.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S Lynd Professor of
Sociology and co-chair of the Committee on Global
Thought, Columbia University. Her most recent books
include Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to
Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press, 2008)
and A Sociology of Globalization (Norton, 2007). For
UNESCO, she set up a ve-year project on sustainable
human settlement based on a network of researchers
and activists in over 30 countries; now published as
one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support
Systems (EOLSS) (www.eolss.net). She has written
for the Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, Le
Monde Diplomatique, International Herald Tribune and
Newsweek International. She contributes regularly to
OpenDemocracy.net and Hufngton.com.
Hernando de Soto is currently president of the
Institute for Liberty and Democracy, an internationally
recognised think tank headquartered in Lima, which
is committed to creating legal systems to help the
poor access property and business rights. Named as
one of the leading innovators in the world by Time
and Forbes magazines, more than 20,000 readers of
Prospect and Foreign Policy ranked him as one of the
worlds top 13 public intellectuals. He has served as
president of the executive committee of the Copper
Exporting Countries Organization, as CEO of
Universal Engineering Corporation, as a principal of
the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group and
as a governor of Perus Central Reserve Bank. He has
advised heads of state in several countries on property
and business reform programmes, and is the author
of The Other Path (1986), and his seminal work, The
Mystery of Capital (Basic Books, 2000).
Supersudaca is a network of architects formed in
2001. Its nodes are based in Argentina, Belgium,
Chile, Curaao, the Netherlands, Peru and Uruguay.
Supersudacas prole is increasingly diverse in subjects
affecting the environment. Caribbean tourism, Chinas
inuence, direct action in public space and collective
housing are some of its recurrent themes explored
from Tokyo to Talca, from Cancn to Cambodia. It
was recognised with the best entry award at the 2nd
International Biennale of Architecture Rotterdam
(2005), the best research project at the Fourth Ibero-
American Biennale (2004) and among the 20 architects
that will change the future by Icon magazine (2009). In
the design realm, Supersudaca has obtained rst prize
in the international competition for the experimental
social housing project in Ceuta, Spain (2006) and the
Museum of Modern Art of Medelln (2010).
Patricia Romero-Lankao is a social scientist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US.
She has developed a considerable body of work on
urbanisation and the environment, and in particular
on how urban development impacts our climate and
water; what societal factors explain cities resilience to
heat waves, atmospheric pollution, oods and sea-level
rise; and more specically on how particular cities
manage and can better meet the challenges of reducing
emissions while improving resilience to environmental
impacts. She is one of the coordinating convening
authors of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Changes Fourth Assessment Report.
152
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What is Architectural Design?
Founded in .c, Architectural Design (2) is an inuential and
prestigious publication. It combines the currency and topicality of a
newsstand journal with the rigour and production qualities of a book.
With an almost unrivalled reputation worldwide, it is consistently at
the forefront of cultural thought and design.
Each title of 2 is edited by an invited guest-editor, who is an
international expert in the eld. Renowned for being at the leading
edge of design and new technologies, 2 also covers themes as diverse
as: architectural history, the environment, interior design, landscape
architecture and urban design.
Provocative and inspirational, 2 inspires theoretical, creative and
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For further information on 2, subscriptions and purchasing single
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Volume . No a
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Contributors include:
Ricky Burdett
Enrique Pealosa
Saskia Sassen
Hernando de Soto
Architects include:
Alejandro Aravena
Teddy Cruz
Alejandro Echeverri
Jorge Mario Juregui
MMBB
Urban-Think Tank
Topics include:
Large-scale urban
case studies, such
as the revitalisation
of Bogot
and Medelln
The announcement of Rio de Janeiro as the 2016
Olympic host city has placed Latin America on the
worlds stage. Now, for the rst time since the mid-20th
century when Modernist ideas were undertaken on an
epic scale, Latin America is the centre of international
attention and architectural pilgrimage. The mass
migrations from the countryside and the erection of
informal settlements in the late 20th century left cities
socially and spatially divided. As a response, in recent
decades resourceful governments and practices have
developed innovative approaches that are less to do
with utopian and totalitarian schemes and more to do
with urban acupuncture, working within, rather than
opposing, informality to stitch together disparate parts
of the city. Once a blind spot in cities representation,
informality is now considered an asset to be understood
and incorporated. As a result of globalisation, Latin
America is now once again set to go through major
change. The solutions presented in this issue represent
the vanguard in mitigating strong social and spatial
divisions in cities across the world.
LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS GUEST-EDITED BY MARIANA LEGUA
1
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
LATIN AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS
MAY/JUNE 2011
PROFILE NO 211