Files: abstract, full paper
Disciplines: Urban design
Travellers’ Views of Seville in the Early Nineteenth Century
Abstract
The city of Seville in the south of Spain commenced to be included in the itinerary of British and continental European travellers in the mid-eighteenth century and became an established extension of the Grand Tour in the early nineteenth century. This thesis aims to collect and catalogue the drawings of Seville made by these travellers in order to give the most complete visual representation of the city in this period.
De-coding the Architectural Typologies of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
Abstract
The project focuses on the ongoing process of regularisation of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. Indeed, since 1992, Rio’s master plans established that legal codes, regularising and protecting the typicality of the occupation of favelas, had to be developed. However, in practice, this did not materialise, as standard-based norms turned out to be unsuitable to regularise favelas.
Rio’s master plan stated an interdisciplinary problem between the lines, raising the question of what rules mould the type/s of occupation of Rio’s favelas. This problem concerns many urban disciplines like planning, sociology, jurisprudence, but also architecture. Indeed, to explicit the rules that shape favelas, means to de-code the process of their construction as well. Nevertheless, to the knowledge of the author, there is virtually no literature dealing with this problem in the field of architecture. In this sense, this research aims at filling this critical gap.
The objective is to define a rule-based typological analysis. Such analysis is meant to ease the process of legally evaluating the rules that led the process of construction of Rio’s favelas. Specifically, the analysis is expected to make clear the relations within and between the material and social features that inform the typologies of favelas since their emergence. Besides, to define whether they mould morphological and/or typological variations.
By computational means, the project (1) systematises and classifies those variables that notably defines differences among favelas morphologies, (2) analyses the typologies of favelas and turns explicit their rules of construction, by employing shape grammar, (3) validates the outcomes of the analysis by a sample of Rio’s favelas.
To sum up, this project aims at shedding new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of favelas as urban types. This contribution strives to equip all the actors involved in the debate over regularisation with an analytical representation of the socially acknowledged, yet unofficial, rules that have been moulding favelas so far.
Democra-city
Abstract
Cities are called to face problems and challenges that don’t find a solution in current paradigms of intervention. Participatory approach has been increasingly evoked against rising socio-spatial inequality and urban exclusion but, while generating practices of emancipatory nature, participation is also appropriated by neoliberal discourse and becomes an expedient for co-optation of consensus. This paper aims at critically reflecting about limits and virtues of participatory approach and socio-spatial impact of participation on the upgrading of marginal self-produced city. The notion of ‘self-production’ which I use here emerged among researchers of the Gestual – Grupo de Estudos Socio-Territoriais, Urbanos e de Ação Local of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). It refers to Lefebvre’s production of space notion – not only to self-construction – and it aims at drawing the attention to the energy spent by the ‘producers’ of spaces, instead of emphasizing (as the dominant concepts of informal, illegal or irregular do), what these places do not have, in opposition to the consolidated city.
Small participatory local interventions implemented in Cova da Moura and Bairro da Torre (self-produced neighbourhoods of Lisbon) will be evaluated at the level of: (1) strengthening democracy among the actors involved and community empowerment; (2) social and urban inclusion, as well as spatial justice; (3) urban and housing quality, and (4) environmental and socio-economic sustainability. The critical interpretation of the different participatory essays and their assessment against current trends at a global level will be carried out at the light of Lefebvre’s Droit à la ville (Right to the City) in its emancipatory meaning of Droit à la oeuvre (Right to the Work) defined as everybody’s right to active participation, to co-authorship and co-transformation of the city. I aim at identifying a more imaginative and experimental participatory approach that contributes to spatial quality as well as social inclusion and emancipation (in line with Lefebvre’s Oeuvre) and leads to the creation of a ‘democra-city’, a democratic, empowered, inclusive, just, qualified and sustainable marginal self-produced city.
I will also consider the figure of the architect/ urbanist questioning the global paradigms of intervention to find new ways of re-thinking the marginal self-produced city and new ways to upgrade it through a renovated participatory approach.
Elements of Design Communication
Abstract:
As part of my research, which I am conducting as a PhD candidate and former ADAPT-r fellow at KU Leuven Sint-Lucas in Brussels, I am investigating an inter- and transdisciplinary design process, which we call (foundation stone) “Forensic Design Strategy” [Origin of forensic: Latin forēns(is) of, belonging to the forum, public (see forum, -ensis) + ic]. The term “forensic” is based on a form of political debate. “Forensics” is a word rooted in the classical experience of the Western world.
