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Multi-mobility,
multispeed cities:
a challenge for architects, town planners and politicians / François
Ascher
The building of a new highway, a tunnel, a new access road to the city,
or a bigger airport usually arouses public interest and opinion. Infrastructure,
backed by engineering studies, figures and graphics, engages the public
and the media, who do not question the (not always clear) relationship
between infrastructure and quality of life.
As multidisciplinary teamwork becomes ever more essential, the architects’
contribution to infrastructure issues is still diffuse. Only relevant,
and eloquent, interventions will reveal the value Architecture can add
to these works, which arise as a precise response to a concrete need.
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Puerto
railway station, Valparaíso, Chile / Murtinho y asociados
Revision of some public transport policies has led to the renewal of
urban and inter-city railway systems. Valparaíso’s regional
metro, currently undergoing improvements with lines being taken underground,
upgraded rolling stock and stations, must deal with conflicting priorities,
between recovering the coastline and maintaining the railway track that
restricts its relationship with the city. The intervention of the Puerto
station could well articulate the poles.
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Warehouse
in Lampa, Chile / Mario Carreño, Piera Sartori
The
project as infrastructure could be rooted in a kind of vague altruism,
which makes Architecture an explicit yet open solution, looking first
at the large scale issues and from there dealing with the specifics.
This emphasis, stressing the space for diverse and dynamic activities
and renouncing form as origin, could provide the link between bridge,
aqueduct, open plan and hangar-like spaces.
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Urban
highways , Santiago, Chile / Proyectos Corporativos. Text: Alex Brahm
The
concessions system for urban highways has changed the way we move about
the city and relate to it, and has also produced new programs and issues
for Architecture, with administrative and supervisory centers, emergency
services or monitoring booths. Part service centers, part corporate
image, these buildings have blended into our vision of the city. Can
they have a positive impact on the urban landscape?
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Warehouse
and shed, Coquimbo, Chile / Martín Alonso, Daniel Rosenberg
These
projects highlight the value of designing a construction strategy, allowing
the creation of form rather than predefining it. On this occasion what
is interesting is a strategy that resorts to conventional, almost primitive,
techniques, elements and procedures, yet these articulate in ways that
are both extraordinary and relevant.
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Barrel
factory , Santiago, Chile / Martín Hurtado
What
contribution can we architects make on the infrastructure issue? Leaving
aside the problem of expression, perhaps we can offer a careful look
at the behavior of materials and their durability, that balances the
relationship between the activities sheltered by the space and its constructed
covering.
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Dongtan
orban development, Shanghai, China / Arup. Text: Alejandro Gutiérrez
Sustainability issues are inevitable in town planning, to the point
that today they are bargaining tools for real estate sales staff and
regulatory agencies. But mitigation is giving way to new, more complex
concepts and as yet unknown implications. The first experiments are
already under way, with an urban scale action that transforms design-generated
energy-saving conditions into a tradable commodity.
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Urban
highways concessions / Margarita Greene, Rodrigo Mora
If there were a model drivers’ city, it would undoubtedly be the
reference point for the interventions in Santiago in the past 30 years.
Leaving aside the relatively isolated case of the subway, vast areas
of land have been given over to road traffic. Concession roads mark
the formalization of a class system among drivers that will, unfortunately,
inform the way we understand and experience the city.
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Estoril
road junction / Ricardo Abuauad, Tomás Milnes
Building architecture –and the city, by a process of association–
is like a choral work that also involves large investments and long
terms. How can these variables be managed to overcome the innate rigidity
of the building and the dynamism of what it houses? Public works are
at the heart of this tension between needs, terms and investments, but
have their own emphasis: participation, and the common good.
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Paradero
14: peripheral areas and infrastructure / Luis Valenzuela
Infrastructure as the matrix for urban development is a concept that
offers a different point of entry to the planning issue. Implementing
some types of infrastructure can offer more information for future development,
and have more impact on it, than some regulations or subsidies, as the
changes at the edges of our cities show. The idea of infrastructure
can be explicitly related to surplus value, real estate development,
value added and urban expansion.
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Urban
design for ravaged areas / Carla Urbina
Much of the relationship among citizens is sustained by public works
(in terms of transport, communication and exchange), and they can also
resolve the relationship between the city and its location. Ever less
a matter of domination, the relationship should become a kind of dialogue,
structured by roads, ditches, canals and drains.
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Urban
structure and greenery in Mendoza / Fabián Bochaca
A characteristic of Mendoza’s environment is the combination of
a basic irrigation system, dating back to the first pre-Colombian vegetable
gardens and its tree-lined streets. In a basically dry climate, urban
tree planting was crucial to appropriating the public space, creating
a new condition in the city that also had an impact on the social behavior
of its citizens.
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Centennial
waterworks / Fernando Pérez Oyarzun, José Rosas, Luis
Valenzuela
The city’s infrastructure has many angles, some more obvious than
others. Mobility and communication are as central to today’s debate
as the city’s relationship to water (rain, drinking water and
sewage), was in the past. A review of public works carried out a century
ago reveals some unexpected impacts among the functional initiatives
that, probably unintentionally, have nourished and protected some qualities
of our urban landscape.
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