MAGAZINE ARQ 52 Displacements

Readings | Works and Project | Essays and Documents | Recent Architecture

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

House in Mallarauco
José Domingo Peñafiel
V Region, Chile, 2000

CIB Building, Finis Terrae University
Moreno arquitectos
Santiago, Chile, 2002

B House
Sandra Barclay + Jean Pierre Crousse
Cañete, Perú, 1999

Photographic atelier
Alberto Mozó
Santiago, Chile, 2001

Cavieres apartment, remodelation
Philippe Blanc
Santiago, Chile, 2002