scholarly journals The notion of limit in architectural theory. Two case studies in Portugal

ZARCH ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
Tiago Lopes Dias ◽  
Rui Jorge Garcia Ramos

Modern Portuguese architecture has been seen as the result of an eminently empirical and intuitive practice, dissociated from any effort of theoretical structuring. This paper intends to contradict that predominant view, presenting the notion of spatial limit as a subject that earned particular consideration from a younger, more critical and intellectually demanding generation of architects. Firstly, it introduces two notions directly related to limit - ‘extensions of the dwelling’ and ‘transition-space’ - presented in theses by Nuno Portas (b. 1934) and Pedro Vieira de Almeida (1933-2011) respectively, two highly innovative works in the academic panorama of early 1960s. Next, it focuses on the fundamental role each of the notions taken in investigative works that are parallel in time but substantially different. The first, Habitação evolutiva, is a typological study reflecting the spirit of its time by claiming the ‘right to the city’ as the founding principle of a model critical of CIAM urbanism. The second is an essay stemming from a critical reflexion on the work of an eclectic architect that eludes categorization (Raul Lino, 1879-1974) which sheds light on the need for a critical approach to the history of modern architecture.

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 2064-2079
Author(s):  
Ben Gerlofs

This article investigates the conceptual and political history of the right to the city in Mexico City from the late 1980s to the present, focusing especially on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City completed and endorsed by leading political figures in 2010. By grounding this investigation in the dialectical methods of Henri Lefebvre, the article builds on roughly 12 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Mexico City to argue that all such instantiations of the right to the city are bound to commit a certain violence against the idea. What the Mexico City case also suggests, however, is that such a dialectical concept is also always radically open to revivification and reimagining, as exemplified by the return of the right to the city in Mexico City’s 2017 constitution. Analysing the right to the city and its attendant politics and history from this vantage allows two crucial and underappreciated insights to emerge from this case: that the right to the city can be and sometimes is pursued under alternative auspices, and that any apparent stasis, even political death, is best considered temporary and mutable.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 470-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca Tavolari

Abstract This article presents a history of the concept of the right to the city. The reconstruction of the concept’s genesis and development draws on the relation between the history of ideas and the history of social struggles in order to show that the variety of meanings attributed to the right to the city today is decisive to its social and theoretical relevance.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Woodcock

This paper discusses precarious workers in London. The aim is to consider the particular challenges and possibilities for resistance in the context of London. It addresses the theoretical questions of precarity and its significance in post-Fordist capitalism. The innovations of the Operaismo—in terms of workers’ inquiries, the concept of class composition and the strategy of refusal—provide the theoretical basis for the paper. The paper draws on two examples of recent struggles on university campuses, that of casual teaching staff and cleaners, which highlight different points. The first is that a method inspired by the tradition of the workers’ inquiry can provide an important starting point for a campaign, combining knowledge production and a project of organisation. This is illustrated with the use of surveys as a starting point for a campaign at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. The second example draws on the experience of the cleaners’ campaigns at the University of London. The history of the dispute is considered along with the use of the London living wage and alternative forms of trade unionism. This paper argues that the particular pressures for precarious workers in London need to be considered, but could also be posed as potential demands from workers, drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘the right to the city’. The conclusion of the argument is a call for further research that is attentive to the new forms of organisation that are emerging from workers’ struggles and to how a consideration of urban demands could provide important opportunities for developing this further.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-258
Author(s):  
Clayton Rosati

For over sixteen years, I have been tracing and retracing an idea through a set of projects involving the political economy and cultural politics of infrastructure—especially, the infrastructure of media. When I began those projects as a graduate student, my concern was a frustration with the image-centered studies of media and culture, which tended to get bogged down in representational politics and a focus on the micropolitics of interpretation and use. Infrastructure attracts similar debates, as anything from a train tunnel to a water use meter can be appropriated and used in unauthorized or subversive ways. The physicality of infrastructure and the relationships it has with the materiality of ideas, ideologies, and social processes is a growing dimension of cultural inquiry around inequality and power, especially in the study of electronic devices. In this article, I will report on a strand of my research that explores an urban history of interactive media that unfolds into our contemporary world of automated ecologies of surveillance, marketing, disinformation, and covert politics. In recent iterations, this strand intersects with the increasingly popular concept of the ‘right to the city.’


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Tom Cairns Clery

Miami’s marketers have a long and successful history of creating and recreating imagery that draws visitors towards the ‘magic city’ or the ‘tropical playground.’ This paper investigates Miami’s marketing from an historical perspective by examining the role and legacy of various discourses emanating from powerful city actors over the past century. Spatial analysis including spatial autocorrelation and Local Moran’s I are conducted to investigate further Miami’s geographical segregation. The findings suggest that unequal, segregating and exclusive discourses have become so normalized within Miami’s marketing and political structure that change is becoming increasingly difficult as attitudes institutionalize further. Using a discourse analysis set around a framework of social exclusion and adverse incorporation, and semi-structured interviews, this paper also examines the current spatial formation of the city with insights from leading figures in Miami’s marketing industry to suggest that the right to the city is still a distant dream for Miami’s other neighborhoods and populations.


GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcio Piñon de Oliveira

A utopia do direito à cidade,  no  caso específico do Rio de Janeiro, começa, obrigatoriamente, pela  superação da visão dicotômica favela-cidade. Para isso, é preciso que os moradores da favela possam sentir-se tão cidadãos quanto os que têm moradias fora das favelas. A utopia do direito à cidade tem de levar a favela a própria utopia da cidade. Uma cidade que não se fragmente em oposições asfalto-favela, norte-sul, praia-subúrbio e onde todos tenham direito ao(s) seu(s) centro(s). Oposições que expressam muito mais do que diferenças de  localização e que  se apresentam recheadas de  segregação, estereótipos e  ideologias. Por outro  lado, o direito a cidade, como possibilidade histórica, não pode ser pensado exclusivamente a partir da  favela. Mas as populações  que aí habitam guardam uma contribuição inestimável para  a  construção prática  desse direito. Isso porque,  das  experiências vividas, emergem aprendizados e frutificam esperanças e soluções. Para que a favela seja pólo de um desejo que impulsione a busca do direito a cidade, é necessário que ela  se  pense como  parte da história da própria cidade  e sua transformação  em metrópole.Abstract The right  to the city's  utopy  specifically  in Rio de Janeiro, begins by surpassing  the dichotomy approach between favela and the city. For this purpose, it is necessary, for the favela dwellers, the feeling of citizens as well as those with home outside the favelas. The right to the city's utopy must bring to the favela  the utopy to the city in itself- a non-fragmented city in terms of oppositions like "asphalt"-favela, north-south, beach-suburb and where everybody has right to their center(s). These oppositions express much more the differences of location and present  themselves full of segregation, stereotypes and ideologies. On  the other  hand, the right to  the city, as historical possibility, can not be thought  just from the favela. People that live there have a contribution for a practical construction of this right. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Rocco ◽  
Luciana Royer ◽  
Fábio Mariz Gonçalves

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