Category: Uncategorized

Buildings are historically neoclassical, modernist, post modern etc, yet architectonically they are NOW.

The intention of conservationist is to freeze a building to a form it never had, because we think that searching for the origin gives a sense of clarity, e.g. searching for the meaning of a word by going back to its origin, consequently in a Hegelian manner some would say the essence of architecture is going back to the hut, therefore architecture is dwelling.

The project for the Florence Medical Center is not a restoration – the building has good karma – it is a reincarnation. The building was strip of its many appendages in order to shed a new skin. A façade that reflects it’s inside function and maintains an urban presence – street relationship.

Florence is a project that deals with history as process rather than an image.

The pattern of the facade acts as a skin that reads the programmatic activities of the building’s interior

Disclaimer: the red glass block in the corner has a symbolic function. Florence used to be owned by Dr, Aubanel, patriarch of the same family that decided to hire Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi to build Hospital del Prado a building that has a green glass façade as its main element. The red block is a small tribute.

Buildings are historically neoclassical, modernist, post modern etc, yet architectonically they are NOW.

The intention of conservationist is to freeze a building to a form it never had, because we think that searching for the origin gives a sense of clarity, e.g. searching for the meaning of a word by going back to its origin, consequently in a Hegelian manner some would say the essence of architecture is going back to the hut, therefore architecture is dwelling.

The project for the Florence Medical Center is not a restoration – the building has good karma – it is a reincarnation. The building was strip of its many appendages in order to shed a new skin. A façade that reflects it’s inside function and maintains an urban presence – street relationship.

Florence is a project that deals with history as process rather than an image.

The pattern of the facade acts as a skin that reads the programmatic activities of the building’s interior

Disclaimer: the red glass block in the corner has a symbolic function. Florence used to be owned by Dr, Aubanel, patriarch of the same family that decided to hire Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi to build Hospital del Prado a building that has a green glass façade as its main element. The red block is a small tribute.

Tipologia de la vivienda en Tijuana

Tipologia de la vivienda en Tijuana

Davis and Monsivais – Live at the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

Last Thursday in El Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mike Davis and Carlos Monsivais conversed on the issues and situation of the border. I must say that I have enjoyed Davis books and consider his work essential as it pertains to urban studies and distopic conditions of the post-urban. In regards to Monsivais I have had a sincere respect for his work, yet I have my doubts on his analysis of Tijuana. It is apparent to me that for Monsivais Tijuana always has a folkloric element to it that is categorized more and more by a 1970’s centralized view of Tijuana, of not being truly Mexican – the same ideology that brought about the construction of the Tijuana version of Paseo Reforma in Mexico City – Paseo de Los Heroes. Interestingly enough it is during the same time that Monsivais recalls participating in a rally with Ruben Vizcaino and a group of prostitutes on Avenida Revoluvion against the bad rep of Tijuana – and the construction of Zona Rio. In his analysis or recollection this is the precise moment in time (it was his first visit to Tijuana) when a cultural awakening occurs in the city which has influenced the present literary and artistic production. I suspect that this view is a common one due to the Medias portrayal of the city. Being born in Tijuana and from a family that extends to 5 generations, I can assure you that there was cultural production before the 70’s. I suspect also that the artistic flourishing of culture now has to do more with the dilapidation of our urban culture, therefore the production deals with the embellishing of chaos and disorder.

Its it imperative to see how during the 40’s and 50’s the city had an established urban culture – meaning that we had zones where life “in” the city went hand in hand with cultural activities, creating an urban environment envious of many cities today. Beyond donkeys and prostitutes we had; jazz, bebop, big band, jaialai, bullfights, horseracing, car racing, cinema, cabaret, and many other activities that today are obsolete or have disappeared by our own negligence, a negligence that we now represent as our contemporary cultural manifestation.

Mike presented his perspective toward the north to south invasion across the border, a concurrent theme in this blog specifically in “Tijuana or Bust”. His contrary and always Marxist attitude of resistance constructs a well formulated scenario of the “take over” of the precious Baja California landscape by greedy developers and upper class suburbanites from the US. He remarked that the hundreds of housing developments being built in the Baja coast is a suburban model that brings theme park iconography and costs so exuberant ( compared to what Mexicans can afford ) that these gated communities will be populated by “gringos” and cleaned, serviced and landscaped by Mexicans in their own land. Therefore the invasion works both ways, yet according to Davis the worker that crosses to the North does so in search of a better way of life, while the suburbanite crossing to Mexico come to impose a secluded and capsular way of life while creating environmental havoc through land scrapping. It’s unfortunate that, having one of the most beautiful and diverse ecosystems in the world, we as architects, planners and developers of this country participate in its destruction. I agree with Davis, yet there must be a method of planning and development of the coast where tourist and citizens can enjoy the geography for generations to come.

Davis and Monsivais – Live at the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

Last Thursday in El Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mike Davis and Carlos Monsivais conversed on the issues and situation of the border. I must say that I have enjoyed Davis books and consider his work essential as it pertains to urban studies and distopic conditions of the post-urban. In regards to Monsivais I have had a sincere respect for his work, yet I have my doubts on his analysis of Tijuana. It is apparent to me that for Monsivais Tijuana always has a folkloric element to it that is categorized more and more by a 1970’s centralized view of Tijuana, of not being truly Mexican – the same ideology that brought about the construction of the Tijuana version of Paseo Reforma in Mexico City – Paseo de Los Heroes. Interestingly enough it is during the same time that Monsivais recalls participating in a rally with Ruben Vizcaino and a group of prostitutes on Avenida Revoluvion against the bad rep of Tijuana – and the construction of Zona Rio. In his analysis or recollection this is the precise moment in time (it was his first visit to Tijuana) when a cultural awakening occurs in the city which has influenced the present literary and artistic production. I suspect that this view is a common one due to the Medias portrayal of the city. Being born in Tijuana and from a family that extends to 5 generations, I can assure you that there was cultural production before the 70’s. I suspect also that the artistic flourishing of culture now has to do more with the dilapidation of our urban culture, therefore the production deals with the embellishing of chaos and disorder.

Its it imperative to see how during the 40’s and 50’s the city had an established urban culture – meaning that we had zones where life “in” the city went hand in hand with cultural activities, creating an urban environment envious of many cities today. Beyond donkeys and prostitutes we had; jazz, bebop, big band, jaialai, bullfights, horseracing, car racing, cinema, cabaret, and many other activities that today are obsolete or have disappeared by our own negligence, a negligence that we now represent as our contemporary cultural manifestation.

Mike presented his perspective toward the north to south invasion across the border, a concurrent theme in this blog specifically in “Tijuana or Bust”. His contrary and always Marxist attitude of resistance constructs a well formulated scenario of the “take over” of the precious Baja California landscape by greedy developers and upper class suburbanites from the US. He remarked that the hundreds of housing developments being built in the Baja coast is a suburban model that brings theme park iconography and costs so exuberant ( compared to what Mexicans can afford ) that these gated communities will be populated by “gringos” and cleaned, serviced and landscaped by Mexicans in their own land. Therefore the invasion works both ways, yet according to Davis the worker that crosses to the North does so in search of a better way of life, while the suburbanite crossing to Mexico come to impose a secluded and capsular way of life while creating environmental havoc through land scrapping. It’s unfortunate that, having one of the most beautiful and diverse ecosystems in the world, we as architects, planners and developers of this country participate in its destruction. I agree with Davis, yet there must be a method of planning and development of the coast where tourist and citizens can enjoy the geography for generations to come.

Reseña de “Aqui es Tijuana”/”Here is Tijuana” por Michael Bell

Para el Architects Newspaper de NY.

Every—where All at Once

by Michael Bell

A 2002 exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art titled “Life of the City” included in its three parts a wholly relocated version of what had been an instantly organized and auto curated exhibition “Here is New York.” Mounted first at a SoHo storefront in the days immediately following 9/11—Here is New York borrowed its title of the E.B. White essay of the same name. White’s essay—or more precisely, the title of White’s essay has levitated over Manhattan‘s literary world since it was published in 1949. It is the perpetual present tense of White’s title—its attempt to inhabit the moment, a flash of experience that was commensurate with the isolation and simultaneous crush of the Manhattan life that was revised. At MoMA, just months after 9-11, the title was re-applied to capture the instant change that was life in New York City at 9-11. A real time museum emerged—the MoMA’s modernity re-emerged. But it was the emergence of a state of crisis set within an exhibition that startled: yet at MoMA it was framed in the context of the larger exhibition—“Life of the City.” The most difficult image I recall was a picture of a television monitor with the text “New York City Declares State of Emergency.”

Here is Tijuana is presenting another form of a perpetual present tense emergency—one we have known for a far longer period of time. But Tijuana is also presented as a wide breadth of future potentials. In the genre of books that have embarked on a urban reconnaissance mission, “The Harvard Guide to Shopping,” “Ladders,” “City of Quartz,” “The Contemporary City” — all prodded at a public that was aware of crisis, but set in a somber lull: not unaware of disaster, but unable to harness the indignation or overt fear in the face of what counted as outright predation. After 9-11 New York’s emotions were cut wide open—and a television declaring directly “State of Emergency” invoked a kind of stilled but total pandemic; and over conscious of knowledge of a present so changed in an instant that it must be understood as a perpetual flash. Here is Tijuana is such a present— after emerging for the last 35 years Tijuana now IS—it is still the border zone, it is still the doppelganger of poverty that shows the inequity of the border at San Diego—but it also now a teaming and centerless milieu that expands east, south as much as pressing north; it is seamlessly wealthy and poor in endless gradients.

Tijuana is a locked entity—an impasse—as much a mathematically coded living and changing zone. Here is Tijuana presents a place and a condition. It’s emergent as well as here and oddly like New York we have always known it well but been unable to really see it. Tijuana is demanding to be understood but somehow opaque.

Nearly 20 years after the publication of Zone Books “The Contemporary City” and well after Mike’s Davis’ work on the Los Angeles and more recently on the global poor and slums, Here is Tijuana has deep footings—but it also must be read with an eye to the future. It’s latent question is how do we constitute the depiction of social emergencies today; how do we see them, respond to them; and indeed what is the state of recourse for those who live under crisis conditions when the flash point that would allow change is also perpetually out of reach. Here is Tijuana’s montage offers a deep sense of joy—its obvious the authors love the city, and are not demonstrating social need as much human potential, but in the light of the book’s historical footings we must ask what becomes of the metropolis that was always luring—even predatory. Something far more dangerous than New York is being depicted here— a metropolis that lures people to the border but is not designed to allow access (to the United States) becomes something internally self and re-generative; returning to itself the energies it spent on exit. Tijuana is of course everywhere: but its harder to see this without the overt border condition of San Diego and Tijuana—at the border the stilled zones of internal machinations lie counter to the heady streaming of monies that so easily characterizes the global city of the wider press—but this stillness is everywhere. It IS very much the new metropolitan life.

Text by: Michael Bell

Michael Bell

Associate Professor of Architecture

Director Core Design Studios

Coordinator Housing Studios

Columbia University, GSAPP

[email protected]

Reseña de “Aqui es Tijuana”/”Here is Tijuana” por Michael Bell

Para el Architects Newspaper de NY.

Every—where All at Once

by Michael Bell

A 2002 exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art titled “Life of the City” included in its three parts a wholly relocated version of what had been an instantly organized and auto curated exhibition “Here is New York.” Mounted first at a SoHo storefront in the days immediately following 9/11—Here is New York borrowed its title of the E.B. White essay of the same name. White’s essay—or more precisely, the title of White’s essay has levitated over Manhattan‘s literary world since it was published in 1949. It is the perpetual present tense of White’s title—its attempt to inhabit the moment, a flash of experience that was commensurate with the isolation and simultaneous crush of the Manhattan life that was revised. At MoMA, just months after 9-11, the title was re-applied to capture the instant change that was life in New York City at 9-11. A real time museum emerged—the MoMA’s modernity re-emerged. But it was the emergence of a state of crisis set within an exhibition that startled: yet at MoMA it was framed in the context of the larger exhibition—“Life of the City.” The most difficult image I recall was a picture of a television monitor with the text “New York City Declares State of Emergency.”

Here is Tijuana is presenting another form of a perpetual present tense emergency—one we have known for a far longer period of time. But Tijuana is also presented as a wide breadth of future potentials. In the genre of books that have embarked on a urban reconnaissance mission, “The Harvard Guide to Shopping,” “Ladders,” “City of Quartz,” “The Contemporary City” — all prodded at a public that was aware of crisis, but set in a somber lull: not unaware of disaster, but unable to harness the indignation or overt fear in the face of what counted as outright predation. After 9-11 New York’s emotions were cut wide open—and a television declaring directly “State of Emergency” invoked a kind of stilled but total pandemic; and over conscious of knowledge of a present so changed in an instant that it must be understood as a perpetual flash. Here is Tijuana is such a present— after emerging for the last 35 years Tijuana now IS—it is still the border zone, it is still the doppelganger of poverty that shows the inequity of the border at San Diego—but it also now a teaming and centerless milieu that expands east, south as much as pressing north; it is seamlessly wealthy and poor in endless gradients.

Tijuana is a locked entity—an impasse—as much a mathematically coded living and changing zone. Here is Tijuana presents a place and a condition. It’s emergent as well as here and oddly like New York we have always known it well but been unable to really see it. Tijuana is demanding to be understood but somehow opaque.

Nearly 20 years after the publication of Zone Books “The Contemporary City” and well after Mike’s Davis’ work on the Los Angeles and more recently on the global poor and slums, Here is Tijuana has deep footings—but it also must be read with an eye to the future. It’s latent question is how do we constitute the depiction of social emergencies today; how do we see them, respond to them; and indeed what is the state of recourse for those who live under crisis conditions when the flash point that would allow change is also perpetually out of reach. Here is Tijuana’s montage offers a deep sense of joy—its obvious the authors love the city, and are not demonstrating social need as much human potential, but in the light of the book’s historical footings we must ask what becomes of the metropolis that was always luring—even predatory. Something far more dangerous than New York is being depicted here— a metropolis that lures people to the border but is not designed to allow access (to the United States) becomes something internally self and re-generative; returning to itself the energies it spent on exit. Tijuana is of course everywhere: but its harder to see this without the overt border condition of San Diego and Tijuana—at the border the stilled zones of internal machinations lie counter to the heady streaming of monies that so easily characterizes the global city of the wider press—but this stillness is everywhere. It IS very much the new metropolitan life.

Text by: Michael Bell

Michael Bell

Associate Professor of Architecture

Director Core Design Studios

Coordinator Housing Studios

Columbia University, GSAPP

[email protected]

Otra/Another 2006

Inhabiting the Border / Habitando la Frontera

Sinopsis:

OTRA/ANOTHER en su tercera versión, analiza la discordancia causada por cambios globales, económicos y políticos entre la ciudad (el desarrollo urbano) y la vivienda. Las ciudades de Latinoamérica han sufrido los estragos de la teoría funcionalista moderna, enfocada en el diseño para el individuo sin desarrollar ideas de carácter social para la ciudadanía en general. A causa del crecimiento acelerado de Tijuana se han creado mecanismos que intentan abatir el problema de los asentamientos irregulares para lograr una consolidación urbana, primero por programas de regularización y después por contrataciones con empresas desarrolladoras para la construcción de vivienda de interés social.[1] En los últimos quince años el cambio de la vivienda popular de la auto-construcción hacia la vivienda en serie por desarrolladores locales y foráneos ha creado en Tijuana, proyectos habitacionales encapsulados y regidos por temáticas de seguridad a causa de los altos índices de criminalidad y por practicas de mercado que reemplazan la oferta de tipologías ante la alternativa de créditos hipotecarios.

El proyecto OTRA/ANOTHER presentará las perspectivas locales sobre el desarrollo urbano en torno a la vivienda de interés social y de clase media. No limitado a la ciudad de Tijuana, el evento concentra arquitectos y académicos de diferentes ciudades en Estados Unidos y México, con la finalidad de mostrar las ideologías académicas y prácticas en relación al tema. Dentro las universidades locales el tema de la vivienda se ha convertido en una simple cuestión de organización de espacio y técnicas de construcción, sin enfrentar el reto de su desarrollo en la ciudad y su impacto social y urbano dentro del espacio político. Sin embargo, OTRA/ANOTHER no intenta presentar modelos arquitectónicos alternativos, el propósito es más bien, analizar el tema desde su carácter social, el impacto de la homogeneización de los desarrollos residenciales e ilustrar las políticas locales (como también las de otras ciudades), que dan forma a los proyectos y programas de vivienda a fines del siglo XX y principios del XXI.

Los temas a tratar en el ciclo de conferencias, así como en la exhibición, se desarrollarán con base al concepto general de OTRA/ANOTHER, dejando abierta la interpretación a cada presentador y participante del evento. Los diferentes temas son (aunque sin limitarse a estos): las perspectivas y programas gubernamentales de vivienda en Estados Unidos y México; los arquetipos de la vivienda suburbana y su impacto en el desarrollo de periferias, tales como Inland Empire en el sur de California; el desarrollo histórico de los asentamientos irregulares en la ciudad de Tijuana y las nuevas tendencias y responsabilidades del arquitecto como desarrollador privado.

La exposición del evento se llevará al cabo en la galería del Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, donde se presentarán proyectos teóricos y académicos así como concursos y propuestas prácticas.

Por medio de este ciclo de conferencias y la exposición de trabajos, en el lapso de un mes, OTRA/ANOTHER en su tercera edición, mostrará a la ciudadanía la diversidad y complejidad del desarrollo de la vivienda y su impacto en el desarrollo urbano de la ciudad; pretendiendo concienciar a profesionistas, estudiantes y desarrolladores, del impacto que tiene la vivienda dentro del espacio público y sus diferentes niveles de interacción social, política y ambiental.

OTRA/ANOTHER, regresa a la ciudad ofreciendo como provocación, un catalizador de la expresión arquitectónica, acelerando el flujo de ideas y la colaboración interdisciplinaria; creando con ello, una energía cultural crítica en Tijuana.

Rene Peralta

Para mas informacion ver el blog de Otra – www.otranother.blogspot.com

Otra/Another 2006

Inhabiting the Border / Habitando la Frontera

Sinopsis:

OTRA/ANOTHER en su tercera versión, analiza la discordancia causada por cambios globales, económicos y políticos entre la ciudad (el desarrollo urbano) y la vivienda. Las ciudades de Latinoamérica han sufrido los estragos de la teoría funcionalista moderna, enfocada en el diseño para el individuo sin desarrollar ideas de carácter social para la ciudadanía en general. A causa del crecimiento acelerado de Tijuana se han creado mecanismos que intentan abatir el problema de los asentamientos irregulares para lograr una consolidación urbana, primero por programas de regularización y después por contrataciones con empresas desarrolladoras para la construcción de vivienda de interés social.[1] En los últimos quince años el cambio de la vivienda popular de la auto-construcción hacia la vivienda en serie por desarrolladores locales y foráneos ha creado en Tijuana, proyectos habitacionales encapsulados y regidos por temáticas de seguridad a causa de los altos índices de criminalidad y por practicas de mercado que reemplazan la oferta de tipologías ante la alternativa de créditos hipotecarios.

El proyecto OTRA/ANOTHER presentará las perspectivas locales sobre el desarrollo urbano en torno a la vivienda de interés social y de clase media. No limitado a la ciudad de Tijuana, el evento concentra arquitectos y académicos de diferentes ciudades en Estados Unidos y México, con la finalidad de mostrar las ideologías académicas y prácticas en relación al tema. Dentro las universidades locales el tema de la vivienda se ha convertido en una simple cuestión de organización de espacio y técnicas de construcción, sin enfrentar el reto de su desarrollo en la ciudad y su impacto social y urbano dentro del espacio político. Sin embargo, OTRA/ANOTHER no intenta presentar modelos arquitectónicos alternativos, el propósito es más bien, analizar el tema desde su carácter social, el impacto de la homogeneización de los desarrollos residenciales e ilustrar las políticas locales (como también las de otras ciudades), que dan forma a los proyectos y programas de vivienda a fines del siglo XX y principios del XXI.

Los temas a tratar en el ciclo de conferencias, así como en la exhibición, se desarrollarán con base al concepto general de OTRA/ANOTHER, dejando abierta la interpretación a cada presentador y participante del evento. Los diferentes temas son (aunque sin limitarse a estos): las perspectivas y programas gubernamentales de vivienda en Estados Unidos y México; los arquetipos de la vivienda suburbana y su impacto en el desarrollo de periferias, tales como Inland Empire en el sur de California; el desarrollo histórico de los asentamientos irregulares en la ciudad de Tijuana y las nuevas tendencias y responsabilidades del arquitecto como desarrollador privado.

La exposición del evento se llevará al cabo en la galería del Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, donde se presentarán proyectos teóricos y académicos así como concursos y propuestas prácticas.

Por medio de este ciclo de conferencias y la exposición de trabajos, en el lapso de un mes, OTRA/ANOTHER en su tercera edición, mostrará a la ciudadanía la diversidad y complejidad del desarrollo de la vivienda y su impacto en el desarrollo urbano de la ciudad; pretendiendo concienciar a profesionistas, estudiantes y desarrolladores, del impacto que tiene la vivienda dentro del espacio público y sus diferentes niveles de interacción social, política y ambiental.

OTRA/ANOTHER, regresa a la ciudad ofreciendo como provocación, un catalizador de la expresión arquitectónica, acelerando el flujo de ideas y la colaboración interdisciplinaria; creando con ello, una energía cultural crítica en Tijuana.

Rene Peralta

Para mas informacion ver el blog de Otra – www.otranother.blogspot.com