scholarly journals EXPERIENCES OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION IN THE RECOVERY OF VERNACULAR HERITAGE IN SOUTHERN ECUADOR

Author(s):  
A. Tenze ◽  
F. Cardoso ◽  
M. C. Achig

Abstract. Since 2011, within the framework of a research project shared between the University of Cuenca (UC) and the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), several practical experiences were proposed and carried out in order to identify paths and actions that allow reversing a marked trend to the loss of built cultural assets, both in the rural and urban context. Most of these assets are made up of vernacular architecture built with technologies such as adobe or bahareque, which use the earth as an essential building material. From the beginning of the first intervention in Susudel (2011), it was important to carry out constant and sustained work with the respective communities and actors involved. It was necessary to inform them about the initiative, but, above all, to involve them consistently, completely and directly, throughout the process, in decision-making and in the search for solutions that were finally applied in the interventions. A comparison between all the interventions carried out from the year 2011 until 2018 show a very significant change of social involvement, both in quantity as well as in quality, with each new intervention. From an empirical and intuitive process, we have moved to a more technical, planned and structured one, based on participatory methodologies that allow a more intense and proactive involvement of communities in the search for solutions and commitments. The article analyzes the participatory process during 4 preventive conservation experiences applied in the town of Susudel and the city of Cuenca, in southern Ecuador, over the past 7 years.

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-183
Author(s):  
David Leheny

From 2004-2009, members of the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science undertook a five-year study entitled Kibōgaku (Hope-ology, translated formally as The Social Sciences of Hope). Looking to rebuild hope in Japan after the pop of the economic Bubble, the scholars crafted a survey of Kamaishi, a declining steel town on Japan’s northeastern coast, showing how networks in and out of the city were central to its limited but measurable successes in inspiring local hope for a better future. In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that devastated the town, killing a thousand residents, the scholars confronted questions of what hope means and what the connections between rural and urban Japan might mean.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Ferman ◽  
Miriam Greenberg ◽  
Thao Lee ◽  
Steven C. McKay

Over the last fifty years, institutions of higher education have served as anchor institutions in cities’ broader neoliberal efforts to generate new economic sectors, attract the creative class, and build amenities that stimulate market-oriented redevelopment. These activities, combined with universities’ own neoliberal restructuring, including diminishing housing support for students and staff, have contributed to gentrification and displacement in neighborhoods surrounding universities, creating the context for interrelated struggles for the right to the city and the right to the university. Using Temple University in Philadelphia, and University of California Santa Cruz as case studies we examine how students, faculty, and other university actors are joining with organizations and movements in surrounding communities to resist restructuring and displacement. In doing so, these emerging coalitions are transcending the more divisive town/gown narrative, forging new solidarities that are reimagining more just and equitable futures for both the city and the university.


Author(s):  
Héctor Hugo ◽  
Felipe Espinoza ◽  
Ivetheyamel Morales ◽  
Elías Ortiz ◽  
Saúl Pérez ◽  
...  

The University of Guayaquil, which shares the same name as the city where it is located, faces the challenge of transforming its image for the XXI century. It was deemed necessary to identify details about the urban evolution of the historic link with the city, in relation to the changes produced by the project’s siting and its direct area of influence. The goal is to integrate the main university campus within a framework which guarantees sustainability and allows innovation in the living lab. To achieve this, the action research method was applied, focused on participation and the logic framework. For the diagnosis, proposal, and management model, integrated working groups were organized with internal users such as professors, students, and university authorities, and external actors such as residents, the local business community, Guayaquil city council, and the Governorate of Guayas. As result of the diagnosis, six different analysis dimensions were established which correspond to the new urban agenda for the future campus: compactness, inclusiveness, resilience, sustainability, safety and participation. As a proposal, the urban design integrates the analysis dimensions whose financing and execution are given by the Town Hall, at the same time the Governorate integrates the campus with its network of community police headquarters.


1878 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 212-214
Author(s):  
Henry O. Forbes

During a recent residence in Portugal I paid a visit in Feb. 1877, to Coimbra, and while standing on the tower of the University, whence a magnificent view of the surrounding country can be obtained, I was much struck by the immense accumulation of sand deposited over a wide area on both banks of the river Mondego, by whose margin the city stands. A considerable, though, comparatively speaking, a small quantity was of recent date, and was evidently brought down by the heavy rains in the months of November and December of the previous year, which had produced destructive floods throughout the country, and had here greatly threatened the low-lying parts of the town. I was informed that every year a large quantity of new sand is spread out over the valley; but the shortness of my stay here precluded any attempt to estimate the yearly additions to the fluviatile stratum.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Whybrow

Joseph Brodsky’s assertion in Watermark (1992) that Venice ‘is the city of the eye’, providing a sense of security and solace to inhabitants and visitors via the sheer aesthetic force of its surroundings, implicitly raises questions, in the context of the twenty-first-century city, about the performative nature of not only modern-day urban aesthetics but also surveillance in public space, both of which, as phenomena, are dependent on forms of visual observation. Taking into account contemporary Venice’s complex make-up in terms of its transient and permanent populations – tourists, economic migrants, and local residents – and the central issue facing the city of the gradual erosion of its historical infrastructure owing to excesses of commercialism and the material effects of flooding, in this article Nicolas Whybrow ponders the continuing role of aesthetics in an urban context. In particular, he considers how both Brodsky’s perception of the effects of the historical environment and contemporary instances of artistic intervention or engagement with the city – official (as part of the globally renowned Biennale) and unofficial (in the form of graffiti writing) – might position users of public space in the light of increased attempts to implement formal controls in the interests of security. Nicolas Whybrow is Associate Professor (Reader) and Head of Department in the School of Theatre, Performance, and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. His most recent books are Art and the City (2011) and, as editor, Performing Cities (2014).


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-212
Author(s):  
Mirjana Roter-Blagojević ◽  
Marko Nikolić

The paper examines the work of Aleksandar Deroko at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Architecture and the inclusion of his rich personal knowledge about the vernacular architecture in the study programme, which he gained from long-term field research. As an assistant professor, he introduced the interpretation of vernacular architecture in the course on Byzantine and Old Serbian Architecture in 1929. After the study programme reform in 1935, a new course - named Old Serbian Architecture - was established, with one semester dedicated to the medieval monumental architecture and the second to rural and urban houses. In 1945/46 academic year, the course was renamed Vernacular Architecture and it incorporated medieval and vernacular architecture of the former Yugoslavia. Practical assignments dealt more with vernacular architecture and, through them the student's discovered the fundamental principles and methods of the vernacular construction. The goal of the studies was for students to comprehend and adopt basic traditional canons of construction and apply them to their own projects of cooperative centers, countryside schools, monasteries, etc. Through illustrations the paper will present, till now unpublished, student projects from the archives of Belgrade's the Faculty of Architecture's office for the architectural heritage of Serbia.


1929 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leonard Woolley

The seventh campaign of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania at Ur started on October 24 1928, and continued until the end of February 1929. The Staff consisted of my wife, Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan, general assistant, and the Rev. E. Burrows, S.J., as epigraphist. Mr. Mallowan was detained in England by illness and did not join us in the field until early in December, up to which time my wife, in addition to doing all the drawings, was my sole field assistant, and subsequently continued to share with me the whole of the cemetery work of the season. The excavation of the graveyard area kept us busy during the greater part of the winter, and we dug 454 graves in all. By the end of January the area proposed for the current year had been exhausted, and attention was devoted to the strata underlying and bordering on the graveyard. It was this work that led to the discoveries connected with the Flood. On Mr. Mallowan's arrival more men were enrolled and set to work on the courtyard of the great Nannar Temple. By the middle of February this task also was completed, and finally, for the last ten days of the season, both gangs were drafted off for experimental work on the city walls of Ur. The results of the season therefore fall under four headings:I. The Cemetery.II. The buildings and rubbish-mounds of the pre-cemetery town and the evidence for the Flood.III. The Nannar Temple.IV. The Town Walls.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 2-8
Author(s):  
Carlos Nivelo-Villavicencio ◽  
Javier Fernández de Córdova ◽  
Amanda B. Quezada

Currently in Ecuador there are 171 bats species, however little is known of their presence in urban and peri-urban areas. These information gaps make it difficult to know the distribution of the species, as well as the ecosystems they are occupying. In this work we report for the first time three bats species in the urban and peri-urban area of Cuenca City which is located in the south of the Inter-Andean Valley. The individuals were identified taxonomically by morphological and morphometric characters, these were deposited in the Zoological Collection of the University of Azuay. The specimens reported in this work are: an adult male of Lasiurus blossevillii, a juvenile female of Histiotus humboldti, and an adult male of Enchisthenes hartii. These new records allow us to contribute with information on the distribution of these species, as well as raise new questions about the use of present resources by these bats in the urban and peri-urban environments of the city.


Author(s):  
Joana Capela de Campos ◽  
Vítor Murtinho

Portugal and its image experienced a re-foundation process in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century promoted for ideological propaganda, which expressed itself as a profound regulation of urban intervention, lead by the Ministry of Public Works and Communications. Simultaneously, the University of Coimbra, a national symbol and an overseas cultural exchange platform, had to follow that change for modernization, which represented the national capacity of entrepreneurship and evidenced the nation’s strength and power on the international political stage and also its global influence. The upper part of Coimbra, the Alta, suffered a significant transformation due to a process occurring from 1934 to 1975, manifesting it by turning into a mono-functional citadel. These transformations started in the 40’s, when several demolitions, determined in the master plan, marked the beginning of the works. The aim of this paper is to highlight the project’s purposes that were used throughout the process of transformations from that period of that part of the Alta in the University City of Coimbra (UCC), taking into account the role that public space assumed in the new urban spatial organization. Through analyses of the master plans of the University City works, it is possible to verify the connection and fusion between the university citadel and the city, that is, between the university space and its urban context. While, in Europe, tabula rasa was a consequence of the destruction caused by war, in Portugal it was a project methodology to achieve the necessary space for construction. That was quite evident in this case, where the “blank slate”, so precious for the creative process of the Modern Movement, was made possible due to an assumption of power by the state.


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