This evening PennDesign had an opening for an exhibit focusing on the works of a few young Colombian (men) architects and examples of their civic works, mostly libraries, some athletic facilities, with an odd Chamber of Commerce building to keep things ideologically mixed. The exhibit, which includes photography, process drawings, video and models, is open... Continue Reading →
A brief post today, wrapping up documentation for the Medellin armature project. First, a bit of site analysis. At a certain scale the world plan seems inappropriate. Map would seen to indicate a bit more freedom, a bit more looseness resulting from trying to represent a territorial scale. Even design moves, taken at this scale,... Continue Reading →
A few more photographs of a model representing an informal armature situated on a former mining operation site.
This past fall's semester culminated in the design of an armature, covering anywhere from a neighborhood to many square miles. I focused on a small quarry right on the border between Belen, a neighborhood in Medellin, and Altavista. The site is located directly adjacent to an Adventist University, a seminary, and middle class apartments. My... Continue Reading →
Spanning a few valleys spanning the southwest edge of Medellin, Altavista is a sparsely populated suburb home to farmland, a large brick factory and a majority of the mining activity in Medellin. Most of the approximately 17,400 residents are in the lowest two economic strata. Like most of Medellin, a good portion of population growth... Continue Reading →
David Gouverneur, a Landscape Architecture professor at PennDesign in Philadelphia, has spent much time and energy exploring the problems, possibilities and characteristics of informal settlements (as discussed a few days ago). His research has focused on preemptive design of areas of city expansion, in contrast to retroactive improvement of informal settlements, sometimes called "acupunctural" interventions.... Continue Reading →
To continue on the same theme as yesterday, the poorest people in Medellin look to build their homes on the cheapest land, often free land or land illegally occupied. On the Southwestern fringe of Medellin much of the land is currently used for material exploitation, mineral exploration or strip mining. Sometimes these two forces converge... Continue Reading →
This past semester focused on growth in Colombia's second largest city of Medellin, surrounded by steep hillsides and facing the serious task of finding safe and equitable housing for its poorest residents. The city has about 2.5 million residents with another million living nearby in the Aburra Valley. The city lies in a river valley,... Continue Reading →
Adam Achrati 