Arquitectura común: aprendiendo de los habitantes y sus prácticas cotidianas

Over the last decade it has been possible to see growing ties between several architectural groups and urban communities located mainly in territories marked by decay, informality, and inequality. This process has generated a progressive recognition of the value that the daily practices of inhabitants and their communities have in the production of new ways of living, which poses new challenges for the development of the area. Starting from a description and analysis of a neighborhood improvement experience, self-managed by the inhabitants, this article addresses this challenge by proposing the formation of a common architecture, understood as a process of production of spatiality, supported by communalization dynamics that are open to new learnings that incorporate the everyday knowledge of the inhabitants and their communities.

Construcción comunitaria a partir de la resignificación de lugares de culto. Una propuesta para las franjas urbanas de América Latina

The urban fringes of Latin American cities are the result of the accelerated growth that entails the formation of new settlements, that do not meet the basic needs of their inhabitants, and where the facilities have lost their meaning as a space to build the social and urban fabric. Starting from this problem, this text addresses the development of a place of worship that incorporates the concept of device as a piece of social articulation. The proposal starts from the analysis and diagnosis of the area and proposes two intervention scales under the “option generator model” (Carvajalino-Bayona, 1985) framework. The first consists of the improvement of the neighborhood in its main urban structures, while the second consists of the development of the architectural project that integrates worship activities with the dynamics of the neighborhood, from a multifunctional perspective. In this sense, urban relationships are strengthened, but at the same time, give continuity to the reflection raised from the design, where the participatory process is an opportunity to build dialogue and social fabric between the players involved, which in this case are part of communities in conditions of vulnerability.

Vivienda para estudiantes indígenas: permanencia, representatividad y proceso de proyecto participativo

This article presents the project process adopted for the design of indigenous student housing at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and discusses its impact both on the formative process of architecture and urbanism students, regarding the experiences of indigenous students at the University. Aside from the relevance of that architecture as support for the permanence of students in public higher education, its importance as a symbol of shelter and respect for indigenous peoples at the university stands out. For this purpose, a participatory project was built that began with dialogues stages with indigenous students at the university and interactions with one of the ethnicities involved in its traditional territory (its village), for the definition of project guidelines and the needs’ program. Subsequently, for the proposal’s presentation and discussion, experiences were gathered in the proposed area for the project’s implementation and the physical models and drawings were presented, which were used to facilitate dialogue and participation of Indigenous students in the project process. The article presents the path followed, the spatial results of this process, the perceptions of the future users of the space, and reflections on the importance of outreach actions in the training of professionals in the area of architecture and urbanism, valuing the social role of the profession, and building a more sensitive projective repertoire, prepared to consider the human diversity that contemporaneity constitutes.

ARQUITECTURA PARA LA COMUNIDAD EN AMÉRICA LATINA

Arquitecturas del Sur magazine, in its 60th issue, turns its gaze to ARCHITECTURE FOR THE COMMUNITY IN LATIN AMERICA. There are currently many institutional and/or private initiatives that focus their attention on solving social problems on the basis of suitable economic, sustainable and morphological projects. These are proposals that contemporarily dissipate the needs that have arisen in basic collectivities. This issue seeks to highlight those works of a notoriously public nature that have emerged within the heart of different communities; works that sometimes use the traditional materials of the places where they are located, to deploy them in a contemporary way.

Identidad e inclusión. Los conjuntos habitacionales realizados por el arquitecto chileno Luciano Kulczewski (1922-1956)

Luciano Kulczewski was a professional who played a key and distinctive role in the first half of the 20th century, a period considered as crucial for the development of Chilean architecture, since it is the moment that brought the advent of modernity to the country. One of the most eloquent illustrations in this regard is the corpus, that collects more than a dozen housing complexes aimed for the middle and the working classes. Today, we recognize in these solutions not just the fact that they are in sync with the web of social, political, cultural, and economic processes that characterized the beginnings of the past century in Chile, but that they also have, among their most notable merits, having been conceived in terms of what we would understand today by “inclusion”. This article seeks to investigate these parameters, which range from urban proposals - that approached the city in "inclusive" terms - inasmuch as they did not push for these housing proposals to be in the metropolitan peripheries - to more particular issues, such as the stylistic management of homes as a tool to serve identity causes, in order to achieve the integration of the user with their environment.

Variedad controlada: el caso de las escuelas prefabricadas de FDE en el estado de São Paulo en la década de 2000

During the first decade of the 21st century, São Paulo's State Government, in Brazil, promoted the construction of a series of schools designed by different local architectural firms, using a system of prefabricated pieces that allowed adapting the projects to the sites and demands of each region, keeping the budget under control. This initiative allowed building dozens of buildings, relieving the school deficit of the most impoverished regions of the state and promoting the construction of public buildings with great social impact by a whole generation of architects. This paper presents the Prefabricated Schools Program guidelines, promoted by the Foundation for the Development of Education (FDE, in Portuguese) illustrating it with seven projects that showcase the architectural richness achieved by the firms.

Aprender a convivir con los demás a través del diseño. Comunidades de prácticas y conocimientos menores

Questioning the ways in which we have understood architectural practice up until today, reconsidering this, is not a just a challenge for professional practices and the materialization of "other works". It is also the responsibility of the educational sphere, in the sense of broadening the way we teach and learn about architecture. Through a recent teaching experience, focused on some "communities of practice", located in the hills of Valparaíso, it is proposed in this article, to imagine a more relational, affective and inclusive future for the area, that perhaps is less "humanistic" and more human or even "much more than human". The wording of the workshop, The good arts of living "with" others "through" design, alluded to design as a set of practices that fundamentally affect our ways of being together, capable of articulating alternative and certainly local ways of living. The aim of the workshop was to make room in the debates on architecture, for those subjects not represented by the most common methodologies and knowledge inherited from Modernity. Faced with them, the course called for a more inclusive and relational type of "minor knowledge", capable of better interpreting the eco-dependent and interdependent condition that characterizes our radical being in the world. Therefore, it sought to problematize the present of architecture from a committed approach of design to these "communities of practice" and their "minor knowledges". Not because they are necessarily better, but because they include a greater quantity and diversity of forms of life.

Revisionismo histórico en arquitectura, en el intersticio de los siglos XX y XXI: reivindicar, rescatar o negar una memoria

Historical revisionism, a phenomenon typical of social and political sciences, has been consolidated at the start of the 21st century as one of the paradigmatic strategies in architecture, with the purpose of rewriting -or erasing- historical memories of the city. In this context, the objective of the research presented here was to investigate the relationship between different convergent social and political situations on the issue of memory and the demolition/construction of architectures, as a strategy to question events from the past and the official narratives. As this is a historiographic research, the methodology used a cross analysis between the discourses on which several socio-political issues around memory, that occurred in different countries, have been based, and the architectural projects built or demolished because of these issues. The conclusions, insofar as a research contribution, allowed detecting three lines of historical revisionism in architecture, starting from its use -and abuse- regarding the historiography of the facts: vindication, rescue, and denial of memory.

Estallido social en Chile y procesos de patrimonialización: un paradigma de resignificación de las memorias

In recent years, both globally and locally, a profound change in the paradigm has been seen with respect to what has been traditionally accepted as a manifestation of heritage. In part, this conceptual and methodological transformation is due to the emergence of patrimonialization processes, driven by social conflicts that go against the institutionalized discourses of heritage. This results in resignifications of the stories and memories in the territory, the city and the architecture, associated with new categories of heritage that need to be addressed. This work is about this new paradigm, taking as a case the so-called ‘social uprising, which has affected Chile since October 18th, 2019. Beyond being perceived as a destructive phenomenon, which initially targets aspects of a socio-political nature, the presence of the conflict in Chilean society points to a sharp criticism of the heritage representation system. In its spatio-temporal trajectory, new socio-spatial practices arise that satisfy the memory expectations of the communities regarding a transforming reality. The article aims to contribute to the field of architecture and the built environment, insofar as it allows reflecting on the transformation of meanings and values of heritage that emerges in the daily reality of our cities. Using a descriptive methodology, based on recent media documents, some emblematic situations of the problem are addressed, manifested in the consolidated urban areas of La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, and Punta Arenas. In them, the patrimonialization operations make visible the contrasts between the discourses of the State and those produced by social organizations, the resignification of elements of traditional heritage and the emergence of the city as a space for negotiation of memories. From all this, the renewal of the values and attributes, traditionally assigned to monuments, is inferred, whether in their objectual, architectural or urban condition, as well as the potentiality of heritage, as a channel for dialogue, coexistence, and cohesion in the ongoing debate about conflicting stories and memories.