Sep '06 - Dec '09
I am very excited, this semester I got my first choice in the lottery: Teddy Cruz's : Housing in Nicaragua - Radicalizing the Local: The Neighborhood as Political Unit.
We are going to Granada, Nicaragua and it promises to be an intense research studio for the NGO Casas de la Esperanza's housing project that will actually get built. Teddy says that at the end he hopes a few of us will go to Nicaragua to oversee the design implementation, so we will work as a team, resembling an office (like in the Tajo studio).
Furthermore, this is another systematic studio where the focus is as much in reshuffling and rethinking larger systems such as power and financial structures as it is in the final architectural intervention. Basically his studio is another chance to further study the power, financial, and social structures studied last semester and re-think the relationships, allowing our designs to fill gaps and make connections not seen previously; except that now this information will be focused on a specific project with real world implications and influencing an architectural design meant for construction.
We actually plan to look at the social design blog and look ways to appropriately expand the body of information, either in this site or a complementary one.
Finally, I want to note that 6 option studios are traveling to Latin America (Brazil(2), Argentina, Mexico(2), Nicaragua) and right now we have a major exhibit of Latin American cities. I hope this will become a positive trend in the GSD...
6 Comments
Wow...You lucky bastard.
I just finished reading Cruz's lecture The New Border Atlas (one of the CCA James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City, late last year...
I was amazed by the kind of informal spaces, specifically through processes of re-zoning etc..
http://www.cca.qc.ca/stirling/download/Cruz_Stirling_Lecture.pdf
Can't wait to see the work..
q, this is great news. sounds like a great studio and good happenings at the gsd all around. looking forward to reading about it here!
thanks nama, yes it is that type of process-based design is what calls my attention about the studio. And process here means looking at the real-world processes of power and control of land and capital and their eventual evidence in the built-world.
aml, isn't this a great trend?
hey quilian! it's alice from cornell. i believe we met at the NOMA conference at Orlando. just dropping by to say hi. :) i just starting surfing architnect, so im still exploring. i hope you're doing well! ttyl.
-alice
Hey Alice, of course I remember you. Welcome to the 'nect and enjoy!!
q,
Teddy just lectured at our school (Texas Tech) last week and I was very intrigued by his work! What stuck out to me were the cross-cultural applications of building typologies, land use practices, informalities and transitional uses of public/private space. I think his ideas have great transferability in an increasingly globalized and nomadic world.
Great guy too, I got to speak with him after the talk and am actually going to submit to him some process work from my master's thesis.
Good luck with the studio. I look forward to reading about it!
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