Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Border Comparisons
Rivera is the best known free trade zone in the Gaucho border. Its main source of income has been the tax-free shopping, so much so that after going into a Uruguayan cafe for a soda, the owner said, "Gracias, buenas compras!"
Xuí is the southernmost city in Brazil. It is the final stop before Uruguay for those traveling along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Much like Rivera, it has developed along its major commercial avenue that sits on the Brazil-Uruguay border. The Avenue is the center of their own free trade zone.
Aceguá is also on the border between Brazil and Uruguay, about sixty kilometers south of Bagé. It did not have a free trade zone and has been very underdeveloped in its urban quarters. Its most successful developments are actually many miles outside the urban zone in the form of co-ops and horse farms. In 2007 the free trade zone was announced in the city and there is speculation that the city will turn into another shopping area for Brazilian Gauchos. So far, it is a distribution point for smuggled produce into Uruguay.
Just for the sake of comparison, here is Tijuana. The severe cut between the US and Mexico is such a stark contrast with the seamless border between Brazil and Uruguay that one must wonder how this "fronteira" has not been exploited more thoroughly yet.
Mundus Mound
Months later I have been finding images in Brazil of similar cases of what I proposed a year ago. This is the Edifício São Vito in São Paulo, Brazil:
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Interview at CEASA
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Interview with "Velho"
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009
How I put myself in danger and didn't even know
Here is the original news feed:
Uruguai apreende contrabando brasileiro de frutas e verduras2008/12/26
MONTEVIDÉU (AFP) — Funcionários da Alfândega uruguaia apreenderam nesta sexta-feira mais de cinco toneladas de frutas e verduras produzidas no Brasil e que entraram ilegalmente no Uruguai, informaram autoridades.
A apreensão ocorreu na região da fronteira com o Brasil, entre as cidades de Melo e Aceguá, a cerca de 400 km de Montevidéu.
No total, foram apreendidos 5.400 quilos de batatas, cenouras, mangas, mamões e bananas, acondicionados em caixas sem identificação do produtor ou importador, como determina a legislação uruguaia.
Segundo a Alfândega, o contrabando entrava no Uruguai transportado por motos, do território brasileiro, e era distribuído entre diversos varejistas.
Uruguay captures contraband of Brazilian fruits and vegetables2008/12/26
MONTEVIDEO (AFP) — Uruguayan customs workers apprehended this Friday more than five tons of fruits and vegetables produced in Brazil and illegally entered into Uruguay, inform authorities.
The apprehension occurred in the frontier region with Brazil, between the cities of Melo and Aceguá, about 400 km from Montevideo.
In total, there were 5,400 kg of potatoes, carrots, mangoes, melons, and bananas in boxes with no identity of producer or importer, as is required by Uruguayan legislature.
According to customs, the contraband entered Uruguay by motorcycles, from the Brazilian territory, and were distributed to diverse vendors.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Images of the CEASA
In the administrative building I also found old pictures of what the distribution centers looked like before the CEASA and a few pictures from the CEASA's construction.
Images of IAPI and Vila dos Comerciarios
The most striking difference between IAPI and Greenbelt is the preservation of the place. Architects in Brazil are constantly enfuriated by the "discharacterization" of planned towns, they complain about the modifications to the buildings, the landscapes, and the building uses. On the other hand, the inhabiting of these places and gradual modifications and marks left by its residents adds an incredible amount of character and physical layers of history. My impression of IAPI is that even an iron-fist home-owner's association could not have prevented the incremental changes of the neighborhood.
An aerial photo of the IAPI
Mercado Publico in Porto Alegre
A block from the market is a building that has been abandoned since it was under construction. It is over 15 stories tall and in the heart of downtown but was never completed so it has been taken over by squatters. They have installed windows, power, television antennas, clotheslines, stores, and all the spontaneous parts of most favelas inside the building's skeleton. Here are a few pictures:
Images of Rio Grande
Images of Aceguá
On the way back to Bagé, we passed through a German colony between the two cities called Colonia Nova. It was established as a cooperative in the 1950s by German immigrants producing dairy goods. I will post more information on the co-op later.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Images of Santana do Livramento and Rivera
Images of Bagé
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Procession of Goods
Present Regional Distribution of Goods in Brazil
Proposed Distribution of Goods through Development of Rural Nuclei
Monday, December 8, 2008
Notes on Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
NPR Interview with Alexander
Real Media Windows Media Player
"Christopher Alexander's Nature of Order" by Jennifer Ludden
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4469331
Notes on Notes on the Synthesis of Form
From the offset of my search for a solution to rural development problems, I have sought a humanist point of view about the individual’s ability to control his or her destiny with the least intrusion by my product. At the root of my objective to avoid meddling in the decisions of an individual is the balance between interpreting a situation that I am not the most familiar and using education to facilitate its solution.
“What does make design a problem in real world cases is that we are trying to make a diagram for forces whose field we do not understand.” (p. 21)We are led to believe that academic research can educate us about all that is necessary to solve problems like the rural exodus and poor living standards for the lower classes while making beautiful places. Yet, there are far too many minute and personal complexities that will inevitably fall through the cracks of the filter with which the designer makes form.
“I shall call a culture self-conscious if its form-making is taught academically, according to explicit rules.” (p. 36)In a developing world that is transitioning from vernacular methods of Alexander’s unselfconscious process to the first world’s individualistic inclination, the relationship between the designer and dweller (regardless if they are the same or different persons). Specifically in Latin America, the ideals of individualistic societies of the Western World are particularly and deeply rooted in the community developments and form-making process of its societies. In the grazing lands of the Pampas, the gaucho perhaps epitomizes the idea of the rugged individual conquering the land and creating space with his bare hands from scratch – much like the North American cowboy of the Manifest Destiny. From this nearly anarchical process of land claims has come one of the strongest and most stubborn cultures of independent life and self-empowerment.
“The form-maker’s assertion of his individuality is an important feature of self-consciousness.” (p. 57)Regionalist theory bred by Bernard Rudofsky, Hassan Fathy, and Amos Rapoport has concentrated on the vernacular approaches to building dwellings and the interactions between them that are integral to the form-creating strategy of a particular structure.
“We know by definition that building skills are learned informally, without the help of formulated rules.” (p. 46)Alexander points out the formalization of form-making as a creation of a self-involved cycle of academic study that may trickle down eventually to the vernacular of a place, although it is in reality more likely to cling to high-style design instead.
“The academies are formed. As the academies develop, the unformulated precepts of tradition give way to clearly formulated concepts whose very formulation invites criticism and debate.” (p. 58)It is inevitable that the educated elite formalizes the design process to the extent that it becomes intellectual masturbation with few tangible results. The “criticism and debate” in the academic circles rarely trickles down far enough to reach the individual home builder-dweller. Hassan Fathy was one of the first to experiment with passing on information to the individual in an attempt to join the experience of vernacular form-making and technical training of an architect. He suffered far many more difficulties than he could have imagined, as he made clear in his book. He was not greeted as a messiah of design but instead with much resistance. In broad studies of societal development, regionalist theory has prioritized the human aspect of a man’s connection with the material construction of his property.
“Closely associated with this immediacy is the fact that the owner is his own builder, that the form-maker not only makes the form but lives in it. Indeed…there is a special closeness of contact between man and form which leads to constant rearrangement of unsatisfactory detail, constant improvement.” (p. 49)Vinicius de Moraes and Chico Buarque wrote a song in 1969 about the humble people that are Brazil’s lower class. They are portrayed as a people, a community that defines the identity of its individuals, a societal structure losing its influence in most of the developing world as access and wealth bring with it more power to consumption, financial and material growth, and pride. The studies of regional architecture concentrate on the small or individual increments of design improvements, but in fact observe the process of individual design as only a step in a societal evolution of form. Alexander talks about individual pride of design as something essential to architects but that has become a part of every person in self-conscious societies.
“In present design practice, this critical step, during which the problem is prepared and translated into design, always depends on some kind of intuition.” (p. 77)Pride brings with it confidence and with that an individual takes more assurance in intuition. Perhaps the intuition of form making is actually the informal education of vernacular building techniques, but there is an interesting and charming amount of pride that comes with arbitrary design decisions. The gaucho raises his own cattle, pours his own mate, builds his own house, and makes his own decisions about every aspect of his life. He wants no interference from a “design-expert” because they are not experts of the gaucho’s life.
“Each form is now seen as the work of a single man, and its success is his achievement only.” (p. 59)As a stubborn gaucho myself, the unwritten rules of our people include never interfering in a man’s life unless one is called upon for help since we are all brothers, otherwise we are risking a brisk knifing (verbal or literal). I am also part of the intellectual elite and have a very unstable place in determining form making in the pampas. In this situation Johan Van Lengen may have found the most effective strategy to implement education to the people at need with his book The Barefoot Architect. His book was first published in Mexico in 1982 and was distributed to thousands of public libraries to provide locals with a manual for basic construction techniques.
Alexander goes into depth in the second half of Notes on the Synthesis of Form about diagrams and process of design in regards to the communication of form design and form making.
“We shall call a diagram constructive if and only if it is both at once – if and only if it is a requirement diagram and a form diagram at the same time.” (p. 87)In my proposal to establish a village of small agricultural workers through self-help processes, the power of suggestion through visual communication and the providing of access are the primary advantages of the professional to provide help to the individual in his building of a home, workplace, and income source.
“…the building of a house is a ceremonial occasion.” (p.47)The education and preparation of the individual to begin the building of a house are the first phases of the ceremony. The access and to information from a simple pamphlet or manual can significantly improve and facilitate the design and construction of incrementally built structures that will provide for the small businesses of the rural developing world. The principles of Van Lengen’s book can be edited and extrapolated to capitalize on a specific site’s opportunities and eccentricities. In essence, access gives the individual the power to incrementally solve his design problems to satisfy his needs as he and only he sees fit.
Gente Humilde
Tem certos dias
Em que eu penso em minha gente
E sinto assim
Todo o meu peito se apertar
Porque parece
Que acontece de repente
Feito um desejo de eu viver
Sem me notar
Igual a como
Quando eu passo no subúrbio
Eu muito bem
Vindo de trem de algum lugar
E aí me dá
Como uma inveja dessa gente
Que vai em frente
Sem nem ter com quem contar
São casas simples
Com cadeiras na calçada
E na fachada
Escrito em cima que é um lar
Pela varanda
Flores tristes e baldias
Como a alegria
Que não tem onde encostar
E aí me dá uma tristeza
No meu peito
Feito um despeito
De eu não ter como lutar
E eu que não creio
Peço a Deus por minha gente
É gente humilde
Que vontade de chorar
There are certain days"Gente Humilde" by Chico Buarque and Vinicius de Moraes
When I think of my people
And I feel like
All of my chest tightens
Because it seems
That it happens suddenly
Like a desire to live
Without being noticed
Just like
When I pass by the subburb
Myself very well
Coming by train from somewhere
And then I get
Like an envy of these people
Who go along
With no one to hold on to
They’re simple houses
With chairs on the sidewalk
And on the façade
Written above that it’s a home
On the veranda
Sad flowers and pots
Like a happiness
That has no place to lean
And then I get a sadness
In my chest
Like a disappointment
That I have no way to fight
And I that don’t believe
Ask to God for my people
They’re humble people
What a longing to cry
1969 © by Cara Nova Editora Musical Ltda. Av. Rebouças, 1700
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Disney's Pampas
The Argentine Pampas
Goofy the Gaucho
Stereotypical Rio
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Program Sketches
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Precedents #3
Central City, Surrey, BC
http://www.bingthomarchitects.com/
Frank Gehry
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2008/02/serpentine_gallery_pavilion_20_9.html
http://photodelusions.wordpress.com/category/out-and-about/london/serpentine-gallery/serpentine-pavilion-2008/
The Pentagon's New Map
3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA Both on the bubble between the Gap and the Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real. • No military threats to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the generals). • South American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have to settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves to be left out and then resent it? • Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that environmental damage continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care enough to step in?
Here is his map (by William McNulty), that delineates the "functioning core" and "non-integrated gap" zones of the world.
In reference to the Amazon, he fact that a country cannot manage its own territory is insulting, regardless of the fact that the administration of the Amazon really is out of control. The way he presents it is reminiscent of the fiasco from about seven years ago when a textbook mapped the Amazon as an international zone. Help is of course welcome, but in non military or territorial means.
The first question referring to the Mercosul, FTA, and NAFTA is valid. South America is divided into two drifting pieces, the leftist underdeveloped northwest and the more developed south. Columbia is an exception in the northwest, so much so that it has negociated with NAFTA more than any other country in South America. Peru is perhaps the country I've seen the most micro-investment headway.
Taking the "non-intergrated gap" map from Barnett's book and coupling it with general regions of high productivity in the continent, the Pampas is evidently the shaft of land that seems to be linking the two "functioning cores" of South America. Considering the richness of the location of the Fronteira (Brazil-Uruguay border region), it is impossible to assume that no development will occur in this region, and it is obviously lacking proper administration since it is sitting between the richest zones of the continent.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Follow-up on "What I can learn from Wal-Mart..."
In the offset of the downward spiral of the global recession of this year, I postulated that companies like Wal-Mart and Carrefour are strategically organized to thrive in hard times because of their target market.
On November 13, 2008, my postulation was reinforced by Wal-Mart's third quarter earnings, with the company profits rising 10% while other companies sank. Here is an article from the AP on the matter.
"Wal-Mart's quarterly profit rises 10 percent"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27696162/
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Tragic Story of the Public Market of Bagé
The Laws of the Indies established a skeleton for town development in Spanish colonized areas from the 16th to 18th century. Its most notable point was a regular block grid grown from a central open space enclosed by a church, a governmental building, and a public market in most complete cases. The nuclear nature of the cities' souls in these regions are still very evident today and provide many cities with beautiful characteristic and vital spaces.
In the case of Bagé, I am personally affected by the history of these spaces. The city developed around two main public squares - the colonial square flanked by the onion-domed cathedral, and the newer square originally flanked by the public market built in 1862 (as pictured below). My grandfather moved from Brummana, Lebanon, to Bagé in 1935 and opened a textile shop in one of the doors of the public market. Eventually he moved his store to the north side of the square out of the market. In 1953, the city, under Mayor Carlos Kluwe, decided to demolish the market citing the need for the city to grow and the lack of funds for the municipal government. In the place of the market were built a hotel and an office building, while a third building was never fully finished, rebar and all still exposed. The last vestige of the market is the street corner clock, pitifully dominated by a 1960s hotel building.
Mercado Publico de Bagé, circa 1948
Site of the Mercado Publico, 2007
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Patterns of the Pampas
And here is a frame of the area that I am interest in working in. The land is far less touched, but also far less dynamic.
Here are four different situations, at equal scales, of the city edge meeting the rural landscape
Monday, November 10, 2008
Get to Know a State
Below is a scale comparison of the state of Rio Grande do Sul overlaid on the Bos-Wash megalopolis. The state is large enough to capture Richmond to New York City to Pittsburg to Buffalo and everything in between.
Here is another scale comparison encompassing most of the major Italian cities.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Targets of Development
The incremental approach is more adapt to my architectural and tectonic goals of my thesis. The possibility of individuals gradually and independently improving their living conditions is the ultimate target for my research.
Nota para arquitectos
...si bien puede ser discutible si es o no es Arquitectura lo que se construye y lo que se hace para resolver la pobreza habitacional, en la forma en que se plantea el problema en nuestros paises, de lo que no hay dudas es que en este trabajo hacen falta arquitectos.
La discusion sobre si el producto es o no es Arquitectura puede quedar para momentos mas distendidos, mientras se sigue trabajando.
[...it may very well be debatable if Architecture is or is not what is built and what is done to resolve habitational poverty, in the form that the problem is planted in our countries, in which there is doubtlessly a lack of arquitects.
The discussion as to whether the product is Architecture or not can fall to more prolonged times, meanwhile, the work continues.]Victor Pelli, 1990
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Precedents #2
http://www.dwell.com/peopleplaces/profiles/7501232.html
Deboer Recent Projects
http://deboerarchitects.com/
Monday, October 27, 2008
Bamboo!
Bamboo and eucaliptus are two materials with plenty of promise and here are some big names in the field of bamboo and alternative materials construction:
Johan Van Lengen - Tibarose
http://tibarose.com
Simon Velez and DeBoer Architects - Bamboo Thoughts
http://deboerarchitects.com/BambooThoughts.html
Martin Coto Gomez
http://www.bambuesworks.com/index.htm
New Bamboo By Marcelo Villegas, Benjamín Villegas Jiménez, Ximena Londoño, Jimmy Weiskopf, Villegas Asociados
Google Book Preview
Images from New Bamboo
Friday, October 17, 2008
Entitlement and Anarchy
In development plans for the poorer regions of the world the consensual approach has usually been aligned with the “better than nothing” ideology where the rich give what they can find and the poor get what they can grab. The standards of micro-lending have embraced this ideology, assuming that the bare minimum is enough to kick-start the small entrepreneur’s financial growth. Perhaps the strongest argument against Grameen Bank’s involvement in Bangladeshi development has been its haphazard distribution of land through small loan purchases. The incremental purchasing of lands moving away from the central cities of Bangladesh and other developing countries has been bla med for the rapid urban sprawl taking over rural areas. For countries whose populations are still in the transitional phase of rapid growth due to high birth rates and low death rates low density suburban development is not an efficient or sustainable pattern of development. There is a need for some level of master planning when it comes to providing people homes and ways of life through development. The implementation of an overseeing organization is ethically problematic though, since it conflicts with the idea of the small entrepreneur having full liberty about how to invest in business, land, and construction. In the general structure of micro-credit, the loan is not pending a particular direction in investment.
Argentine architect Victor Pelli presents a dilemma to begin his book, Habitar, Participar, Pertenecer – how does a designer balance the necessities of the individual with the satisfaction of social standards? He proposes no earth-shattering solution in his book other than reason and sensibility. He emphasizes the effectiveness of individualized attention, small-scale studies and projects, and the assumption that no one knows better than oneself what one needs. As a designer himself, he reminds the all too often omnipotent educated designers that they must provide a service to those in need, not indoctrinate them and force them into our idealizations of what their lives should be.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Google Earth Links
Bagé, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
City of about 100,000 inhabitants, a commercial hub for the pampas region less than an hour drive from the Uruguay border at Acegua.
Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Capital city of the state, metropolitan area of about 4 million. It is the fourth largest city in Brazil and the southernmost major city.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Site Presentation
View map of the pictures on GoogleMaps
Noman Kindergarten
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Structuring the Microcredits of Development
This second diagram is my initial proposal for a micro-development process that is sparked by an architect's initiative and produces financial and personal growth for the borrower as well as profits for the investor architect.