Latin America at the Crossroads: Architectural Design

156 Pages·2011·22.75 MB·English

by  Mariana Leguia

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MAY/JUNE 2011
PROFILE NO 211
GUEST-EDITED BY MARIANA LEGUÍA
LATIN AMERICA AT
THE CROSSROADS

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
JULY/AUGUST 2011 — PROFILE NO 212
MATHEMATICS OF SPACE
GUEST-EDITED BY GEORGE L LEGENDRE
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 refl ect on the roots of the process and the way it shapes practices and
intellectual agendas, while helping defi ne 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.
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 confi nes of architecture. It is a multi-dimensional, amorphous category,
which is heavily infl uenced 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 Griffi ths, Charles Holland, Sam Jacob, Charles Jencks
and Kester Rattenbury.
• Featured architects: ARM, Atelier Bow Wow, Crimson, CUP, FAT, FOA, Édouard
François, Terunobu Fujimori, Hild und K, Rem Koolhaas, John Kormelling,
muf, Valerio Olgiati.
Volume  No 
ISBN   
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 — PROFILE NO 214
EXPERIMENTAL GREEN STRATEGIES: REDEFINING ECOLOGICAL DESIGN RESEARCH
GUEST-EDITED BY TERRI PETERS
Sustainable design and ecological building are the most signifi cant 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 identifi es 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
Volume  No 
McDowell Architects (BNIM), HOK and RAU.
ISBN   
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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
GUEST-EDITED BY LATIN AMERICA AT
MARIANA LEGUÍA
THE CROSSROADS
|
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
VOL 81, NO 3
MAY/JUNE 2011
ISSN 0003-8504
PROFILE NO 211
ISBN 978-0470-664926
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IN THIS ISSUE
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
GUEST-EDITED BY LATIN AMERICA AT
MARIANA LEGUÍA
THE CROSSROADS
 EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
 ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
Mariana Leguía
 INTRODUCTION
Latin America at the Crossroads
Mariana Leguía
 Simultaneous Territories:
Unveiling the Geographies
of Latin American Cities
Patricio del Real
PREVI-Lima’s Time:

EDITORIAL BOARD Positioning Proyecto
Will Alsop
Experimental de Vivienda in
Denise Bratton
Paul Brislin
Peru’s Modern Project
Mark Burry
André Chaszar
Sharif S Kahatt
Nigel Coates
Peter Cook
Teddy Cruz
PREVI-Lima led the way in the 1960s as the
Max Fordham
Massimiliano Fuksas seminal informal housing project – low-rise and
Edwin Heathcote high-density – with fl exibility integral to the design.
Michael Hensel
Anthony Hunt
 The Experimental Housing Project (PREVI),
Charles Jencks
Lima: The Making of a Neighbourhood
Bob Maxwell
Jayne Merkel Fernando García-Huidobro, Diego Torres
Peter Murray Torriti and Nicolás Tugas
Mark Robbins
Deborah Saunt  Elemental: A Do Tank
Leon van Schaik
Alejandro Aravena
Patrik Schumacher
Neil Spiller
 Tlacolula Social Housing, Oaxaca, Mexico
Michael Weinstock
Ken Yeang Dellekamp Arquitectos
Alejandro Zaera-Polo
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
 Governing Change: The
Metropolitan Revolution
in Latin America
Ricky Burdett and Adam Kaasa
 The Olympic Games and
the Production of the Public
Realm: Mexico City 1968
and Rio de Janeiro 2016
Fernanda Canales
 Articulating the Broken
City and Society
Jorge Mario Jáuregui
 Formalisation: An Interview  A City Talks: Learning from
with Hernando de Soto Bogotá’s Revitalisation
Angus Laurie Enrique Peñalosa
 Playgrounds: Radical  Bogotá and Medellín:
Failure in the Amazon Architecture and Politics
Gary Leggett Lorenzo Castro and
Alejandro Echeverri
 From Product to Process:
Building on Urban-Think Tank’s
Approach to the Informal City
Interview with Alfredo
Brillembourg by Adriana
Navarro-Sertich
 Latin American Meander: In Search
of a New Civic Imagination
Teddy Cruz
 Supersudaca’s Asia Stories (AKA
at Home in the First, Second,
Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds)
Supersudaca
 When Cities Become Strategic
 Urban Responses to Climate Saskia Sassen
Change in Latin America: Reasons,
Challenges and Opportunities  Organising Communities for
Patricia Romero-Lankao Interdependent Growth
Enrique Martin-Moreno
As the main emitters of greenhouse gases
in Latin America, cities will determine
 Universities as Mediators: The
climate change in the region.
Cases of Buenos Aires, Lima,
Mexico and São Paulo
 Filling the Voids with
Mariana Leguía
Popular Imaginaries
Fernando de Mello Franco
 COUNTERPOINT
Looking Beyond Informality
 Civic Building: Forte, Gimenes
Daniela Fabricius
& Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos
(FGMF), São Paulo
FGMF
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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MAY/JUNE 2011
PROFILE NO 211
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Quintana, ‘Tomas Carrasquilla’ Park Library,
Medellín, Colombia, 2007. © Sergio Gomez
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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 Lúcio Costa’s and Oscar Niemeyer’s
vision for Brasília. 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 unoffi cial 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
Offi ce 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 offi cial 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 fi 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 Leguía,
also confi dently portrays Latin America. This time as a continent that is on the cusp of
change. The most obvious manifestation of this is perhaps Brazil’s burgeoning economy
and Rio de Janeiro’s 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 110–7). With the intensifi cation 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, Vol 33, August 1963 1. For an insight into this period see ‘Interview of John F C Turner, World Bank, Washington DC, 11 September
Born in Chile, Monica Pidgeon, 1’s 2000’ available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTUSU/Resources/turner-tacit.pdf, an edited transcript by
longstanding editor, had a personal
Roberto Chavez with Julie Viloria and Melanie Zipperer, audited by Rufolf V van Puyembroeck, Legal Department
interest in Latin America. In Lima in
1962, she met the British architect and Assistant. A further edited version is also published in ‘La Collective’, 1 March 2010, Supersudaca Reports 1.
John Turner. The result was the 2. Ibid.
pioneering 1963 issue on housing.
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Steve Gorton
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LLAMA urban design (Mariana Leguía and Yncluye (Mariana Leguía, Nelson Munares LLAMA urban design, Small is More, 2007
Angus Laurie), Housing development and and Maya Ballén), Proposal for the Plaza opposite: This strategic approach
retail unit, Lima, 2010 de la Democracia, Lima, 2009 for zoning, taking into consideration
top: This is one of the few new buildings above: Through creating a protected diversity of use through pedestrian
in Lima that does not have a 3-metre but permeable facade facing the busy distances, will give different results in
(9.98-foot) security wall. Along with the surrounding roads and at the same time the way the public realm is activated
retail unit on the ground fl oor, this will help activating the inactive walls of the third and used throughout the day.
activate the public realm. 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.
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ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
MARIANA LEGUÍA
Mariana Leguía 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 2006–7, 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 fl 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
confi guration of public spaces.
Between 2006 and 2009, Mariana worked extensively on different urban
projects for a large architectural offi ce 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 US–Mexican 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 Leguía, Angus
Laurie; p 6(t) © Mariana Leguía; p 6(b) © (Y)NCLUYE. arquitectura. ciudad. Mariana Leguia, Maya Ballen,
Nelson Munares
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