Final Thesis Prep Booklet

1 + 3

1. Revitalizing an area of urban slums

3...Slum neighborhoods tend to overgrow on top of themselves and the areas where they reside. These hand made shelters are inadequately structured and organized causing hazardous conditions. With appropriate methods of intervening these slum houses can be revitalized and turned into a more sanitary neighborhood.

Booklet

1 + 3 + 9 (III)

1. Revitalizing an area of urban slums

3...Slum houses tend to overgrow on top of themselves and the areas where they reside. These hand made shelters are inadequately structured and organized causing hazardous conditions. With appropriate methods of intervening these slum houses can be revitalized and turned into a more sanitary neighborhood.


9........Villa 31 a region in the North East sector of Retiro, Buenos Aires that is know for its crude living conditions and has the leading crime rate within the city. After analyzing the area, it is clear that one of the reasons for its negative presence is because of its isolation due to an airport space, ocean port, train station and a highway that surround it. This separation from the rest of the city allows for more crime to consistently occur due to its little exposure and over crowded housing. These home made shelters are hazardous to the inhabitants and continue to grow haphazardly where space presents itself. With thorough investigation I believe that an intelligent revampification would create a permanent and positive impact in the neighborhood as well as the city. I plan to design a system of prefabricated components that could be implemented in the existing housing in order to establish cleaner and more durable living conditions. Not only would this system of modules allow for a more rigid sense of construction but it would also, in my hope, encourage a more structured manor of expansion within the region. In the adjacent ports that surround Villa 31 lie many abandoned shipping containers that could server as the primary income of materials for my project. By dissecting the containers, I can formulate the parts I need for my design.

1 + 3 + 9 (Revised)

1. Integrating a dangerous area with the rest of a city in order to reduce the overall crime rate.

3...The physical disconnection of dangerous low income housing areas often feeds the crime rate within. By appropriately exposing an isolated area to the rest of the city, extremes in income tend to be infused by public inhabitance. Public space will later serve to increase the capacity of the city or at least allow an overcrowded city a chance to extend itself.

9........Retiro is a region in the north east of Buenos Aires that is know for its crude living conditions and has the leading crime rate within the city. After analyzing the area, it is clear that one of the reasons for its negative presence is because of its isolation due to an airport space, ocean port, train station and a highway that passes over its center. This separation from the rest of the city allows for more crime to consistently occur due to its little exposure and over crowded housing. These home made shelters are hazardous to the inhabitants and continue to grow haphazardly where space presents itself. With thorough investigation I believe that an intelligent revampification of this area would benefit permanently and would reduce the overall crime rate in Buenos Aires. My program would consist of designing a public park that will not only house modified housing units but also mediate the two extremes incomes that are present in this area. Currently there are many unused steel ship containers that sit along the shore and the outskirts of this region. By recycling these containers to make housing for the current residents, much of the area will be cleared up and most importantly cleaned up.

Reading Response: "How To Define An Urban Site"

At first glance I knew this article would be one that would spark my interest. Just as I expected it began illustrating the various types of boundaries that cities had. I have always been interested in what defines a city limit and when does it change. seeing how artists from the past depict their sense of the city was nice to see because it was clear what was important to them and how they saw the existing conditions. I also appreciated the examples that were giving in the reading regarding how specific projects or entities of the city tend to have their own subjective boundaries.

"For instance, a subway station three blocks to the east required renovation to accommodate the expected load of thousands of new commuters, and a wast treatment facility eighty blocks to the north in Harlem was built to bear the infrastructure burden of Trump's high density tower."

This quote illustrates a hierarchy of boundaries that overlap similar to a semi lattice diagram. These is the type of patterns that I like to analysis. As I begin to redefine my thesis focusing on the city of Buenos Aires, I start seeing areas of which I can draw interests and conclusions. I also want to study how certain areas develop because of the surounding influences. There are many beautiful parts of the city yet crime is prevalent in many areas.