Urban Acupuncture and the

paradoxical Logic of Systems

Sarah Deyong
Urban Acupuncture refers to the idea that carefully considered,

U-TTs Vertical Gymnasiums and Metro Cable are focal points

small-scale architectural interventions have the potential to bring

within the urban fabric that have substantially changed the social

about positive change to a larger urban field. The term first

field. Stacking basketball courts, soccer fields, volleyball courts,

appeared in the writings of Manuel de Sol-Morales in reference

dance studios, and a running track, the Vertical Gyms fulfill a

to reparative interventions to Barcelona and has subsequently

need for recreational facilities in neighborhoods rife with gang-

been adopted by other architects such as Kenneth Frampton,

related violence. An average of 15,000 people a month have vis-

Teddy Cruz, the architect-mayor Jaime Lerner, and Urban-Think

ited U-TTs first vertical gym in Chicaos Barrio La Cruz since its

Tank.1 While clearly referencing the Chinese medical procedure,

inauguration in 2003, and the concurrent 30 percent decline in

urban acupuncture can also be understood in relation to the sys-

crime has been attributed in large part to the impact of this com-

tems idea of leverage points, as expounded by scholar and envi-

munity facility. Located on the site of an old makeshift soccer

ronmentalist Donella Meadows. Meadows leverage points

field, the building displaces little of the existing urban fabric and

designate places within a complex system (a corporation, an

is strategically located to maximize accessibility. Though the

economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift

facility is not the first of its kind, it has been successful where

in one thing can produce big changes in everything. 2 Leverage

others have not, in part, because the architects addressed the

points are like faults where converging, mutually amplifying ener-

problem of finding an embedded site that avoided displacing

gies, though disruptive to a system, effect positive change. In her

existing residents. Buildable sites are virtually non-existent in the

essay Places to Intervene in a System, published in Whole Earth

densely-packed barrios, so most of the VGsthere are now five

in 1997, she warns against generalizing systems which are way

of themhave been built on the sites of existing playing fields,

too complicated and dynamically complex to figure out easily;

whose programs are vertically transposed in the new building.

instead, she identified tactical sites of intervention, ranging from

Similarly, U-TTs Metro Cable in the Barrio San Agustn lever-

the prosaic (parameters, rules and constraints) to the revolution-

ages change within the physical urban organization. As is com-

ary (casting off paradigms).

mon in the barrios, circulation occurs through an intricate web of

Meadowss notion of leveraging change relates to urban acu-

pedestrian routes that are prone to flooding and difficult to tra-

puncture as defined through compact, urban interventions

verse during the wet season. As a new road system could dis-

capable of spontaneously restructuring their immediate sur-

place up to one-third of the residents, U-TT proposed an elevated

roundings. 3 However, it also underscores the possibility for

cable car system that touched the ground minimallysimilar to

urban acupuncture to go beyond the remediation of the built envi-

one that effectively transformed the barrios of Medelln,

ronment to transform a broader social context. Accepting the

Colombia. Subsidized by the government and completed in

interconnected and rhizomatic nature of a complex system,

January 2010, the Metro Cable bridges the river and six-lane

Meadow points to an ecologic based not on a conservative,

highway that geographically divides San Agustn from the city

homeostatic model but on what Jean-Franois Lyotard once

proper, connecting the three peaks of the barrio with two sta-

called the paradoxical logic, or paralogic, of systems. A case in

tions along the public transportation route in the commercial

point is the urban acupuncture of Urban-Think Tank in the barrios

area of Caracas. Consequently, the cable car has reduced the

of Caracas, an area where 60% of the urban population resides

commute from as much as two and one half hours by foot to

plagued by poverty and a lack of essential services, including

twenty minutes. In addition to increasing residents accessibility

schools, hospitals, parks, water supply, sewage and trash

to the city below, the cable cars facilitate the transport of goods

removal. Specifically, two of Meadowss leverage points, outlined

(such as drinking water) into the barrio. The introduction of the

in her Places to Intervene in a System, resonate with U-TTs

transportation infrastructure thus has then the additional eco-

strategy to create change in the barrios. The first is what

nomic impact of reducing the cost of goods sold in stores located

Meadows has referred to as material stocks and flow, that is,

higher up in the barrio.5 The La Ceiba station integrates a library

the physical arrangement of things, such as urban infrastructure

and gym, thus serving as another means of providing the barrio

(Meadows cites road systems) and public services. The second is

with the public amenities of the city. Cisterns built at the hilltop

self-organization, a bottom-up strategy of adaptation, or in

stations collect rainwater; grey-water recycling, and other ser-

Meadowss words, of surviving change through change.

vices marked for future incorporation at the five stations include:

Urban Think-Tank: Interventions 99

praxis 13

new housing, a social center, stores, public gardens, a day-care

tion, maintenance, and ultimately, for the projects success. Dry

center, offices and a government-sponsored supermarket.

toilets have now been built in other barrios by community work-

Urban infrastructure functions at what Meadows calls a lower-

shops, under permit from the Ministry of Health.

ranking leverage point, because it is difficult to change once it is

Although U-TT never directly reference systems theory, their

built: Physical structure is crucial in a system, but the leverage

rhizomatic approach is connected to the paradoxical logic of sys-

point is in proper design in the first place. That is why it is so

tems. Their strategy for an urban acupuncture entails not only a

important to get the infrastructure right the first time [sic]. Still,

deep understanding of the social, political and economic forces

U-TT has managed to transform the socio-urban field by capital-

at play in a given field, but more importantly, a tactical knowledge

izing on the forces that already exist rather than eradicating

of the dynamics of this ecology in order to construct new maps,

them. Brillembourg and Klumpner have had to reinvent the ways

and networks of relations. Their work mediates between multiple

things are typically done out of necessity, like a bricoleur who

agents and has led to innovative design solutions that have

resourcefully juxtaposes previously unrelated elements (a cable

changed the dynamics of the socio-ecological field in which they

car and a mountain of houses or a vertical gym) in a poetic yet

are embedded. Their strategy begins with mapping the existing

practical attempt to create a new possibility.

forces at play in order to identify potential sites that can act as

The second of Meadowss leverage points that relates to

catalysts for change, and is therefore not unlike the psychogeo-

U-TTs urban acupuncture is self-organization, a concept that

graphic strategies of Guy Debord, in which Paris was re-imagined

U-TT term informal. U-TT sees the unregulated urbanization of

by forging new relationships (dtournements).9 U-TT has mapped

the barrios not as urban blight but as morphologies with their own

the phenomena of everyday life in the barrios in order to under-

internal logic. These settlements, they note, are both illegal

stand informal relationships; they have made physical connec-

and extra-legal, since existing zoning codes have no jurisdiction

tions with infrastructure linking topographically distant points,

over building sites that lack any title of ownership. But the squat-

as well as interventions that tactically reverse the existing socio-

ter cities are not without their own codes, following unwritten

economic condition. They see informal settlements as urban lab-

rules of self-organization. To be sure, informal logics have seri-

oratories of the future, precisely because they necessitate new

ous inadequacies (houses are built on unstable ground and are

off-grid prototypes for the city are applicable for so-called devel-

subject to mudslides), but it has also fostered vital cooperatives,

oped world as well.10

where families acquire property collectively in the interests of

the community as a whole.
In working with the community, U-TT has capitalized on the

NOTES
1. For their use of the term, see the following texts: Manuel de Sol-Morales,
Progettare citt/Designing Cities, Lotus Quaderni Documents 23, ed. Mirko

fault between the urban poor and an unstable dictatorship. After

Zardini (Milan: Electa, 1999); Teddy Cruz, Urban Acupuncture, Residential

ten years of research in the barrios, they know they must harness

Architect (January-February 2005); Alfredo Brillembourg, Kristin Feireiss and

the collective intelligence of self-organization. Indeed, the Metro

Cable became a reality only after U-TT organized a highly publicized conference among architects, planners, university activists, and barrio leaders, in protest of the governments plan to
upgrade the slums with an invasive road system. This was a
watershed moment in land-use planning and development, they
say; never before had a slum community asserted the right to
shape its own future; never before had stake-holders demanded
a role in the decision-making. Community involvement also
8

resulted in the citing of the Mama Margarita Orphanage in an

abandoned municipal space under a highway bridge in Petare,
due to insight of a local priest. Other projects, such as the dry
toilets and water collection units (a necessary alternative to
costly and invasive upgrades to infrastructure), in La Laderas
Barrio La Vega, relied heavily on individual initiative for construc-

Hubert Klumpner, eds., Informal City: Caracas Case (Munich: Prestel Verlag,
2005), 107; and Jaime Lerner, Urban Acupuncture (2008).
2. Donella Meadows, Places to Intervene in a System, Whole Earth Review
(Winter 1997).
3. Kenneth Frampton, Labour, Work and Architecture (London: Phaidon, 2002),
16.
4. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979;
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 61-63.
5. This point is made by Brillembourg and Klumpner in the film by Rob Schrder,
Caracas, The Informal City (Rotterdam: VPRO, 2007).
6. Meadows, Places to Intervene.
7. Brillembourg, Feireiss and Klumpner, Informal City, 74.
8. Urban Think Tank, Metro Cable, unpublished document (2010).
9. Spurred by the publication of Simon Sadlers book The Situationist City
(1999), U-TT produced their own psychogeographic maps of Caracas.
Brillembourg in conversation with the author, 12 December 2010.
10. For an example of their phenomena mapping, see Brillembourg, Feireiss
and Klumpner, Informal City, 135-41.