What happened with the future?It’s supposed to be like this, pristine, clean, perfect. We were supposed to have all kinds of technologies for the efficient technology for sustainable, but it’s not. This is the real things we have, we have environment deterioration, sickness, pollutions, and this the real through. We have precarity, so what is the problem with that? I think that information is not the same as knowledge and knowledge is not the same as culture. We have to build bridges between them. The project started in Caracas. This is Caracas. It is the capital of Venezuela, a very rich country, with petroleum, it’s called black gold. The city is protected an arm of the Andes Mountainssystem, which is in between the Caribbeansea and the city, it’s beautiful place. It’s a small valley, but it’s very dense. The modern yearlong planning is, tracing all the city with these kinds of highways, so this is supposed to be an interconnected city but at the same time these highways that fragment the territory. In the middle of the last century you started to see a lot of this infrastructure that was supposed to be an idea of progress, of modern utopia, but now, we can see how the plans grow and how the nature wins the battle between infrastructure and organic landscapes. So we are very interested in these kinds of places, the non-regulated and non-government places. This is a very typical section of a Latin American city. You always can see the present of the infrastructure, also the green areas, while at the same time these amazing construction and organic construction which we call favelas. Most of the time the people who lives in favelas, are the people who build the infrastructure, so I think that there is avery amazing transference between knowledge, concrete knowledge, to the favela. This is a kind of artificial landscape which is very impressive, but we think that, we have to have reflect on this as architects, as urbanism, because it’s more efficiently, this kind of construction all that, modern movements said. But, these people start to get angry because there is a lot of instable situation, very different between the classes, so in the middle of the 1990s there is a big protest in Caracas, so the things started to change. They are asking the rights, and they are asking for more equal society.
So we are like an urban activism, so we started to reflect about this, on how the city can grow, without planning, with academic or intellectual planning, and how to grow with the people, with the demands of the people and also manage with the community. So we see this the formal city on the other side which is building by blocks, this is the other side, kind of organic constructions, so it’s very difficult to conceive a different kind of service in this situations. But we have to multiply this service in order to create any order. So we make thissubversive master plans to attack these kinds of terrains that we can use to the community, and also we work with a lot of communities near from favelas, so something changed because we start make subversive interventions while suddenly the law protect us. So we start to use the legal frame in order to reenter these kinds of establishments. So we make this master plan using spaceand non-regulated lots of terrains, which is really nice because you can invent all kind of strategies to rebuild them. So our priority is the balance of these three forces, the object, the produce of objects, which is, we produce waste, and other things, we like to reuse and recycle, also the territories, which is the environmental deterioration we have to reprogram or rescale, and most important the humans, we seek out poverty where we can social interact it. We are very interested in creating what we call micro urbanism, which is small scale urban planning, also to recreate, or transform, the law in order to rebalance these situations. The project started in the aparking area,so very close to thefavela, which is a very dangerous favela, in the middle fifth of the area. So you can see the terrain is most of the time in between highways. There is a non-regulated terrain, it doesn’t have numbers or laws, so these are perfect opportunities to transform. But we have to grow from the asphalt. To transform these landscape from the ground, but not only physically, but social grow. We try to work with different kinds of kids, but especially the kids are in prison. So they can exchange the weapons, the guns for the mic. We create these comics to work with the community to understand how we can do that. It was an abandoned parking lot. So we made a cultural occupation with a temporary intervention, like tents or cinemas, but we were interested in the permanent intervention more than temporary. So we make these social management, we start to see the cultural occupation dynamics and we make like a social cartographer what kind of talent we can find in the favelas. Which is amazing, there is a lot of talent in these places. So we make these cartography in order to replicate and disseminate all that social and cultural activities in the park. So the idea is to try to get involved with them, working together, not only in the terrain but also in the favela. So what we made, there is another legal frame that we use.
There is a law called social responsibility that is supposed to be, the company is supposed to be obligated to donate three percent of the contract, so we don’t receive any money, we receive a lot of recycled materials that comes from their trash. But, we organize them and disseminate them and try to make a lot of workshops with the talent and community, also we make a cartography of the vast expertises and try to mix them and working together to make that, so we use more than 60 containers, donated containers because, some fancy things, just the bricks we have, we use pallets, we use wheels, we use a lot of cardboard, etc. We make all these models in the studio but it was so different, we need to contact with reality. So, we make these master plans that consist in three different cultural ships, so they have different kinds of auditories. I’m going to show this is the first ship, this is a maze. We used vertical containers, this is the roof, we are using different kinds of strategies to map the landscape and mapping the ground, with different kinds of information. And also we try to use very low tech technology, like just collect the water and using it convert these parking lots into real ecological parks. It starts to come through because were working with a lot of talent of the favelas also with the street artists and musicians and all kind of culture agents we can find in the favela. We made these urban strategies, we used advertising, and we worked together with the artists in the favelas, and transformed them into the cinemas, a kind of cine-photo. Also we started to use the fence for the high way. For the fence, of the auditories, and because we don’t have money, we always steal the water and electricity; this is a cultural occupations so the law is supposed to protect us. But you start to see different kinds of interventions, we work with the local know-how, or local practices, local knowledge, we use the old people that have some expertise in wood, and we try to mix it with young people so you can see that with the expertise of wood, the clean roof, the other side, you can see different kinds of interventions with different people. This is the auditory, it’s a very simple space but it’s very popular because we covered it and transformed into a very nice space. This is a second ship that we made, we also have collected tanks, this is different, because we used the ground as a scenario and we have the first level, the first level information centers, in the second level we have labs and classrooms and we also collect water. This is the sections. So, we take borrowed a crane for three days and built this empty building, but we start to look for founding. We used the car pipes to make the fence, and also these kinds of windows, that we work with the community. But the idea is to try and make a different kind of workshop, a fabrication workshop. We use a lot of piece of metal that we find to reinforce these structures. Also we use the steel to create the doors. Also we use different kind of urban strategies like painting the floor with the same paint we use in the streets. All the lights that you see are second hand lights. We make these laboratories and start to teach these kids different kinds of communication skills, like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. This is what they have in their brains, they start to explore their creativity using these programs. So we use also the graphic designs strategy to mapping all the programs on the walls. This is the kind of company that we create. The workers are from the community have to innovate in different systems, there’s not a systematic world, they have to improve their creativity in order to create new kinds of content for the building. This is the windows. And also to create, not just create tools, and also mechanism, which is very nice invention from them. This is the space of the auditory. This is a free auditory. So when we made the roof with these woods, so we don’t cut it, we just use the material as we found it. It’s a good environment to join people, also we have invited a lot of famous artists of salsa, that they teach afro Caribbean beats for the young people. Recently a guy from the favela won an international award in japan for breakdancing. They really create a different kind of dance, because they mix their roots with these contemporary arts. So this is the fence which is very special things that we made because we find a lot of pieces of steels we reinforce these components. Also we make with Ariel, who is master of the community, to fold the steel and create this protection mesh. We put a metal panel and we collect the water in this channel and put in the tank. This is the idea to be all the systems, transparent, transparent systems in the spaces. So we use a lot of recycled boxes and all these tables from differentworkstations, so the idea is that we have to buy all the components in the corner shop. So this is very nice because the workers start to think in this way. They have the conscious of recycling. This is Louis, who is a worker from the community, he found this pieces and he rebuilt this bank. So sometimes we make the workshop with the young people from the community, we make this pattern, and say to them, lets collect a lot of cardboard from Mcdonalds, so everyone says we’re not going to eat at McDonalds, that’s the reason we have to collect them. So we make this ceiling for the community radio station, acoustic ceiling, which is very popular because they learn a lot of communication tools, also we have this lab, these guys are amazing, you can go with your art and they print it, it’s supposed to share the benefits. This is the four guys of the graffiti team. Also as a designer we make a t-shirt in order to communicate our strategies, using the solar energy and recycling of objects, plant trees, and collect the water, so we make this t-shirt for the community to replicate these experiences, in white and brown of course. This is what happened, we also started to recycle our own trash in different kinds of ways.
This is our very famous graffer, this was the first children who came, he has seven years working with the community and now he touches other young people. So we make a lot of workshops on the streets. We use the terrain as an extension of the streets, it’s not just a lot, we try to use the street as an area. So this Guki, which is very famous in Europe, he’s from the favela, he has produced a lot of art in different magazines. This is what I have, we have, we use the street as a surface. So also the architecture, all this intervention is a platform for cultural expression. We have a very nice ecosystem, because we start to plant a lot of trees so sometimes we have eagles hunting for rats and lot of dogs and lot of new ecosystems. This is the first mobile radio station that we made. This is of a very famous graffer in Spain, who is invited a lot of times. This is what we have now. These progress pictures are very interesting, because we are very satisfied when we see more graffiti than architecture, the architecture disappears, just the cultural expression. Architecture is also poor for cultural expression. This is Flix, which is another graffer, very important. We make these workshops trying to mix the design graphics with the graffitis, so we talk with them, you can use this wall but you have to use the numbers, and the foreign characters. This is what we have now, a lot of expression in the bathrooms, but different techniques which is very fine, this kind of flyers or posters. This is the info center. We receive a lot of kids from the favela, in preparing for computer science. A lot of children in the streets, we have music, the classic arts, mixed it the emerging arts, like theatre, musicians, with parkour, graffiti, etc. This is a workshop that we made in the street. Also we receive a lot of handicap people. This group is a kind of urban poets. Which is very nice because they have the hope to transform his life using poetry? This is amazing because they play in the street on the asphalt. And also, we see a lot of kids playing in the infrastructure. This is the very nice view because you see these children, the hope in her eyes. This is what have, a lot of peopleusingthe space. All the workers from the community we are working together as group. We are more than forty collected groups of urban activists that work together, mixing sociology, anthropology,they’re all kinds of design disciplines with all kinds of urban artists. This is the terrain we are planning on making the third ships in this hole. We are trying to get all the street and to extend our intervention. We use for this the obsolete things, we use all the windows. This is a model of the third ship. Also we construct these windows. We hope that we have the high technologies,it’s supposed to be there. We make this rendering to find funding. This is the idea, to transform all these abandoned parking lots into ecological parks and mix it all together. We have a lot of different plans that we can transform all these surfaces using the pallets. We create these organic walls, and also we receive a lot of donations. We make a hold of this, and try to get a hold of the original landscape. So we started to plant different trees. And we hope that we have this, different environment. There is a small park, they receive more than fifty five hundred children a month. This is the idea that we like, using the nature to transform these territories. And so, I want to show you the video that we made in order to recreate the feel that the park has.
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