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Moving
in cities, moving on the ground, moving within density / Alejandro Gutierrez
Is it possible to reduce vehicular congestion? / Juan de Dios Ortúzar
Rotonda Quilín / Bernardo Valdés
Microcards / Eduardo Castillo
The relation between the city’s layout and the way we move about
within it is surely one of the key aspects that we need to look at in
order to understand the present crisis of our cities: the commuting
movements, the subway lines, the use of land, and the use of cars are
fundamental elements in order to understand the British or American
models of ground use (which have served as a model for the urban planning
of much of the Western world). Even though communications have evolved,
and the extensive use of internet has even brought up the possibility
of displacements becoming completely unnecessary as a part of the exchange
processes, the need for physical contact and for certain rituals in
the life of citizens seem to warrant that a certain amount of displacement
will continue to be necessary. How do we look at displacements today,
when the difference between traveling and pursuing paths has become
more and more subtle? Four articles (two texts and two visual presentations)
review the problem of movement within cities.
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Caracas
helicoide / texto: José Rosas e Iván González
During the 1950s and 1960s, in Caracas, a significant number of architecture
and urbanism projects were developed. Their fragmentary nature illustrates
the concrete reality of modern projects.
In this case, a helicoidal shape stands on a hill, as a double spiral
mantle, in one of the city’s denser centers. It is a building
meant to be traversed, an apology of the use of cars in the early seventies.
In spite of its apparently rigid character, however, it has indistinctly
served as a police headquarters and as a commercial center.
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Footbridge
for byciclists and pedestrians/ Feichtinger Architectes
We conceive of the architect’s project as something that opposes
a kind of resistance to nature: it shelters from the sun and the rain,
it separates us from the open air, or it helps us to overcome geographical
difficulties. This pedestrians bridge, projected by an architect formed
in our school, stands over the Rhin, where Germany, France and Switzerland
meet, in a context of very dense flux and exchange. This density is
related to a certain scale and a way of moving that does not emphasize
the border as a significant moment: it is scarcely a moment on the way
from the house to the marketplace.
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Magister
studio, spring 2001:
Buslag: daily deferred, homes for drivers / Fernando Portal
No house project / Max Núñez
Portal and Núñez developed the projects presented
here in the context of a MA in Architecture Studio Workshop. Both place
their projects at the West side of Alameda Avenue, near the Central
Railway Station and the Bus terminals; a rather derelict area which
has paradoxically been treated as a backyard instead of one of the entrance
doors to the city. This projects work with that deteriorated reality,
which provides the backdrop for the case studies the projects in question
engage with: namely interurban buses drivers and cardboard gatherers,
who have both, for diverse reasons, set themselves apart from official
urban routines.
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Bio
tren station / Cristian Fernández E.
On the one hand, the government’s attempt to revitalize
the railway transportation system; on the other hand, a city that is
undergoing a process of urban renewal. This proposal for a railway station
in Concepción is one of the first signs in this direction. It
consists of a detachable structure (so it can be transported elsewhere),
constructed with prefabricated elements and a corporative image that
expresses the nature of the technological and repetitive world of the
railway system.
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Centenario
avenue / Teodoro Fernández arqtos. asoc.
Enric Miralles said once that the quality of a city had less
to do with the quality of its buildings or the peculiarities of its
location, and more with the quality of its first 20 cm of height. Teodoro
Fernández and Partners’ project works in this direction:
in the constantly changing and congested context of the Paradero14 at
Vicuña Mackenna, a possibility of order (and, eventually, of
architecture) emerges after providing carpets, building a zigzagging
border and planting some green areas. It’s all about how to set
up the stage of passage and promenading.
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Itinerant
screen: Cinema, wine and space / Organización ElCine Vino + Alejandro
Soffia
The ceremony of going to the movies: getting out, buying the tickets
and a bag of candy, giving the ticket to the man collecting them at
the door, watching a couple of previews in the dark room… Unexpected
encounters in the foyer, talking about the movie on the way back home.
The dissemination of TV as a mass entertainment medium, free of charge,
has displaced those routines to more specific domains in large cities.
Going to the movies in a small town is something the TV has relegated
to the private domain.
A group of architecture students has decided to question this process
by designing a moveable movie house that will bring the movies and their
paraphernalia back to the rural zones.
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Dispersed
concentrations: Santiago`s Urban Traffic plan and consumer geographies
/ Luis Eduardo Bresciani L.
During the last century architects have been seduced by the
so- called do it yourself procedures: works made without architects
which can be very useful to architectural discipline. But these procedures
seems no more interesting when they shift to major urban scales: on
the contrary, we architects tend to avoid this reality where land operators,
real estate agencies and clients meet. The fact is: the city is made
out of this kind of stuff, and Bresciani warns us about this complex
and dynamic situation that has been operating without architects and
urbanists.
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Between
image and thought / Germán Hidalgo
A significant amount of effort in contemporary architecture is invested
in organizing biennials, publications and presentations. In this context
of intoxication with images, where renders are about to become obsolete,
Hidalgo’s reflections put architectural representation in perspective.
Because, more than an instrument of seduction, architectural images
are tools that communicate ways of constructing while also informing
certain experiences: reflection and perception together. Do images amount
to nothing? I certainly don’t think so.
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Total
inexperience / Pedro Alonso
Starting from the current split of the different artistic
disciplines, and the later attempts to regroup them into a total art,
Alonso proposes a link between that totality and the city. If, for
the situationists, the city is the ultimate staging of man’s
life –and, as such, the ideal frame for this integration–,
then urbanism, architecture, and the citizen’s everyday lived
experience must assume together a new kind of commitment.
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The
sound of river is no longer rolling stones: Myths, truths and lessons
of an urban highway / Pablo Allard. Photographies: Anne Laure Moniot
and Montserrat Palmer
A project’s development can be long and full of incidents
along the way. Allard puts in perspective the development of the polemic
Costanera Norte project, probably the most important urban intervention
in Santiago after the construction of the Norte-Sur highway. After years
of discussions, open contests and protests, the construction work has
begun. Finally, no matter whether we like it or not, the Costanera Norte
is here to stay. Which leads to the question: How are we to use it and
how are we going to deal with this invasion of cars next to the Mapocho
river?
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House
in Mallarauco
José Domingo Peñafiel
V Region, Chile, 2000
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CIB
Building, Finis Terrae University
Moreno arquitectos
Santiago, Chile, 2002 |
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B
House
Sandra Barclay + Jean Pierre Crousse
Cañete, Perú, 1999 |
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Photographic
atelier
Alberto Mozó
Santiago, Chile, 2001 |
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Cavieres
apartment, remodelation
Philippe Blanc
Santiago, Chile, 2002 |
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