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.

Short Time Line

This image is, in my opinion, a shortened timeline of how culture and technology have worked hand and hand in design. The sketch of a rough sphere portrays the first imagine showing an example of the first attempts at shelter which had more organic forms. The sharp cube illustrates the rectilinear quality that we are more familiar with seeing in our architecture today. Lastly the smooth cube with filleted edges represents the new movement in architecture that encompasses the organic characteristic as the first while also maintaning the rigor of the second with an added bonus of sustainability.

Reading Response - "Artchitecure as Conceptual Art"

After reading this article I seemed to have opened many more mental doors regarding my thesis. As I continue the discussion of the culture vs. technology I find more and more examples of both pulling me back and forth. Silvetti brings up a two crucial periods in time that made me think of differently in how the architecture world impacts technology and our culture.

"And since I want to focus not on the specific buildings and architects, but instead on design strategies and techniques that [produce architectural form, and the ideas and ideologies behind them, suffice it to sat that the period and corpus I am looking at cold be bracketed by the exultant irruption in the world and in our imagination of the Guggenheim Bilbao and the wound to out affects left by the physical consequences of September 11 attach, the disappearance of two buildings we did not know we would miss so much."

My focus being mostly on the mention of the Guggenheim and the Twin towers. Both of these icons in architecture were only considered famous, not because of the architectural genius but, because of the cultural identity that they knowing and unknowingly had among the community. For example, the Guggenheim is well known to be an icon in Spain now because Frank Gehry placed an extravagant (and unorthodox) piece of architecture in a city that was struggling at the time. Its presence redefined much of the culture, though some believe its was not entirely positive. The Twin towers on the other hand, had quite a different impression on the American culture. The fact that the architecture was indeed an American icon that had graced the NYC skyline for so long was a shock to the public when it was no where to be seen within hours. Though that moment in time has been known for its negative affects, one can see the slight change in culture that it has provoked; that is, increase in security and an overall sense of pride for freedom (Hence: The Freedom Towers)


Another quote that seemed to help with my thesis brainstorming would be categorized more with the technology of architecture.

"We make Blobs because we can, and that was, for a while, sufficient reason...Yet I would like to emphasize their valid promise of more substantial achievements, which must be pursued, since technology has become a natural part of our doings"

Advancement in building methods and design tools has allowed architecture to design many buildings that often are only based on form and not function. As the demand for more sustainably increases, the bar continues to rise on expectations of building performance. Even the 'Blobs' that were possible before due to advancements in materiality seem to now also rely on the advancement of green technologies. it is an evolution of technology... a culture of technology