Berlage Institute

Buenos Aires Design Studio

Field Trip
2017

Buenos Aires Intangible Assets

Develope a maind map by

Bike tours
Digital stories
Interviews
Subjective maps

Elements
The public
The private
The intangible
The translucent
The playful
The emblematic
The insubstantial
The emergent
The informal
The memory
The myth

I
In order to develop a diagnosis with a precise assessment, previously it is necessary to define
the parameters that allowed us to understand the data (desegregated as well as relational).
This evaluation system will be organized according to hierarchies of values associated to
physical and social conditions of the place.
The future strategy then required the definition of a method in order to compare existing
or latent opportunities both in the place of work and the immediate con text. These methods
that will be used in these information processes will enable the construction of an urban
cartography where specific aspects of the place (recognized or not, valuated or not, existing or
potential) are reflected. The information research process will consider the understanding of
the following cognitive maps:1
Social map: to define a general scheme of relations and interactions among the different
social organizations, trying to map the spatial dimension of these relations.
Spatial map: to construct an inventory of spatial conditions, patterns, regularities and
irregularities of the urban fabric, as well as a valuation of the natural and scenic systems in
the settlement.
These maps will be based on three approaches according to three different dimensions
of the city:
Territory city: the inhabitable spaces system, and their topographical, historical, and
social delimitation; examples of this are the urban topographies, infrastructure and physical
form, the eco-system, the urban nature and emergent new ecology, the expansion borders and
periphery, etc..
Dynamic city: the area constantly growing, with continuous expansions redefining
forms and typologies in the urban place. Space can be approached through changing and
1
“A new cognitive map in the most rigorous context of daily life in the material conditions of the city enables the
individual to represent his/her situation in relation with wide and genuinely un-representable totality constituted by the
city as a whole. For this reason, the cognitive map demands the combination of pure personal experience data (the
empirical position of the subject) with abstract and artificial conceptions of the geographic totality”. Jameson, Frederic, El
posmodernismo o la lógica cultural del capitalismo tardío, op. cit.,
multiple categories with different experiences capable of occurring together in the same place
that are neither exclusive nor hierarchical (i.e. circulation systems, public space systems,
quotidian, immigration/emigration).
Event city: a formal reconstruction of the individual or collective life space from
particular events or situations. These events have a thickness, a passion; they mix and clash,
generating an urban scheme that can be used as a reference for the formalization of their
supporting spaces. Examples: sports and their urban effects, festivities and celebration spaces,
all kinds of celebrations (their origins and urban effects), music as a product, markets and
fairs (i.e. the trade phenomenon as capable of generating city).

Some of the aspects that are going to be evaluated as part of the mapping and exploration
processes are:
From a physical point of view:
 specific context and surroundings.
 analysis of the urban structure
 open space quality
 spaces inventory
 elements inventory
From a socio-cultural point of view:
 analysis of mobility systems
 analysis of activities
 villa community members ambitions/expectations/demands
 use preference concerning program alternatives with different users
 use preference concerning space, everyday customs, main routes, etc.
 map of the social network

This mapping and exploration process allowed a definition of a spaces inventory organized
according to its degree of pre-existing or potential centrality, its capacity of association with
other places, the connectivity among its own centrality places, its particularities, values, etc.
This way, each space is considered from its location, its physical space (both the built and the
vacant areas), and its associative networks.

II
The design studio is starting by a critical and creative analysis of Buenos Aires City and in its
particular conflictive area in order to understand, recognize and organize opportunities for
future socio-territorial integration, activation and transformation. This analysis will be
organized on Critical drawings using existing or potential data, specific or general readings
based on a presented bibliography and on different backgrounds of each one of the students.

Conflict as a concept could be understood as a design tool because it opens, in its analysis
and evaluation ways to consolidate, in its influence to actors and their demands, forms for
future processes of change. Based on this framework, the Conflict has, in its no-wishes
conditions, a dual capacity because determine on one hand ways for specific institutional and
professional Actions and on the other spontaneous and extemporal local and informal
Reactions. In this way this Action/Reaction dynamic gives the chance to think and create
new open and flexible interventions that allow not only to improve the existing condition but
also to open the place for future opportunities that until today are unknown.

In this way we are proposing ways to understand and recognize opportunities for future
Planning, Urban and Landscape Design open initiatives. Based of the background of each one
of this way of understanding will allow to recognize how the place could act and react
according to different provocation.

This research process will be the way to define arguments that could define both methods and
results for future changes. To look for different ways of city, site and conflict interpretation is
then the way where the conflict and its opportunities for transformation could be visualized
and specialized in new critical and deeper design proposals.

This interpretation of the existing and potential opportunities will be organized on different
research methods based on different kind of Maps and Plans These drawings, collage or other
ways of representations, as an ongoing questionnaire process, are understood as ways of
manipulate different interpretations of existing or potential data. The produced work will be
both textual and experimental based on manipulation of urban fabric, urban networks, urban
scale, urban density, urban infrastructure, urban program, urban spaces, urban places, urban
connections, urban centralities, etc.
Numbers are also information for these inquire material where population, timetable, size,
distance, speed, economy, production, etc. could also be interpreted in new physically maps.
The documents should have to be organized following specific way of representations and
scale and will define series of conclusions that could or could not be used in the final project.
Comparing the future results the aim is then to produce series of design information that allow
the understanding of opportunities for future creative planning, urban and landscape design
statements its hypothesis and arguments.

The aim is also to build a model in order to search for different ways of physical
interpretations. The model will also help to recognize the area condition as part of the City
Context and the way as each one of the designs and planning decisions could also interact and
integrate the different fragments within the area and with the rest of the City.

All these information will also define the goals for the studio trip, allowing each one of the
participants and according to their own research the specific data and the way in which this
information will be surveyed.