DESIGN
Embodying the inbetween spaces
FRAMEWORK
24/03/19
EXPLANATION
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Before going into site I decided to develop a framework that would integrate the design proposal of my site at a city scale. I decided to focus on the stream of Santa Elena which runs from the very center of the city, up to the informal settlements and the higher peaks. The aim of this vein is to reveal this landscape and creates a democratization of public and green space by connecting communities, encouraging development, creating resilience, providing services and challenging the urban edge. The design of the vein is inspired by Olmsted’s Boston Park System, and it adapts to the urban fabric and needs of this area while adapting to the landscape characteristics. It follows an action plan that focuses on three aspects: planting and slope stabilization, reprogramming of flooded areas and colonization by people.
The idea would be that certain elements are maintained throughout the vein these are: public mineral space providing safe space for the locals that tend to work on the street, an ecological core that protects the river and the use of gabions.
REFLECTION
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At this point in my design process I was more lost than ever before, as I realized that this vein of Santa Elena that I was trying to do was incredibly complex, very different in terms of topography, communties etc. and I couldn't get my head around the idea of how to design something that was suposed to adapt to different communities and evolve. Moreover, I could not find a single precedent that was related to what I was trying to do.
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The I remember a lecture I had in Versailles about Olmsted and his parks systems and decided to look into his work, which turned out to be an excellent precedent for what I wanted to do. The way his design of the Boston Park System adapts to the complex spaces and different areas was exactly what I needed. It surprised me that a project which is quite old was still aplicable to the same issues we face nowadays.
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Moreover, I realized that I was wrong in trying to find references and projects in cities of the Global South, but what I had to do is use the existing knowledge that we have in developed countries and apply it and adapt it to this different context.
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After this not only I started exploring references of projects in developed countries that could be applicable, but also use more contemporary theory to inform my design, such as landscape urbanism or Lynch. Because what I am doing is not something new, but just adapting what we know into an unkown context.
REFLECTION ON PRACTICE
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Landscape urbanism, in the form of landscape frameworks, can have a very positive impact on improving the conditions of informal areas and the sprawling cities of developing countries. While cities in developed countries are very much designed by urbanist, architects and planners that think in terms of road and transport, in the global south the issues that growing informal areas present need to respond to the landscape if they want to succeed. We need a stronger presence in these urban areas, both in terms of research and practice.