If in San Diego Temporary Paradise exits, in Tijuana we have Paradise Express!
Category: Uncategorized
como me decidí escribir sobre otro tema para una revista gringa que me pidió un texto sobre Tijuana – y en Tijuana todo se recicla -este queda para el blog.
Drag and Drop Urbanism
In the last twenty years the east side of Tijuana has grown beyond its critical mass, housing conditions have moved from being self built favelas to a phenomena of overnight density – drag and drop suburbs are becoming the normative housing strategy for the working class. If a certain hybridism represented the informal self-built shacks, these mono-logical constructions include seriality, production-line planning and non-place iconography, as part of their pedigree.
Stockholm, Lisbon, Madrid, London in addition to literary masters such as Velarde, Cervantes, Dante, Sartre, Victor Hugo, title most streets of gated sectors, names that are supposed to stimulate a sense of cultural awakening. The community must then imagine that their planners, these avatars of sprawl, perceive culture as a bourgeois European vacation or a mere psychological fairy-tale voyage, becoming a non-attainable construction element that is valued engineered and with a short spreadsheet life.
A vast accumulation of housing units left behind to develop into a city by their own willpower. What is fascinating is the determination of the population to appropriate urbanism and model it through their own idiosyncrasies.
As in other previous histories of the city, illicit acts of urbanism are still the fundamental modus operandi to transgress enforced homogeneity of design guidelines, which pretend to establish a general image of a simulated townscape. It is here where the majority of Tijuana’s maestros are employed to assist the transformational process. Waiting in public spaces for drive-by employers that solicit their services according to their skills and expertise, posted in the maestro’s cars, which not only function as transportation, but also as storage, workshop, and advertising billboard. In Tijuana, the box has endured all rhetorical debates and owing to the ability of operational performance the Tijuananense achieves with this ecology, it has empowered residents of Villa Fontana to reconfigure it and multiply it, with imagination and craft.
A constant condition of the unit housing box is its transformative capacity, inside and out, from a strict residential code to an assortment of “illegal” programs. The base is not only a physical datum, but also a hardware that acts as a platform allowing programmatic architectures to operate. They are plugged in with necessary installations to re configure their use; water store, mini market, internet café, tarot reader, and countless other uses that cater to basic needs as well as to sustainability, hopes and desires. The new spaces and functions of the generic box allows primarily, to maintain a family structure allowing members to share their home (initially most of the houses built have two small bedrooms) and secondly to incorporate an alternative source of income by the way of a commercial venture.
It is here where technology performs as second infrastructure, a personal urbanism, allowing a network of activities such as communication, entertainment and job search and various functions. Cell phones, computers, satellite antennas, all gadgets, purchased in mercados sobreruedas, markets on wheels, that in themselves are ubiquitous plug and play devices within the city, who’s function is to transform some undifferentiated set of circumstances to a condition nearer human desires (Banham).
Like in any other developer project, gates and metal bars are part of a collective sense of security. Bars work as a macro economy that enables distinct areas of homes to organize into enclaves, and at a micro scale in the house themselves securing windows doors and some times trees from thieves and vandals. The permeability of the bars permits light and ventilation, and allows a view or dyslexic gaze through the ornamental bars. Landscape of the community is made of serifs and other motifs that configure a baroque pattern on the design of the bars, in some cases becoming the only “organic” topology in the field of view.
Tijuana – From the free formed to the automated, the urban to the post urban.
como me decidí escribir sobre otro tema para una revista gringa que me pidió un texto sobre Tijuana – y en Tijuana todo se recicla -este queda para el blog.
Drag and Drop Urbanism
In the last twenty years the east side of Tijuana has grown beyond its critical mass, housing conditions have moved from being self built favelas to a phenomena of overnight density – drag and drop suburbs are becoming the normative housing strategy for the working class. If a certain hybridism represented the informal self-built shacks, these mono-logical constructions include seriality, production-line planning and non-place iconography, as part of their pedigree.
Stockholm, Lisbon, Madrid, London in addition to literary masters such as Velarde, Cervantes, Dante, Sartre, Victor Hugo, title most streets of gated sectors, names that are supposed to stimulate a sense of cultural awakening. The community must then imagine that their planners, these avatars of sprawl, perceive culture as a bourgeois European vacation or a mere psychological fairy-tale voyage, becoming a non-attainable construction element that is valued engineered and with a short spreadsheet life.
A vast accumulation of housing units left behind to develop into a city by their own willpower. What is fascinating is the determination of the population to appropriate urbanism and model it through their own idiosyncrasies.
As in other previous histories of the city, illicit acts of urbanism are still the fundamental modus operandi to transgress enforced homogeneity of design guidelines, which pretend to establish a general image of a simulated townscape. It is here where the majority of Tijuana’s maestros are employed to assist the transformational process. Waiting in public spaces for drive-by employers that solicit their services according to their skills and expertise, posted in the maestro’s cars, which not only function as transportation, but also as storage, workshop, and advertising billboard. In Tijuana, the box has endured all rhetorical debates and owing to the ability of operational performance the Tijuananense achieves with this ecology, it has empowered residents of Villa Fontana to reconfigure it and multiply it, with imagination and craft.
A constant condition of the unit housing box is its transformative capacity, inside and out, from a strict residential code to an assortment of “illegal” programs. The base is not only a physical datum, but also a hardware that acts as a platform allowing programmatic architectures to operate. They are plugged in with necessary installations to re configure their use; water store, mini market, internet café, tarot reader, and countless other uses that cater to basic needs as well as to sustainability, hopes and desires. The new spaces and functions of the generic box allows primarily, to maintain a family structure allowing members to share their home (initially most of the houses built have two small bedrooms) and secondly to incorporate an alternative source of income by the way of a commercial venture.
It is here where technology performs as second infrastructure, a personal urbanism, allowing a network of activities such as communication, entertainment and job search and various functions. Cell phones, computers, satellite antennas, all gadgets, purchased in mercados sobreruedas, markets on wheels, that in themselves are ubiquitous plug and play devices within the city, who’s function is to transform some undifferentiated set of circumstances to a condition nearer human desires (Banham).
Like in any other developer project, gates and metal bars are part of a collective sense of security. Bars work as a macro economy that enables distinct areas of homes to organize into enclaves, and at a micro scale in the house themselves securing windows doors and some times trees from thieves and vandals. The permeability of the bars permits light and ventilation, and allows a view or dyslexic gaze through the ornamental bars. Landscape of the community is made of serifs and other motifs that configure a baroque pattern on the design of the bars, in some cases becoming the only “organic” topology in the field of view.
Tijuana – From the free formed to the automated, the urban to the post urban.
Plug and Play
The swap meet is a plug and play device in which system of exchanges enable a series of informal ephemeral acts of assemblage, public space in a pure sense. Up or plugged into the city infrastructure early mornings, to be later used, consumed and played with all day. This ephemeral spatial conglomerate is a type of plug in city, a meshwork of exchanges without architecture; it just needs four poles and a tent, a generic formal condition that enables a layering of spatial frames in section. As the concept of the city is reinterpreted by the despatializing of the local, the notion of urban space is being restructured by global circumstances. As in many other urban conditions, the contemporary city is complex and unfathomable. Therefore, this network of exchanges predominates in some cases as a primordial diagram for a linear, radial, or organic city – or simply – swap meet urbanism.
Plug and Play
The swap meet is a plug and play device in which system of exchanges enable a series of informal ephemeral acts of assemblage, public space in a pure sense. Up or plugged into the city infrastructure early mornings, to be later used, consumed and played with all day. This ephemeral spatial conglomerate is a type of plug in city, a meshwork of exchanges without architecture; it just needs four poles and a tent, a generic formal condition that enables a layering of spatial frames in section. As the concept of the city is reinterpreted by the despatializing of the local, the notion of urban space is being restructured by global circumstances. As in many other urban conditions, the contemporary city is complex and unfathomable. Therefore, this network of exchanges predominates in some cases as a primordial diagram for a linear, radial, or organic city – or simply – swap meet urbanism.
Mal-Hitos
La mona, la bola, las torres, colloquial names given to a series of pseudo monuments found in the urban landscape of Tijuana. Generic names for highly iconic objects that within other contexts have specific meaning, yet in Tijuana they have become blank canvass of assorted interpretation. As you drive by them you distinguish their freakish resemblance to other familiar icons sited somewhere in a modern metropolis, from NY to Sao Paulo. They belong to a family of imposter icons, such as the Bart Simpson, Incredible Hulk and Mickey Mouse, plaster statuettes sold to tourist waiting in line to cross the border. They represent artificiality at a grand scale, a need to embody a replicated communal narrative. Their generic description is a negation of their figurative representation making way to a sort of diagrammatic reading that enables a looping of diverse correlations.
In a series of paired black and white photographs titled Mal-Hitos (shown above), Melisa Arreola juxtaposes the authentic against the forgery, in a mug shot format that exposes their culpability of stolen identity. Even though they impersonate monuments that through decades have acquired a deep-seated symbolism in their distinct cultural environment, they have become affirmations of the longing Tijuana has for a past and desire for urban artifacts. Their only crime, in their short and dislocated existence, is forming part of a simulated collective memory.
La mona, la bola las torres, nombres coloquiales que describen una serie de pseudo monumentos localizados en el paisaje urbano de Tijuana. Nombres genéricos para objetos tan iconográficos, que dentro de otros contextos llevan consigo significados específicos, sin embargo en Tijuana se han convertido en lienzos vacíos donde se plasman multiplicidad de interpretaciones. Al pasar cerca de ellos es posible distinguir su semejanza deformada con los iconos de las urbes modernas, desde Nueva York a Sau Paulo. Pertenecen a una familia de impostores, junto con Bart Simpson, Increible Hulk y Mickey Mouse figuras de yeso que venden a los turistas que esperan cruzar la frontera. Representativos del la artificialidad a grande escala, y de una necesidad de replicar una narrativa comunal. Dentro de su descripción generica se encuentra la negación de la figura representada – que a la vez se dirige hacia una lectura diagramática permitiendo “loops” de correlaciones diversas.
En una serie de fotografías en blanco y negro con titulo Mal-Hitos, Melissa Arreola yuxtapone el objeto original con el falsificado, en una especie de ficha fotográfica que expresa su culpabilidad de secuestro de identidad. Aun se hacen pasar por monumentos que por décadas adquirieron un profundo simbolismo en sus distintos ambientes culturales, reafirman el anhelo que tienen Tijuana por un pasado y su deseo por artefactos urbanos. Su única culpa, dentro de su corta y dislocada vida, es ser parte de una simulada memoria colectiva.
Mal-Hitos
La mona, la bola, las torres, colloquial names given to a series of pseudo monuments found in the urban landscape of Tijuana. Generic names for highly iconic objects that within other contexts have specific meaning, yet in Tijuana they have become blank canvass of assorted interpretation. As you drive by them you distinguish their freakish resemblance to other familiar icons sited somewhere in a modern metropolis, from NY to Sao Paulo. They belong to a family of imposter icons, such as the Bart Simpson, Incredible Hulk and Mickey Mouse, plaster statuettes sold to tourist waiting in line to cross the border. They represent artificiality at a grand scale, a need to embody a replicated communal narrative. Their generic description is a negation of their figurative representation making way to a sort of diagrammatic reading that enables a looping of diverse correlations.
In a series of paired black and white photographs titled Mal-Hitos (shown above), Melisa Arreola juxtaposes the authentic against the forgery, in a mug shot format that exposes their culpability of stolen identity. Even though they impersonate monuments that through decades have acquired a deep-seated symbolism in their distinct cultural environment, they have become affirmations of the longing Tijuana has for a past and desire for urban artifacts. Their only crime, in their short and dislocated existence, is forming part of a simulated collective memory.
La mona, la bola las torres, nombres coloquiales que describen una serie de pseudo monumentos localizados en el paisaje urbano de Tijuana. Nombres genéricos para objetos tan iconográficos, que dentro de otros contextos llevan consigo significados específicos, sin embargo en Tijuana se han convertido en lienzos vacíos donde se plasman multiplicidad de interpretaciones. Al pasar cerca de ellos es posible distinguir su semejanza deformada con los iconos de las urbes modernas, desde Nueva York a Sau Paulo. Pertenecen a una familia de impostores, junto con Bart Simpson, Increible Hulk y Mickey Mouse figuras de yeso que venden a los turistas que esperan cruzar la frontera. Representativos del la artificialidad a grande escala, y de una necesidad de replicar una narrativa comunal. Dentro de su descripción generica se encuentra la negación de la figura representada – que a la vez se dirige hacia una lectura diagramática permitiendo “loops” de correlaciones diversas.
En una serie de fotografías en blanco y negro con titulo Mal-Hitos, Melissa Arreola yuxtapone el objeto original con el falsificado, en una especie de ficha fotográfica que expresa su culpabilidad de secuestro de identidad. Aun se hacen pasar por monumentos que por décadas adquirieron un profundo simbolismo en sus distintos ambientes culturales, reafirman el anhelo que tienen Tijuana por un pasado y su deseo por artefactos urbanos. Su única culpa, dentro de su corta y dislocada vida, es ser parte de una simulada memoria colectiva.