Archinect - Constellations of Tijuana

Exhibition

2017-08-18T01:57:14-04:00

So the time has arrived to exhibit the work we have been doing in Tijuana. If you are nearby, stop by. Escuela is on the famous Avenida Revolucion.

"Constellations, when uncovered, are documented with layered maps, photographs, interviews, and articles, giving us an urban scope like that of horoscopic formations we see and ponder on the vast Milky Way."

tijuana mapping urbanism escuela libre de arquitectura #mexico

Monumental

2017-07-22T05:16:00-04:00

As it was predicted and desired, the Constellations project is having its own life and form/format/look.

The most valuable here that we are finding a very hands-on way of studying and documenting the city like Tijuana where there are hundreds of stories, street patterns, densities, orthogonal collisions, urban stories and myths, risks, invasive spread, rewards, and punishments. There is always some type of return.

A little snapshot of where we are going:

The picture above is the ‘Monumental Constellation’ just south of beachhead border wall and south of the existing and remaining bullring. It is designed to be a car race track turned into the residential and civic area with schools, government buildings, parks and commercial use extending to the ocean front. We are also recording the bdrone videos and local interviews with people living in this area called ‘Playas.’ What people say in those interviews are the narratives we are utilizing and using as a vehicle to get to the stories w...

Fieldwork starts

2017-07-02T14:07:00-04:00

Partial model by Jesus Serrano Figueroa

Into the third week, our documentation and the ideas for the format are becoming clearer. We start to do the fieldwork and the final exhibition is slowly forming. Among other material, team member Jose de Jesus Serrano Figueroa developing 3D prints of the constellations superimposed onto a large map of Tijuana.

There’s a synopsis of the project by me towards the end of this Sessions podcast and we are collecting field information with a drone circling the areas we are documenting and piecing a video of the project.

There is a reaction from my friend and the friend of the project Tijuana architect Carlos Gamino about last week’s Colosio post for connecting Tijuana with violence. Perhaps rightfully but that wasn’t our intention as it was an example of narratives we are developing, and they don’t necessarily dwell on violence. Tijuana is a relatively peaceful city with lots of music and culture. There, as I promised him to bring some clarity.

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Tijuana as a galaxy of constellations

2017-06-26T17:54:00-04:00

Into the second week of the research, series of constellations are fast emerging. We have located about two dozens already. Tijuana is like a galaxy with endless stories. A young city already rich in urban archeology.

Here is a Constellation Colosio to give you a sample of constellar structures we are looking for. IE: The route ambulance took PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio to the emergency hospital where he was pronounced dead in 1994, (in red.)

FYI:

Assassination [from Wikipedia]

At 5:05 PM PST, on 23 March 1994, at a campaign rally in Lomas Taurinas, a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, Baja California, Colosio was shot in the head with a .38 Special from a few centimeters distance and nearby a person recording a video. Colosio collapsed, and was subsequently rushed to the city's main hospital, after plans to fly him to an American hospital across the border were canceled. His death was announced a few hours later, amid contradicting eyewitness reports that remain to t...

Constellations

2017-05-31T20:12:00-04:00

Constellations originally started as a made to order work when I was invited by Bryan Finoki to participate in the Los Angeles issue of Postopolis L.A. curated by Bryan and Geoff Manaugh and others. It was the second installation of Postopolis! previously launched in New York at the Storefront for Art and Architecture under Joseph Grima’s directorship. Constellations is a way of recording and experiencing the city and creating its own codes of observation while doing it.

Although the idea kept alive by its offshoots, it has been a while Constellations project has been updated or a new edition created and published under its namesake. Since, I have developed many new locations for the project and had a chance to test the effects of such studies. Escuela Libre De Arquitectura in Tijuana, Mexico, gave me the opportunity to do a Tijuana issue of the ongoing project of Constellations as an Urbanism research seminar.

Here’s the byline:

Constellations of Tijuana:
A research study in Urbani...